The Player of Games is the only Banks i've read but i've been reading to mean more; i've heard such good things!!!!
it was initially recommended to me by a friend who said it's his favorite novel & said friend is also perhaps the BIGGEST strategy/board game enthusiast i know, so when i was reading i was like "ok lmao this tracks"... but i also liked that there were larger Themes licking the edges of the main narrative (which indeed felt mostly like Biggest Board Game Nerd On Earth throws down). the alcoholic ambassador character was INTERESTING (and i'm told he gets more development in other novels?), and the sort of ambient contemplation of "what sorts of *problems* exist in a Fully-Automated Gay Luxury Space Communism society" was really interesting... like the MC certainly seemed to fit uneasily into his own society in certain ways, and clearly cared more about the game than he did about larger societal/diplomatic goals, but you get the sense he can't *escape* those larger questions in a way i found nice and chewy.
i keep a loose list of "paired reading" suggestions (books that i think may be particularly interested read back-to-back or simultaneously) and i think Player of Games could pair interestingly with a lot of books... particularly The Glass Bead Game which has gotta be one of my all-time favorites; i read it back in middle school and it still haunts me today haha
(Kokoro is one that i read aaaaall the way back in freshman year of high school, so my concrete memories are fuzzier... i was doing that thing where i was Ambiently Interested In Literature From Outside The English-Speaking World, and it was The Japanese Novel That Happened To Be On The Shelf In My High School Library... i remember puzzling a long time over K's death (why it happened, how Sensei felt about it), and WHY the narrator was so interested in Sensei in the first place, and remember finding the sparse prose so different than anything i'd read before and so beautiful... in hindsight i think part of why it made such an impact on young!me was that it was probably my earliest effort at Trying To "Get" A Book without any kind of teacher, sparknotes, reviews on the internet, etc, to guide me? so i just remember being like Wow, Big Feelings, What Is Happening Here kind of deal lol. really good random high school library find; i bet adult!me would get a lot more out of it lol)
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it was initially recommended to me by a friend who said it's his favorite novel & said friend is also perhaps the BIGGEST strategy/board game enthusiast i know, so when i was reading i was like "ok lmao this tracks"... but i also liked that there were larger Themes licking the edges of the main narrative (which indeed felt mostly like Biggest Board Game Nerd On Earth throws down). the alcoholic ambassador character was INTERESTING (and i'm told he gets more development in other novels?), and the sort of ambient contemplation of "what sorts of *problems* exist in a Fully-Automated Gay Luxury Space Communism society" was really interesting... like the MC certainly seemed to fit uneasily into his own society in certain ways, and clearly cared more about the game than he did about larger societal/diplomatic goals, but you get the sense he can't *escape* those larger questions in a way i found nice and chewy.
i keep a loose list of "paired reading" suggestions (books that i think may be particularly interested read back-to-back or simultaneously) and i think Player of Games could pair interestingly with a lot of books... particularly The Glass Bead Game which has gotta be one of my all-time favorites; i read it back in middle school and it still haunts me today haha
(Kokoro is one that i read aaaaall the way back in freshman year of high school, so my concrete memories are fuzzier... i was doing that thing where i was Ambiently Interested In Literature From Outside The English-Speaking World, and it was The Japanese Novel That Happened To Be On The Shelf In My High School Library... i remember puzzling a long time over K's death (why it happened, how Sensei felt about it), and WHY the narrator was so interested in Sensei in the first place, and remember finding the sparse prose so different than anything i'd read before and so beautiful... in hindsight i think part of why it made such an impact on young!me was that it was probably my earliest effort at Trying To "Get" A Book without any kind of teacher, sparknotes, reviews on the internet, etc, to guide me? so i just remember being like Wow, Big Feelings, What Is Happening Here kind of deal lol. really good random high school library find; i bet adult!me would get a lot more out of it lol)