There is a certain pleasure we take in thinking about how bad it gets, Sartaj thought, and then in imagining how it will inevitably get worse. And still we survive, the city stumbles on. Maybe one day it'll all just fall apart, and there was a certain gratification in that thought too. Let the maderchod blow.

- from Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra

So I've started reading Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, because that is what I do now, between bouts of not blogging for weeks at a stretch, between going to work all day and making madness out of clothespins at night; I decide what I really need to go off and do is get myself wrapped up in 900+ page crime novels set in India. Or just, well, long books, really. Between the short ones. When I think I'm going to just read short things for a while. That's usually the moment I decide I need something reliable, trust-worthy, dependable. Oh, gods, it's all I can do to not re-crack open Against the Day right now.

Anyways, Sacred Games, I'm 100 pages or so into it, and it's good. Textural might be the word I'm looking for. Good story, but not so much story that I lose it when I can't pick the book up for a couple lunch hours; so far, at least. There's a police man and the criminal he catches and the criminal's telling his life story from beyond the grave and now there's conspiracy afoot. So. Good detail, good scenery, good to be reminded that shit's crazy wherever you go. Good little bits of melodramatic yet not over-the-top text like the quote above. It's, you know, fun to read. Which I like right now. Fun. Reading. Books. Now and then. When I can.

Just a couple days ago I finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. I sort of like her. A lot. It says something when I can say that a book about Jesuits going off to space might not be for the weak of heart. But there you have it.