What I'm reading right now

In light of yesterday's post on the newest book I've got, I'm going to reveal what Dustin's reading on a regular basis. I'm actually a ways off from breaking into Second Person - I have several books to go through before that.

Usually, for books, I have one fiction and one non-fiction going at the same time. For the last few months, I have been wading through Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Don't get me wrong, its a great book, but it is hard for me to digest. For fiction, I just finished reading Perdido St. Station, by China Mieville, and now I'm into Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. These two books are great. Perdido Street Station is fantastically imaginative, and Haunted is deliciously weird.

I constantly keep a list of books, movies and video games I need to play through posted on my bulletin board, numbering about 20 each. Sometimes on a whim I will go internet shopping and actually go out and buy these things, so they physically end up in the "cue" bookshelf above my desk. Next to me right now is: The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson, Collapse by Jared Diamond, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, AI for Game Developers, The Long Walk and finally, at the bottom, is Second Person. Whew!

I also read graphic novels. I read Y:The Last Man (whenever it comes out. the publish schedule is damn slow) and I'm reading through a friend's 100 Bullets.

With games, I take a similar approach I do to books, except instead of fiction/non-fiction I do casual/non-casual (A non-fiction game is, well, The Internet). I'm playing through Syberia, an adventure game, and Wik and The Fable of Souls (a really innovative arcade name with a stupidly pretentious and misleading title). I'm also playing through an interactive fiction game called Savoir-Faire by Emily Short. It's a parser adventure, very well written with an aristocratic flair. On the cue (ahem, shelf), I have Indigo Prophecy, known for its excellent writing.

As for TV and movies, I almost never schedule my life around TV. Except for Battlestar Galactica, which is between its 3rd and 4th seasons. Usually, I download series, and I just started watching Dexter two days ago. It looks pretty interesting so far, but I'm not sure if it will hold my attention.