What are you reading today?

I had some time to my flight while leaving the US, so I obviously ended up at a bookstore. I havent bought a book for a month now, so I was getting the itch to spend some money :-) Something well paced, engrossing and witty is just what I need to get over my blues, eh? Si.

The first section had the 'How-To' books - The Eight Habbit, Nice Girls Dont get the Corner Office/Man of Dreams, Why Men Fall Asleep After Sex ...all that kind of crap. I hate self-help books - I think they are an oxymoron anyway coz self-help means YOU help yourself. The gyan these books contain sounds very good but I would either not want to or be unable to implement most of it.

The next was the post Bridget Jones chick flicks - The Shopaholics series and other such stories about wacky-poor-girl who is out-of-job and/or out-of-money but gets handsome-rich-charming-man-of-dreams at end of novel after crazy/silly/sometimes-funny,always-unreal encounters. I call these the modern MB's. You enjoy reading them sometimes, hell, you want to read them sometimes when you want complete mindlessness, but after you have read a few they get tiresome. The problem is not that they are unreal and have no story (you don't read such stuff if you want a story), the problem is with the writing - there is no humor or wit at all. It's like someone has run a random program over a million words and generated these books. Gimme a Georgette Heyer or a Dorothy Sayers or even Precious Ramotswe for a chick flick!

The next was the 'popular authors' category - Dan Brown, Mario Puzo, Crickton, Archer, King - the lot. All wearisomely-very-similar. Aargh.

Then there was the 'poignant story' category - The Nicholas Sparks kinda sob-stuff. Any author who wants to be taken seriously today will write a poignant and moving tale about love or life and its purpose/meaning - preferably both together. Which is fine with me - some of them are quite nice to read. The problem is when these books become succesful, so the Sparks and Morrisons and Smiths of the world think that they can go on writing poignant stories for ever. A random program again, but on a different set of words. Sigh. Im giving up hope by now.

Is this what the world is reading today? Where are the good books that make you laugh, that make you cry, that make you think, that sometimes make you take a leap of faith? And each different from the other....whatever happened to variety in writing? When I think of some of my favorite writers - Maugham, Steinbeck, Russell, or even Seth and Rushdie - they always had a new tale to tell. Vikram Seth even has new ways of telling his tales - that's what makes him so interesting. Or if they had the same theme - like Stevenson (adventure) or Wodehouse (BritButler humor - right ho Jeeves!) or even Asimov, Bradbury or Adams - they made each work so thrilling and absorbing that you are left gasping for more. And the subtle humor that would light up even the most sordid tales - that's what makes a good book to my mind.

A great book is one that tells you different things each time you read it. You understand it bit by bit, and it never ceases to wonder or amaze you. It's like love, or old wine - it gets better with time. Most of the stuff that I saw at the bookstore was like a one-night stand - read it, shut it, forget it.