Right now I'm reading:
Bullshit Jobs (2018) by David Graeber - I loved Debt but had low expectations for this one and was reluctant to read it (I expected it would just be an extremely padded out version of the essay, which I liked). I'm enjoying it a lot more than I expected, and I'm reminded how skillful 
was at gently taking a reader along and path that is unambiguously radical, yet each individual step on the path seems casual and reasonable.
Western Marxism (2017) by Domenico Losurdo - it's good. It's Losurdo, if you've read him before this is about the same - very rigorous and orderly arguments that lead to some very powerful insights. I'm only 100 pages in so far but liking it and feel that this new English text might become a vital text once it gets read more widely
Exhalation (2019) by Ted Chiang. Science fiction short stories by one of the best to do it rn. I'm about halfway through, so far I enjoyed his first collection more (Story of Your Life and Others). I liked the first story quite a lot (The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate) but most of the rest of what I've read so has been dominated by one 100 page novella that felt kind of weak for the amount of real estate it takes up. I've heard a few of the later stories are real bangers though so maybe it will balance out.
As for what I'm excited to read next, I'm kind of spinning my wheels a bit. Might do Washington Bullets by Vijay Prishad, or maybe some Strugatsky Brothers. Open to suggestions!
Orientalism is indeed quite theoretical, especially in the first chapter (out of three) which I'd say is the hardest part to read, since he basically lays out the scope of orientalism (which is actually the title of the chapter). But afterwards he gets into specific examples of events (like Napoleon's invasion of Egypt or the construction of the Suez canal) or authors (Renan, Sacy, Byron, Chateaubriand, Flaubert… but also Marx) to illustrate the development of orientalism in tandem to European colonialism (in anthropology and other social sciences, but also in the portrayal and use of "the Orient" in fictional works), and I felt it was considerably easier to understand, not only because of the many examples but also because I actually understood somewhat well what he meant by orientalism since he spent the hundred or so pages of the previous chapter explaining it. The third and last chapter is also fascinating, since it delves into the contemporary manifestations of orientalism, and especially the last part where he shows how Euro-American cultural influence has even spread these orientalist constructions to "the Orient" itself (through academia and consumerism, at least these are the examples which he talks about), to the point where the people there adopt that same view of themselves as "orientals": a caricature of themselves as a homogeneous "other" to the West.