A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

I was so disappointed by this: despite the raging plaudits i found it read like sub standard rushdie, masala lit that didn't say anything new or interesting, but rather beat the same old tired drums of caste and the emergency to engage an occidental audience easily engrossed by anything positioned, as unsubtly as possible, in the orientalised space that is india.
you will be gripped and shocked by this if it is your first experience of indian diasporic writing: the characters are competently drawn, the storylines powerful but neat. i however already knew that the caste system leads to horrible injustices, that the emergency, wherein indira gandhi went on an ademocratic rampage, and it's consequences were shocking: i've not only got the tshirt, but the novelty necktie and complementary cufflinks too. i don't see the point in rereading a sterile midnight's children which swaps dazzling flights of imaginaive metaphor with banal cliche.

the female eunuch (germaine greer)

all of the feminist work that i have read has been intensely theoretical, so i thought i'd have a crack at something a bit more populist. it's strange, like reading a rehash of proper theory by someone who, whilst clearly very erudite, has let anger and frustration totally obscure academic objectivity. you can see that her emphasis is very much on political agency, and this undermines the cohesivity of some of the ideas presented. still, it must have been effective, as many of the disparities that she complains about seem totally unthinkable now, though others still remain. an interesting read, though not really a good one.

the age of reason (jean paul sartre)

this novel charts the attempts of a philosophy professor to deal with the consequences of the pregnancy of his mistress: unsurprisingly it's more of a philosophical tract then a ripping yarn, as our hero (or not)mathieu struggles with the concepts of free choice and personal agency in the traverse of his existence. the problem with existentialist novels is that you find it hard to empathise with, or even like, any of the characters, whose concerns are so abstract they are oblivious to the pain and inconvenience they cause to all around them in their quest for ideological resolution. more surprisingly though, i got quite hooked on this towards the end: you want to know what happens, whether mathieu steps towards normativity, whether there is any such thing to aim towards. good stuff, probably the result of sartre munching many a tasty post modern baguette.

american pastoral (phillip roth)

i only picked this book up because it was lying around my guesthouse, but it wasn't a bad read. it's meant to be a deconstruction of the american, immigrant, dream, and roth tries this through his admirably thorough characterisation of the principle character, swede. swede starts off as the all american immigrant wonderboy, a facade that he carries throughout his life, but which is in fact something of a front. the problem with this critique of good ol' american country living is the reason for swede's disillusionment: his daughter happens to be a revolutionary communist who blows people up. honestly.
that's the problem, all the questioning of the dream is punctuated by stories of merry, the psycho daughter... this slice of fancy means that the accompanying queries on american living and utopia are slightly undermined. it's like derrida delivering a monologue, but wearing a clown suit: the ideas are interesting, but it's hard to take fully seriously.

confessions of an english opium eater (thomas de quincey)

twentieth century drug addled tales revolve around dance music, star wars, and spurious sexual encounters. in the nineteenth century it was all a bit more sedate... schoolboys drinking sherry and exchanging latin anecdotes and the such like. clearly a very intelligent, or at least well read, man, but you don't want to have it rammed down your throat every minute.

angels and demons (dan brown)

this is a good page turner, though will seem a bit familiar after the da vinci code... for the grail quest, read the turbulent interplay between science and religion, and fill in the blanks from there. still, brown knows how to keep the suspense going, and there are some neat twists, as well as a gargantuan wrench, towards the end, so it's basically a good, entertaining read: buy some popcorn and settle in.

catch 22 (joseph heller)

gut wrenching, convoluted, heart breaking, and laugh out loud hilarious, this is a genuine twentieth century classic. be warned though, if you don't love it after ten pages, don't punish yourself with the remaining six hundred.