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"title": "My Current Read",
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"plaintext": "The magic of Leaflet.pub over the homegrown, markdown-driven blog on my website is that I’ve got access to a blog editor on my phone again. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still something satisfying about the pure DIY of working in a blank .md file and pushing a fresh commit to Github, but for the purposes of sheer output, being able to work from a mobile screen when necessary (or when more convenient) is pretty unmatched."
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"plaintext": "Plus, a variety of new and immediate publishing opportunities present themselves. I could, for instance, just as I’m writing this, snap a pic of what I’m currently reading and share it. To wit:"
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"plaintext": "Sorry for the bedsheets-and-soft-lighting aesthetic, but we’re putting this together on the fly. Blogging!"
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"plaintext": "Anyway, yes, current read is Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar: One Rainy Day in May. At 880 pages, it looks like a beast, but anyone familiar (heh) with Danielewski’s style from House of Leaves knows just how much his books can shift from dense to airy in a heartbeat. Some pages are full to bursting, while others hold only a scattering of words, often shaped to carry a visual weight as well as a textual one. A few samples:"
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"plaintext": "Reactions I’ve gotten to this have been muted."
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"plaintext": "“Huh.”"
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"plaintext": "And that’s before I get to the fact that the book’s the first in an ultimately failed 27-part, multicharacter, multivoiced series that publisher Pantheon Books decided it couldn’t justify the printing costs of after just the first five volumes. So there’s a whiff of hubris coming off of it, too."
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"plaintext": "But I’m still giving it a try because 1) I enjoyed House of Leaves a good deal, and 2) the ambition of the whole thing intrigues me, even if it’ll never be realized in full. I’m always down for a grand, maximalist project; the question’s just whether it’s done well. I doubt I’ll read all five volumes (this is the only one I’ve got on my shelf a the moment), but I want a sample—a hint of the thing’s sweep and execution."
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"plaintext": "I’m in the 500s at this point, of the total 880 pages, and some narrative threads have been working better than others. The Xanthar, Astair, and Anwar chapters: yes. The Luther Perez chapters: ehhhhhhhh. The Cas chapters: not enough data to compute."
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