book back

The books are back. Yeah! It's been a two-and-a-half-month drought, but now the book bar is back. How did you survive without it for so long? And how did I fare without a constant nagging reminder of the increasing shelfload on my Billy and towers of unread pages that, if stacked vertically, would nearly reach the sun – and catch fire if I added a single page.

I've done well. I've acquired five books and I've read five book, so the balance is even. That's more than I can say of last year, when I bought seven more books than I read. What I did read is summarized below, solely to comply with my obsession with structure and order. There are no deeply intellectual insights.

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – A hilarious read, once you get through the first 400 pages, which are a bit tedious. A self-conscious attempt at intellectual depth results in the most unexpected satire. After reading, you will want a copper smelter in your backyard and a coal mine in your living room.
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid – A great book, giving an unconventional look at the causes of Islamic radicalization.
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie – One of the most mesmerizing beginnings I know. Three drops of blood frozen into rubies and diamonds brushed from eyelashes by an angry young man who resolves to never again "kiss earth for any god or man". The writing stays brilliant throughout but the story struggles to hang on – as I struggled to finish it.
• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa – I found this on a dusty shelf in the lab, read it in a week and returned it. A mathematics professor who has lost the ability to form new memories in an accident rediscovers life and his housekeeper each day. Predates the movie with a similar idea, and is cleverly written. Touching but not cheesy.
• Samarkand by Amin Maalouf – The sect of the Assassins, the Persian polymath and poet Omar Khayyam, and the court of Nishapur form the backdrop to the writing of a book of history and poems. Halfway through, the book turns into an adventure set at the beginning of the 20th century. Thoroughly enjoyable historical fiction.
• The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi – Growing up in the desert of southeast London and then moving to West London where things were happening in the late 70s. The pubs still exist on North End Road but have different names and don't host punk shows anymore. Much more convincing than Zadie Smith.
• The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri – Inspector Montalbano is a national hero in Italy. Dozens of books and several films chronicle his cases. There's probably a pizza named after him, but I couldn't get too enthusiastic.
• The Iliad – The Trojan War retold by Menelaos Stephanides – Whenever there's a hole in the plot or the story threatens to get lost in contradictions, a god steps in and sorts things out. Not my way of doing things.
• On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin – Awesome writing about nothing at all, and utterly captivating.
• Interpreter of Maladies – Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. A good read, and better than The Namesake, because it's more varied.
• Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh – A sorrowful book and probably also an important one, but I'm still not tempted to hike the West Bank.
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac – Supposed to be a highlight in the literary canon. I found it dull.
• When you are engulfed in flames by David Sedaris, who can be funny, but this book is not.
• Arnes Nachlaß by Siegfried Lenz – The writing is lyric and calm. All the drama happens between the lines. Siegfried Lenz is one of the great German writers.
• The White Road by Tania Hershman – Short fiction for the 21st century? Writing on speed? It's amazing what a skilled writer can do with as little as half a page.
• Wenn ich mal groß bin by Martin Reichert – Any randomly chosen three or four pages are funny, but the novelty wears off quickly.
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell – Much better than many other books that collect an asphyxiating number of anecdotes to substantiate a point, which is not a scientific way of proving anything. But Malcolm Gladwell is even better when he write short and to the point. Some New Yorker articles have just been stapled together and hit the shelves of bookstores.
• L'Etranger by Albert Camus – A guy goes to his mom's funeral, then the movies, then swimming, then kills a man. He's tried and sentenced to death, and none of this has much of an effect on him.
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – Whoever read this book was not afraid of the recession in 2007 and isn't afraid now. The (western) world has come a long way. This book is a harrowing description of the 1930s, when the dustbowl emptied its residents into the paradise of California that turned out to be a deep sea of misery with very few opportunities. The last scene is even stronger than the rest of the book, a rare feat.
• Best American Short Stories 1998 – I lent this to a friend half an eternity ago and now count it as lost. Great Stories!