Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Some of the writing is fantastically beautiful but it's definitely not the sort of book you can read half-heartedly. It requires full and devoted attention - something which I don't think I'm quite giving it at the moment as I normally read when I'm half-asleep on the train on the way to work.

"The Satanic Verses" by Rushdie. I've always been curious about it. Very inventive, but quite dense. It reminds me of "100 Years of Solitude" (which took me two tries to finish...it can be done).

Welcome meltdown. I also found that to be a bit of a slog. Nice to see the Chicago contingent growing.

I also have a lot of sympathy for mnb's point, there are certain types of books that just don't lend themselves to "casual" reading.

I'm still reading Modesty Blaise: Night of the Morningstar, mainly because I've got Watchmen and The Complete Maus on the go and the same time.

I have just started reading "The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates" by Des Ekin.

I adored The Satanic Verses, though it really is tough going. Not as tough as when I first attempted it, at age nine, though.

I just couldn't get along with The Inheritance of Loss at all. It seemed deeply, deeply average to me, though for no reasons I could put my finger on. Marking essays, you sometimes feel as if the only honest comment/instruction you can make to tell the student how to get a better mark is "Be More Clever" - there's nothing in particular wrong with it, it just doesn't... pop. I felt a bit like that.

That was my reaction to Inheritance of Loss, too. Lots of little things bugged me about it, and there was nothing to raise it above the ordinary. I sometimes feel that if books about India, and particularly which reference Independence, are thought of as brilliant purely because of the association with Midnight's Children.

I've started "Whutering Heights"...Emily Bronte invented "Emo" I think with that novel. The other night I was reading it by candle light, for authenticity purposes...

Just finished the Elegant Universe and started Bill Bryson's Shakespeare.

Reading Ruskin's memoir, "Praeterita", a title that will have Lyra cooing with the sense of warmth only Latin can bring. Wonderful stuff on the youth. Home educated, when he went off to Oxford, his mum moved there as well.

It's the only book Ruskin ever intended to bring pleasure, written in breaks between his "brain fever" at the end of his life. Mostly very pleasant, he does have the occasional relapse, mostly when he comes across a Catholic priest or cathedral.

Not expecting much on his wife or the Whistler trial.

Awww, indeed, that's a lovely title.

I'm reading The Conqueror, the follow up to The Seducer which I constantly bang on about as being one of the best books ever.

It's as good as I expected it to be; taking a different look at the same subject as it were, which is basically the evolution of Norway into what it is today.

I've just started Robert Ludlum's The Janson Directive which is, so far, surprisingly compelling. I must admit I'm a sucker for spy fiction and espionage stuff, but I prefer the slower pace of a Le Carré usually. This is the first Ludlum I've read (although he's got an extensive catalogue), and I approached it with a bit of trepidation because I recently read a Bourne book, but written by Eric Van Lustbader, and it was appalling, and I suspected something similar. In terms of action, setting, and plot there's not so much difference, but Ludlum is clearly a far superior writer.

I'm 50 pages into Victor Pelevin's The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, and it's shaping up to be his best yet, an absolute corker. The atrocious The Helmet Of Horror (from a couple of years ago) seems to have been a dashed-off-for-the-money blip, I'm happy to to say.

I finished Bill Bryson's Shakespeare yesterday, having found it rather inconsequential, really. Its problem is that it does exactly what it sets out to do and doesn't attempt to stray outside its remit, so we have a biography of a man about whom precious little is known and no analysis of the plays and poems save what scant illumination the texts might offer to the biographer. There's nothing whatever in the book that would help anyone, even the complete beginner, towards an appreciation of Shakespeare - and that's a woefully missed opportunity.

Still mired in the Cantos, and accompanying commentary. Finished the Steiner, which was wonderful, and am now reading Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols. Combined influence of FH and Sebastian barker.