The Satanic Verses

 What a provocative title. When I first learnt about this book, which was when I was around twelve years old, I thought it had something to do with Christianity. Then I learnt about the plight the author went through because of it, which added to its allure. Now I have finally read it and I feel like I do not know what it is about. I did do some quick reading about Islam and about what are the 'Satanic verses'. That helped me understand parts of the plot. And I imagine someone who is more knowledgeable about Islam might probably find this book much more interesting than I did. I am not sure how I feel about books that require you to have some prior connection to an aspect of culture and society for the reader to better appreciate the story. Although I imagine that, to some extent, that might be true of all books. Perhaps what I am trying to say is that I feel annoyed that I am sufficiently ignorant about Islam and that as a result it would appear that I did not enjoy this book as much as I could have otherwise enjoyed it. Still, most of the novel is intense magic realism in a way that made it quite difficult for me to follow what was going on. The part that I enjoyed the most was the ending, which coincidentally felt like the most concrete and tangible part of the story.
  Overall, it saddens me to think that the people most likely to understand the intricacies of the novel seem to be the least interested in reading it. Nonsense, if I really wanted to better understand the book I could do my own deeper research, and reread multiple times the book. Except, learning about any religion is not something I am actually interested in. In fact, I am currently of the opinion that the least I know about them the better. Which I know deep down that it cannot be true. One should never be proud of one's ignorance.
  Anyhow, this is not a book that I liked. But I do look forward to reading Midnight's Children.

The Karamazov Brothers

I am sorry I left writing this post for so long. I finished reading this book in February and it is now October. As a result, I no longer have as fresh a memory of the story as I would have if I had written about it back in February. I do stand by my three-star rating. It was a good book. But there was something missing for it to be great. What I most appreciated about the book was the fact that it serves as a record proving that wrongly incriminating a person is a phenomenon whose existence dates back ages ago. Of course The Karamazov Brothers was first published in 1880, but I am sure there are much older books that deal with this topic. It is a shame that we never got the sequel to the story. I want to believe that I would have liked to see Dmitri vindicated. But even if he was not vindicated in the eyes of society, then what I would have liked perhaps even more is to see him overcome his grossly undeserved condemnation and thrive in life in spite of it. Maybe I do like this book more than I want to admit. At least in retrospect I admire it much more.