Broken Book

As I am single, having only virtualised friends and living in the most boring city of Germany.........
(Goodness gracious me, was that a pitch-black day when I went to the cityhall to change my passport - I asked the lady to stamp the cities name somewhere where it wouldn't be so eyecatchy...like on the last page for example. However, she refused...).....

.........I somehow slid into becoming a shopaholic. Well, not really - nothing to worry about, but in contrast to my "Oh-Yes-Grandma-You-CAN-Take-Money-Into-Your-Grave"-attitude the frequency of my shoppings has increased to 187% . The interesting thing about my shoppings is that they reveal my despair of being caught in this city and my longing for breaking out and travelling the world again. To exemplify this...since yesterday, I am proud keeper of a glaring red T-shirt showing a Chinese round faced women's figure, surrounded by Chinese letters which hopefully mean something "smart" or at least neutral. Seeing me with this shirt, it is not hard to get my call: "Get Me Out Of Here!"

Further suspicious buys: Goodness Gracious Me, the British TV series dealing with an Indian family living in Britain. This is the best Series ever!

"Oh dear, there were robbers in our house! I wonder, how they could enter - all the windows and doors were closed.."

"Well...maybe...through the cow flap?"

"Through what??? A cow flap? You mean..like a cat flap...but for cows? Cow flap?"

"Yeah, well....you know......Our pet, the cow, she should have the freedom to come in and go as she pleases...."

I don't know what to add - this series is just a fantastic laugh and (coming back to my topic) reveals my affinity to India :) .

Finally, my last buy: Rushdie's Midnight's Children, again something that allows my mind to travel to far away India and forget for the time of reading that I am in the city of B. However, I have to admit that Midnight's Children is not the easiest book I have ever read. Being in the bookstore I couldn't decide between God of small things and this one. I knew both of them won prices and had good reputations, but apart from that I didn't know too much about any of them. Therefore I had to make my choice by other criteria.

Criteria 1:
Title: Which title sounds more interesting and why?
Answer: 1:0 for Rushdie, because I think children shouldn't be outside at Midnight. Thus, I wanted to know Rushdie's opinion. I was sure, he'd give an answer to that. Additionally, I do not believe in God which caused one minus for Arundhati Roy.

Criteria 2:
Design: I did like the God - Design with it's small pink lotus flower. The beige Midnight's cover didn't really appeal to me and I wondered (and still do) how you can chose a light cover if the title inevitably collocates something dark?

Criteria 3:
Reading the first sentences: Midnight's won. Cannot tell why. Just sounded interesting to me.

Criteria 4:
Price: The prices were nearly the same, but regarding that Midnight's has at least twice as many pages as God makes it relatively cheap. Why paying 10 Euros for 200 pages if you can have 650 pages for 12 Euros? I mean...that's usury isn't it? I know it is not the best criteria counting the pages and going for the best page-price-ratio, because it takes a lot of time (especially if you do not have a calculator on hand) and sometimes it's hard to tell where page number one starts...But in my case, the comparison was easy.

Criteria 5:
Do I have the time for reading at all? Well....this criteria would be have been a plus for Gods....but as I had to hurry in order to catch my train I was standing at the counter already before evaluating this (and further) criteria.

Overall evaluation and choice:
No time for a proper evaluation. However, Midnight's won.

Happy with my new book (and being proud to have outweighed all the pros and cons and not just having grabbed anything) I went to the train, took my seat and started reading...

[....]

It took me about 5 pages until I got confused for the first time...

"Am I stupid or does this guy jump back and forward in time? And what do all the '......' mean?"

I did not want to worry too much and I was very optimistic that this would be a pleasure to read. The right travel literature.

Page 9 : "Where the hell are we now? What's happening here? Oh, we are on a boat now...Well, ok...I am flexible....No, I am not surprised or confused...I am deeply enjoying...easy..."

Page 15: "Maybe I should get a pencil and take some notes on the characters and settings...."

Page 20: "Relax, Kangaroo...you can do it!"

Page 28: "Mh...difficult book...well...as mum has always said: 'The most important thing in life is not to understand high literature or belonging to the intellectual circles, no...
The most important thing in life is to be healthy. Fullstop."

Some vague remembrances coming up: "Midnight's children is a very challenging book with special narrative style.......!"

Page 40: "This book is broken. They put the pages together in the wrong order. I want my money back!"
............................................


To be continued......