Like Drawing Blood

Recently, I've been reading two books.

"JPod", by Douglas Coupland. This is a story about a video games developer, working in a cubical alongside 5 other disillusioned developers whose last names, extremely curiously, all begin with J.

and

"My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk and translated by Erdağ Göknar. This is a story about miniaturists, or book illustrators, working in Istanbul. Four miniaturists are working on a very special book, but one has recently been murdered by one of the others. Meanwhile, their old friend returns from an extended exile to find that both Istanbul and the love of his life are not exactly as he remembered.





So... Which one reminds me most of my old work, do you reckon? And which one will I bother reading through?

Well, as a kind of hint, I'll endeavour to answer at least one of the questions of the master illustrator here. He asked three questions, designed to separate the great miniaturist from the pretender. However, I will answer them not from the point of view of an illustrator, but instead from the point of view of a video games coder.