My reading days

I have been reading a lot in the last two weeks. It all began with my pledge to myself to finish every library book within the three weeks for which it is lent and to get a new book next time I go to the library. My wishlist coincided largely with the list of recent Booker Prize winners - I remember planning to read all the winning titles back in my university years. So I began with Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (I didn't borrow this book, though), then went to the library in search of Yann Martel's Life of Pi, but it was out on loan, so I settled for DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little.

I read Roy's book slowly, desperately trying to make the joy last longer, turning the pages slowly over a large teapot of darjeeling and countless bars of Meiji black chocolate on quiet evenings. I tried to taste every word, hold it in my mouth for some time, chuckling at jokes and sighing when Roy's fictional world threw its weight on my shoulders. In short, I couldn't get enough of this book - it eventually ended, as good books usually do, leaving me thinking about it for the rest of the week.

Vernon God Little was good in its own way. The eff words kept piling on my head from the very first page, and after reading Roy's beautifully constructed prose, it was a little disappointing, even disgusting to some extent. But later on I got used to this, and caught up with the narrator's real story, which is nothing but hilarious. I literally swallowed the book in one busy week.

I finally got my hands on the Life of Pi, which I am reading at the moment. The book is promising much at this stage (I am now in the thirtieth pages), but let's see whether I will eventually approve of the Booker Prize panel's decision.