BOOKED

i'm currently reading voss by patrick white. and after this i plan to resume reading a confederacy of dunces- may be. i left this half read when things started to get interesting. the reading was interrupted because i left the paperback at the back of a hotel limo taking me to shanghai airport. and i just bought a new paperback oh...about a year or so ago and the book is now sitting there among all the rest of books still waiting to be read. and about a month ago i finished reading a twilight in delhi by ahmad ali. last night i read the monk's tale an interview of a tibetan monk by william dalrymple in the paris review.and before i went to sleep i leafed through an old volume of Art of Asia which interestingly had a story about the Farquhar's collection of natural history drawings of malacca which belonged to the royal asiatic society and was going under the hammer at the time for an expected 400-600,000 pounds. and shame on malaysia as we now know the collection is now in singapore. i was fortunate enough to see an exhibition of the complete collection of this immensely beautiful drawings several years ago in singapore of which i took some pictures here. and before going to sleep i read some obscene and very funny derek and clive from the book Peter cook and Dudley moore. ....and my bedroom is now imprisoned by books as you can see here. and so, taking everything into consideration one might say that i'm not doing too bad in the reading (for pleasure) department.



but then why do i feel so jaded and disinterested in any new writings and new books? mention of winners of this and that literary prizes put me off just like i 'm put off by winners of say amarican idol or eurovision song contest or academy award movies. new writers don't interest me. local writers are worse. i don't even want to hear anything about them. what is this disease i'm having ? am i a literary snob? it can't be. anybody who loves derek and clive can't be a literary snob by definition....as someone asked in the paris review, how do I get my reading mojo back?