Kindle life

The best thing about it is that you can read anything you want to.  No one can see.  The downside is that you have no idea how big the book is. 

I was sat on the side of a pool in Umbria in August and eavesdropping on the conversation of two ladies doing the slowest lengths on record, as you do (ie eavesdrop - not swim slowly), when I heard them saying, '..by far the best book I have ever read (South African accent)' followed by, 'Do you really think so dear? (Manchester).  My interest was caught by the wonderful mix of accents, rapidly followed by an intense curiosity as to what book they were talking about.  I assumed it must be either Middlemarch, Our Mutual Friend or Farmer Duck - my all-time top three, but was eager to have this confirmed.  Being of Irish stock and therefore socially shameless, I just called over and did a sort of 'excuse me, and sorry for interrupting' malarkey followed by a request that they reveal the name of this great opus. 

Do you know those times when people are talking about people or plays or books or films as if the whole world has an intimate knowledge of them - all, of course, except you?  Well, I had never heard of Rohinton Mistri or 'A Fine Balance', but I stored it up and downloaded it to my kindle as soon as I got home.

Having spent about an hour reading, the electronic page declared that I had read 1%.  Yick. 

So anyway, here we are at the end of November, and I have eventually finished it.  Not exactly an 'Of Mice and Men' in terms of length, then. 

And yes, it is brilliant, but is pretty depressing - covering India in the mid-seventies and early eighties when the 'Great Emergency' took place (hadn't heard of that, either), with its forced sterilisations and brutal government.

So now I'm reading some detective thriller.  After reading for ten minutes, I am already 2% of the way through.  Joy.