You Are Reading These Words

by David de Léon

A seemingly sentient book that seems to speak directly to you and teach you magic through a series of fourteen exercises.

The magic is not the spells-and-fireballs kind but the deliberate alteration of how you see, think, and act in the world. The exercises are like little games that you perform with your mind and body, sometimes in a comfortable chair, sometimes venturing out into the world.

A few examples:

Staring into a mirror in low light until your sense of “I” wobbles.

Turning your visual blind spot into a “portable hole” for things you want to let go of.

Walking through your city as if every sign and object were a message meant for you.

Giving yourself a secret new name and testing how it changes your behaviour.

Travelling backwards in time to deliver advice to your earlier self.

You might like this if you:

Enjoy solo RPGs, journaling games, and LARPs that blur fiction and reality.

Have a soft spot for experimental literature and books that talk back.

Are curious about magic but allergic to dogma.

Like the idea of doing philosophy with your whole body, not just your frontal cortex.

Want a structured excuse to gently, playfully mess with how you see yourself and the world.

100 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2026

About the author

David is a Swedish freelance UX designer and researcher with a PhD in Cognitive Science. He grew up in Stockholm and the south of England and now reluctantly lives in Malmö. He likes to write short books for fun and will keep doing that instead of watching Netflix. When he is not writing or reading sci-fi, fantasy, ergodic literature, philosophy and psychology, he likes to play role-playing games and take long naps on the sofa. He is not a very good cook.