In the absence of any recent favorable developments in my life, I've been spending a considerable amount of time reading the works of some of the most formidable human beings (in my own unostentatious opinion) to have ever put their thoughts on paper. So you needn't spend your energies disputing, for example, Mr.Adams' views on the subject of misogyny prevalent amongst the peoples in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. You can have a bite out of my towel for all I care.
Since I've already mentioned Mr.Adams, I must begin by admitting that I've been kicking myself for not getting around to reading the Hitchhiker's Guide any earlier. Helped me get through quite a bleak period, it did. Got through the 'trilogy of five books' in under a week and kept re-reading for a while after. I never imagined that time-travel, inter-galactic colonization, extraterrestrials, manic-depressive robots and, yes, towels could be so riotous. I hear Douglas Adams was the first Mac user in the whole of England. Totally irrelevant trivia. Or not. Maybe its a genius thing.
I'd also returned to the land of Stephen King with a vengeance. His knack for storytelling, his 'craft' as he calls it, is a gift. A modern day Tolkien who drinks deep of that fabled literary pool where those great men and women of yore cast their nets. Lisey's Story was admittedly rather insipid at several turns, but SK's allowed to not-impress once in a while.
Currently getting through some vintage King. The Dead Zone is a classic psychic-psycho story that goes all over the place before going totally berserk on the unwary reader.
The Enchantress of Florence kept me up several nights on a recent visit to Trivandrum. I definitely think Padma Lakshmi's departure from his life did the man a world of good. His first post-Padma Lakshmi novel, The Enchantress is a throughly researched effort that seamlessly blends fact, fiction and fantasy to constitute a single volume of unadulterated Rushdie with generous doses of his signature brand of wit and wisdom. They say that if you call something flawless, it means you haven't looked hard enough. And believe me, I've looked. So here goes, at the risk of coming off as a pretentious little Rushdie-fanboy, this one was perfect as cats.
I've described the last couple of weeks of my life in books fairly accurately. Props to you, for sitting through this. Currently listening to Savoy Truffle -The Beatles as I write this from an uncharacteristically cluttered desk.
