dancing_moon | Reading

Is it OK to read Infinite Jest in public? Why the internet hates ‘performative reading’

You know, I was completely unaware that 'The Internet' hated upon this (whatever it is) until I came across this article and I think we are probably well into a realm similar to journo constructing a phenomenon on the basis of '6 people I spoke to in the wine-bar last week'.

Or maybe I just don't do TikTok and am missing this, but in my experience, few forms of social media are entire monoliths, what?

Why shouldn't people read in public? They're not doing it AT other people, honestly.

Can't help thinking that those who get aerated at people reading on public transport or while sitting quietly in a restaurant or coffee-shop are very likely those who think you should 'rawdog' long planeflights, sad gits.

Okay, these days I am pretty much always reading on ereader when out and about, so nobody can see what I'm reading. But back in the day I have read a lot of things that I daresay some miserable so-and-so would have considered 'performative', like Remembrance of Things Past on the Tube.

And among other things Marx and Rousseau on the train when I was commuting in from suburban Surrey.

Which phase of my life I was reminded of by a review headed 'A darker side of Lawrence Durrell' - I was not aware that there was any other side, actually - I habitually got in the same compartment of the same train each morning and there was the same young man making his way veeeeery slowwwwly through the volumes of The Alexandria Quartet. Months and months of Balthazar.

iamrman posting in

scans_daily

Writers: Barbara and Karl Kesel

Pencils: Rob Liefeld

Inks: Karl Kesel

Kestrel strikes!

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james_davis_nicoll

This is much easier for Martin's New Voices series....

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james_davis_nicoll

Four works new to me. One is SF, two fantasy, and the magazine (which I have not yet looked inside) likely both. Two of the novels are series novels, one does not seem to me.

Books Received, June 28 — July 4

Poll #33326 Books Received, June 28 — July 4

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

FIYAH No. 35: Black Isekai published by FIYAH Literary Magazine (July 2025)
6 (35.3%)

Aces Full edited by George R. R. Martin (November 2025)
1 (5.9%)

Only Spell Deep by Ava Morgyn (March 2026)
2 (11.8%)

The Damned by Harper L. Woods (October 2025)
0 (0.0%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
15 (88.2%)

oursin

Happy birthday,

stillsostrange!

iamrman posting in

scans_daily

Writer: Beau Smith

Pencils: Mike Parobeck and Butch Guice

Inks: Dan Davis

Zero Hour tie-in.

Guy is transported back in time to the day of Coast City’s destruction.

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cyberghostface posting in

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( Scans under the cut... )

iamrman posting in

scans_daily

Writer: Paul Kupperberg

Pencils: Bill Willingham

Inks: Rich Rankin

Hal tries to defend Carol from the Predator. It goes just as well as everything else Hal does.

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delphi

✓

kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Non-Human POV

(I checked this square off my bingo card last time, but this new release arrived with perfect timing, so I'm doubling up.)

Ew, It's Beautiful is the newest collection of cartoonist Joshua Barkman's webcomic False Knees. It contains around 120 short comics, the majority of which were new to me, separated into sections for winter, spring, summer, and fall based on their setting.

The stars of False Knees are usually birds, but there are some cats, insects, and at least a couple of beavers in the mix here. Barkman's art is legitimately beautiful, with a naturalist's specificity and a knack for combining human expressions with realistic animal features, and his writing captures the universal experience of being a small creature in an unfathomably big world. It's full of absurd humour, occasional moments of awe, and recurring bits about the creative process, self-image, and the way friends or family can be on entirely different wavelengths. The comic is where I got my current default icon from, and it almost never fails to bring me a little joy or give me something to appreciate.

( 3 Comics )

laughing_tree posting in

scans_daily

Originally I wanted John Stewart to be the main protagonist, and I wanted him to be around forty-five. I sat down one day and thought to myself ‘Do I want to do another haunted old man comic? Do I want to do another comic about an older man?’ A lot of my comics seem to be about old men. I was getting notes about how passive John was in the book as well. I was searching for who else could be the protagonist after that, and I had plans for Hal, and I needed somebody who cuts through really well. That’s Jo Mullein. -- Al Ewing

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heartsways posting in

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oursin

What I read

Finished The Islands of Sorrow and it is a bit slight, definitely one for the Simon Raven completist I would say - a number of the tales feel like outtakes from the later novels.

Decided not for me: Someone You Can Build a Nest In.

Started Val McDermid, The Grave Tattoo (2006), a non-series mystery. Alas, I was not grabbed - in terms of present-day people encounter Historical Mystery, this did not ping my buttons - a) could not quite believe that a woman studying at a somewhat grotty-sounding post-92 uni in an unglam part of London would have even considered doing a PhD on Wordsworth (do people anywhere even do this anymore) let alone be publishing a book on him b)a histmyst involving Daffodil Boy and a not so much entirely lost but *concealed unpublished in The Archives* manuscript of Epic Poem, cannot be doing with. (Suspect foul libel upon generations of archivists at Dove Cottage, just saying.) Gave up.

Read in anticipation of book group next week, Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones (1962).

Margery Sharp, Britannia Mews (1946) (query, was there around then a subgenre of books doing Victoria to now via single person or family?). Not a top Sharp, and I am not sure whether she is doing an early instance of Ace Representation, or just a Stunning Example of Victorian Womanhood (who is, credit is due, no mimsy).

Because I discovered it was Quite A Long Time since I had last read it, Helen Wright, A Matter of Oaths (1988).

Also finished first book for essay review, v good.

Finally came down to a price I consider eligible, JD Robb, Bonded in Death (In Death #60) (2025). (We think there were points where she could have done with a Brit-picker.)

On the go

Barbara Hambly, Murder in the Trembling Lands (Benjamin January #21) (2025). (Am now earwormed by 'The Battle of New Orleans' which was in the pop charts in my youth.)

Up next

Very probably, Zen Cho, Behind Frenemy Lines, which I had forgotten was just about due.

***

O Peter Bradshaw, nevairr evairr change:

David Cronenberg’s new film is a contorted sphinx without a secret, an eroticised necrophiliac meditation on grief, longing and loss that returns this director to his now very familiar Ballardian fetishes.

iamrman posting in

scans_daily

Writer: Alan Davis

Pencils: Will Simpson

Inks: Jimmy Palmiotti and Jeffrey Albrecht

Professor Xavier tries to wake Rachel out of her coma.

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iamrman posting in

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Words and pencils: Jack Kirby

Inks: Mike Royer

I have run out of Phantom references, so I don’t know... Something-something Angel of Music?

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laughing_tree posting in

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I do see Paul as just an incredibly ordinary person. I don't think he's the devil. I don't think he's a saint. -- Al Ewing

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james_davis_nicoll

Ninety years after her grandmother's family was stalked by a witch, international student Minerva Contrera's studies land her in a similar position.

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia