Books Between Birthdays

I am too lazy to do serious reviews. So, I am just listing them out, the personal bests and worsts. The best are simply all the stuff that kept me interested, and I have only sub-categorized them. The worst are stuff where I felt the author was just going on and on unnecessarily with no obvious or unobvious reason, other than self-indulgence.

First, the thumbs up people.

Ha-has:

Memento Mori: Muriel Spark.

The Merry Go Round: Maugham.

Have his Carcase: Dorothy Sayers.

Serious Men: Manu Joseph.

The thrills:

The Little Stranger: Sarah Waters.

The Blind Assassin: Atwood.

Non-Fiction:

India after Gandhi: Guha (let me also admit here that, this is the only non-fiction I read).

Provoking:

Arthur and George: Julian Barnes. (Arthur here is Arthur Conan Doyle)

A Million Little Pieces: James Frey.
God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy

Disgrace: Coetzee.

Snow: Orhan Pamuk.

The Color Purple: Alice Walker.

Nodded off to:

The Famished Road: Ben Okri

It was simply too loooong. 450-80 pages for what?? I did like the whole concept of the spirit boy who can see people for who they really are, i.e 3 headed demons and 3 legged dogs and 3 eyed lizards and 3 breasted women, but he took it a little too far. And okay, I am listening when you say, trade is killing Africa. But his infinitely repetitive narration was killing the book. they might as well have chopped the book, no editing what-so-ever at page no.200 and called it complete.

Foucault’s Pendulum: Umberto Eco

Alright. So imagine this situation. You have to crack the password to a computer file. You have infinite trials. The Computer prompts the question-“Do you have the password?” Who will type in inane number of blasphemic possibilities before typing “NO”?? If this is what you want to call the intelligent man’s Da Vinci code, go shoot yourself.

Such a Long Journey: Rohinton Mistry

This wasn’t really Mr. Mistry’s fault. It simply wasn’t to my taste. One, I expected a plot and there wasn’t anything substantial. Two, his tenderly woven, humane characters were lost on me.
Athena: John Banville

The Sea was better though nothing great, and I really didn’t understand why the Booker people thought it (The Sea) was better than Arthur and George, but now I think its because they penalize characters borrowed from real life.
...and yes, i see that I've ended up typing about The Sea instead of Athena. Transitive logic, okay?
PS: birthday, 12 days away.