A Spot of Reading

This is the second cloudy day in a row, the cloudiness being a nice change from the recent sunniness. Yesterday, however, I was considerably out of sorts; today I am most cheerful.

Last evening I stayed up late reading An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, a present from my aunt. I found it most engrossing and kept on reading a little bit more until I really was too tired. It's about a London-based musician; his interactions with fellow musicians and his parents; and especially his interactions with a fellow musician whom he loved and lost a decade earlier, only to find her again, married. I like the fact that the style is relatively unadorned, and that the interactions between characters and the characters themselves are natural, and that one can sympathize with the protagonist. Lastly, I like the frequent mention of some aspect of London geography, for instance the Serpentine, too.

It annoys me in modern literature when one gets the sense that the author is taking out his frustrations in life on his hapless protagonist, while pretending that this approach is realism or worldly wisdom rather than revenge. So it was a great relief not to find a hint of that in the book.

My other bedtime reading, The Pickwick Papers, is getting along well, too. The plot is much less desultory than I had expected. (This is the first time I've used "desultory" -- hehehe.) And I find it most amusing, and an excellently satirical source of broad information about English society -- and refreshingly free of colourless heroines.