Reading...

I was going through the books in the shelf and came across a book by Naipaul. I was familiar with his name, since my eldest brother had a few of his (Naipaul's) novels in his collection. I also knew that Naipaul was a Nobel laureate, but this book, titled "In A Free State," I borrowed from the library for it won Booker. Previously I liked "Life of Pi" and grew a liking for Bookers. There were three stories in "In A Free State." I started reading the second one from midway, this is the first time I started reading a book from a random page. I liked the familiar setting of the story, "Tell Me Who To Kill", the characters and settings were Indian. The style is direct and lucid. I also liked the story, "One Out Of Many." It also was about some Indian. In both of these stories, the protagonist tries to escape his miserable state of life and fails. I started reading the last and the longest story, "In A Free State", but did not like it. It was set in Africa during a time of political unrest. I stopped reading the book.

I have borrowed, "The Perennial Philosophy" by Aldous Huxley since it had been called "beautiful book" by Schrodinger in his "What Is Life?". But it is not the type of writing I am fond of. It is an anthology of "Perennial Philosophy" from scripture-like sources. I just don't like it.