Book Sense

I got a quarter of the way through Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses before deciding to take a step back from it for a while. For those of you who might not know, it's simply a novel--not really a book of *evil verses*. (I can see you all shaking your heads and feeling sorry for me in my ignorance.) Perhaps you're not as naive or oblivious as me, but I pretty much had no clue as to the real focus of the book. I knew that Rushdie became a marked man after he wrote it--the Ayatollah put a bounty on his head that hasn't been lifted--because of Rushdie's supposed disrespect for Islam and Allah. As far as I can tell, though, Rushdie's supposed disrespect seems more like a critical inquiry into the nature of faith and love and life.

Rushdie's writing is superior. He is a gifted poet and storyteller. The tricky part for me, though, is that I don't have enough knowledge of Islam or of Indian culture to understand the nuances of the writing in this book--his references, his jokes, the ironies, etc. So, I have to admit, I put it on the back burner until I look up more about these things--or until I've spent my time reading every other novel I'm turned on to!

(And War and Peace? That sucker just looks too fat to look any good right now.)

Instead, I've read Molly Gloss's Wild Life, Asne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and about a hundred million books about princesses, dragons, mice, and billy goats.

In the queue? Heller's Catch-22 and bell hooks' remembered rapture.

Feel free to email me the name of a book you think is a must-read.

-Anjie