Spraining my wrists with A Suitable Boy
October 30, 2001 (1:07 PM) ( link )

On Ali's suggestion, I've decided to start reading (at some point) Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. I didn't realize before I checked it out that this bruiser is a 1,300-page novel—and it's supposedly something of an Indian soap opera too. Now, 1,000+ pages don't daunt me, but 1,000+ pages of soap-operaish romantic escapades is a little bit scary.Ali suggested Seth's book in a long discussion we had about the different fantasy/sci-fi novels we read as kids (and more recently too). Reading those books is such an abiding passion for me that it's always good to find somebody else who enjoys them so much. In the same discussion, Shuko urged me to continue reading A Prayer for Owen Meany despite my ongoing reservations about the quality of that book. Supposedly "everything comes together in the end." And, once I'm done with that, I'm supposed to read Irving's The Cider House Rules, as suggested by Ali. Of course, that'll depend both on whether I liked A Prayer for Owen Meany and whether A Suitable Boy turns out to be pretty good—but Ali and I seem to have pretty similar tastes (dislike The Chronicles of Amber, like The Earthsea Trilogy), so it looks like there's more Irving on the horizon.