Like the title! I've been getting back into reading for pleasure, and want to know what you like! I recently read Piranesi and loved it. I've heard good things about The Poppy War and Babel by R.F. Kuang, has anyone read them?
Generally just want a bunch of recommendations from your favorites, on our commie corner of the internet. No genre needed! 
Well, I don't have any sources for that one, but I've seen comparable amounts of people calling it brilliant or pretentious and gimmicky. I suppose it's that reaction - counter-reaction cycle that we always see with media that draws some kind of special attention to itself. Think Everything Everywhere All at Once, everybody loved it and then suddenly it was an overrated piece of crap.
ok, I understand. I am very careful with the word 'pretentious' because I'm not sure I caught that while reading.
spoiler
After reading many books of all types I appreciated how the author tried to do something different and use colors, patterns, fonts, etc to weave a mystery inside the mystery book. I was thrilled everytime the story jumped back to the actual exploration of the weird space inside the house, but about half-way through the book the writing was starting to grate. I wasn't impressed by the prose itself, but the story is still very interesting. I definitely didn't put all the puzzle pieces together but I must say it's really cool. If what I considered a "better writer" put that in a novel I'd be hooked. I simply wasn't motivated enough to turn it sideways and take notes, etc.
I like how HoL shits all over academia and I think that's why a lot of people get bothered by it. It's literary analysis and crit done seriously about a thing that doesn't actually exist. There's name dropping and commentary for a fictional piece of footage.
Literary crit has its place, I think the author was likely just sick of it after spending too much time among lit snobs. I feel that way about art sometimes. I'll wonder if Postmodernism was a mistake, especially since Marxism is Modernist.