A Man in Love (My struggle book 2), Karl Ove Knausgaard, many days in, The Player of Games, Iain. M. Banks

Ill today, and somehow Karl Ove Knausgaard was too much to read while feeling slightly nauseous and uncomfortable.  I picked up The Player of Games to read again, but the print was small and unclear - that slightly smudged effect that you get in cheap paperbacks and the paper  yellowed with age so it wasn't a comfortable reading experience.
I had a look how much it cost on the Kindle, and it was only £3.99, so I downloaded it for  big font size easy read.

I had forgotten the basic premise of The Player of Games, even though it's one of my favourite books.  The eponymous player of games is tricked into playing a game in a far off civilisation, blackmailed in fact. He has committed a small indiscretion, but one that , even in the anything goes tolerant world of the Culture (even because it is an anything goes tolerant world), will haunt him if disclosed. It's both the relative littleness of the thing, but the fact that it impinges on his honesty so directly, that almost hollows out his life, makes it worthless, when he been having existential doubts about its worth anyway. This unease is at the heart of the book, and although it is soon eclipsed by the events that follow, this time round I reflected on the the way in which he would never forget the dishonour that he had committed on himself, even as the thing itself diminished through time and perspective. It was like a low level ontological nausea that mirrored the slightly physically sick feeling I had myself.