What are you reading now?

[Travesty]

I have almost finished I'm in Love With The Villainess (light novel) 4, and it's enjoyable but books 3 and 4 have not been as good as books 1 and 2. The first 2 books had more emphasis on the main characters relationship, which brought out more comedy in the dialogue which was what I enjoyed most about the books. Will be reading the fifth book at some point.

Performativity (The New Critical Idiom) by James Loxley. Lately I have been taking university courses from performing arts field, which is where I have my degree on, but since it's been over 10 years since I graduated I feel like it's important to update my knowledge. Late last year and early this year I have had classes that were focused on performativity and it really clicked for me, and now am building a small reference library and reading more on the subject. This book has been a intresting read, and I will have to go through it again some day.

[MartyG]

If you want to have nightmares and not sleep well, then I recommend reading this.

Nuclear War: A Scenario

It's a timely reminder why we really don't want this to happen. You should probably read it even though it might stop you sleeping; it seems well researched, based on interviews with science and military experts.

[charlesr]

I've been given a Kindle. Now I can read without glasses again!

I'm reading Absolution Gap. It's the 3rd book in the Revelation Space series. Great science fiction.

[fuse]

Finished reading House of Leaves recently. It's got a lot of new attention following myhouse.wad turning some heads in the gaming space last year, mine included. You kinda can't talk about it without highlighting how it's presented - which is unusual, to say the least - and in toying with formats, structures, layouts, fonts and the like it certainly adds a hook for shmucks like me that aren't such regular readers.

The underlying story is pretty engaging in itself though; a young family move into a house where the father figure soon realises that one inside wall is bigger than it is on the outside. Things build from that first logic-defying discovery, but with the story being somewhat accidentally captured in a series of home movies that are compiled into a documentary, with you reading about someone's written assessment of this documentary while also having a parallel commentary running in its extensive footnotes from someone who has happened across this manuscript and whose total fixation on it appears to be distressing them greatly.

It has moments where it goes off on total tangents and is quite dull / crass, but there's also no shaking that all of this is all by design as it gets you to ask questions about each layer of narration you're weaving through. It has definitely stuck with me. I'm not sure this is a total recommendation, but I enjoyed it and am glad to have read it.