What’s on Your Reading List?: Johanna Kasurinen from Mouthwashing Shares Her Picks

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! While cleaning under my bed recently, I once again discovered my copy of the smallest physical book I have ever owned. It’s a tiny handheld edition of the I Ching. What a wonderful thing. I mean, I haven’t actually read it, but wisdom is owning at least one very small book, is what I assume the gist is.

This week, it’s Strange Organ’s Johanna Kasurinen, writer and artist on none other than the RPS 2024 GOTY, Mouthwashing! Cheers Johanna! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

What are you currently reading?

Hell yeah! I’m so happy to be doing this series, thank you for having me!

I tend to be reading books that could be classified as research into stories I’m either currently working on or am interested in working on in the future. So it’s a lot of non-fiction on pretty specific subjects. It’s a way to justify “wasting time” on reading, let’s be real. Right now I’m going through Ninety Percent Of Everything by Rose George as well as Destroyer: An Anthology Of First-Hand Accounts Of The War At Sea 1939-1945 by Ian Hawkins. Those are for a personal project I’ve been batting around in my head for years now.

A few of my previous favorite reads prompted by a research mindset were While You’re Here, Doc by Bradford B. Brown as well as Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food And Longing by Anya Von Bremzen. These ones stuck out to me beyond the project I was looking into due their wit and the specificity of the experiences detailed in the anecdotes. It never fails to strike me how real stories can often be much more bizarre and unbelievable than anything creeps like me try to cook up with fiction.

What did you last read?

A reread of The Shining, actually! I’ve long since been a big fan of the film adaptation and am overall a huge fan of Stephen King’s work but it had been a long time since I’d read the book. I happened to be in the perfect setting for it as well, isolated in the middle of nowhere Finland for a good chunk of the summer. When I first read it I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the novel specifically for the aspects of it that were distinctly different from the adaptation, having come into it as a fan of the movie first. The portrayal of addiction and all the anger and circular thinking that drags a person down into something entirely unrecognizable was particularly striking and relatable. Definitely one of my favorites, and a really interesting case study overall in how one story can be told with very distinct methods and entirely different mediums to such high standards.

What are you eyeing up next?

I’ve been on a short story collection streak since they make for good commuting reads. A few that I’m interested in right now are Orange World by Karen Russell which seems off-kilter and outlandish with potentially disturbing subject matters. I’m always down for that. Another that stands out is Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata, I really enjoyed her novel Convenience Store Woman especially for how crisp and lifelike that felt so I’m interested in reading something by her that’s been described as more grotesque and dark.

What quote or scene from a book sticks with you the most?

“But he knew he wouldn’t. How much it said, that line; how much it told about himself.”

– Charles R. Jackson, The Lost Weekend

What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?

Anyone who either wants to make or enjoys consuming indie horror games or “lost media” type horror content, surprise, I’m going to burst through your floorboards and proselytize about Mark Z. Danielewski’s House Of Leaves.

You can’t buy a digital version of House of Leaves. When I first realized I couldn’t download it I felt annoyed, inconvenienced. But it’s for a good reason, it defies everything about regular storytelling down to the formatting of the words on the page itself. Getting your hands on a copy sort of feels like part of the process, like the story itself begins with just acquiring the physical book itself. Don’t look up anything about it, just go in blind, suffer. It’s in parts overwhelming, obtuse, rambling and entirely deranged but altogether incredible. One of one.

My copy now sits on the bookshelf in the house alongside my other books, but while those spines are lined up neatly, appropriate, in their correct place, I can’t help but see House of Leaves as the singular entity that’s continuously glowering at me instead.

For a quicker read I would recommend anyone to try out Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. It is a masterclass in how to break the rules of language and writing which packs a punch through the sheer technical creativity and control of the prose. A concise, entertaining and bleakly human story that stays with you.

What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?

Nothing springs to mind immediately, to be honest. Adding in gameplay to an existing narrative is such a difficult prospect because ideally the story and mechanics are holding hands right from the beginning. We’ve had this issue at Wrong Organ where I have a stack of unpublished short stories in my repertoire that I think are strong concepts but it always comes down to “well how would making this into a game elevate it?” It can be difficult, but there are of course many great games that come from books, like Parasite Eve or I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream. It’s really interesting to see these kinds of adaptations and look into how the mechanic implementations were approached. What was inherited from the source material and what wasn’t.

I suppose instead of wanting to see direct adaptations of books, I’d want to see original titles take inspiration from a wider, more diverse selection of sources. Especially when it comes to books that cover difficult or mature topics. It shouldn’t be limited to just game narrative either. Books can definitely inspire mechanics just as much as story. There’s a sick heap of untapped potential there. Make a game that’s thematically inspired by Lord Of the Flies and mechanically by Trainspotting. Why not?

Oh, so you claim you’re “happy” to be “doing this series” and yet you didn’t “name” every single book “ever written in human history” as is this column’s “very secret goal”. Typical guest. Not sure why I keep inviting them really. They’ll be another “next week” though, no doubt. Book for now!