Giving up!

From now on, I will only report titles I am actually reading and not those I had on my hands, with all good intentions of reading it them through.

Cactus Town, as logged earlier, is a treat, something you read a bit of every night before going to sleep. Open a page at random and read a short story...Let the book fall and drift off. Someone will come along and put out the lights.

Last Saturday I went out to Urdu bazaar in Karachi and got Through the Narrow Gate, Karen Armstrong's memoir of seven years as a nun. An intellectual giant that she was, this book traces her difficulties as a nun, where she was supposed to quell the self, her intellect, in an ongoing quest for finding God...More on it later. Her Order facilitated her studies at Oxford, with the World and Order in a cataclysmic clash, she had to leave one, and she chose to relinquish her robes. She later went on to right epic works like history of God, Islam: A Short History, Jerusalem : One City, Three Faiths, and Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, among various other works of religious, primarily monotheistic researches. Of the list given above, I have just two tomes waiting to be read in my bookshelf, the first two.

I first discovered Armstrong's History of God in early 2002. I was supposed to write and present a paper on 'Dialogue Among civilizations' organized by a University in Iran. I had reams and reams of print outs, had managed to mutilate Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order but it was this book that had me glued. So much so that I forgot when deadline for the paper went by. It's a mammoth work, this tome, History of God, and I am embarrassed to say that I have yet not finished it. Even when I had ample time on hand during two prolonged bouts of unemployment. But it is the kind of work that merits proper treatment. I can't read it for the sake of reading it and bragging in front of people that I have read it. I want to read it and understand it fully. And I am hoping that my read of Through the Narrow Gate has equipped me with a better understanding of the writer's background. There is no doubting her credentials as a religious writer/researcher par excellence, she makes you think, question and reflect on many thanks you may take for granted. She has been a nun, taught at the Leo Baeck College for the study of Judaism and is an honorary member of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists. Top that!

On another note, I was considerably dampened when I googled for AMSS (US and UK) and found that both have not been updated. AMSS (US) is in want of an update since 2003 and AMSS (UK) has not brought out its newsletter since 2003. One would have thought that both these organizations were as dynamic as they promised to be, not so.

Trust me to do such things.

I listed two titles I had got my hands on.

Never finished either.

Instead I finished Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi's Zurguzisht, for a second time.

I last read it in 1993 with his other two works, Chiragh Taley and Khakum Bedehn. Yousufi at that time and age was not exactly the kind of literature I had the nous to appreciate. My interest was piqued only because Pa was rediscovering Y and would not let me get anywhere near the books! And what reason he cited...that I was smack in the midst of my board finals. He hid the books, can you imagine? Not to be outdone, I found his hiding places, swiped a book when he wasn't home, read a chapter or two and back it went. Real appreciation of satire and humor, as Y merited, was not possible in such circumstances. I could only get the obvious digs.

So a real reading was long overdue and I can galdly report of a task accomplished.

And picked up Aamer Hussein's Cactus Town and Other Stories from OUP the other day (Sunday to be exact). Been reading through it.

Also to be reported is Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. I know I am usually late in picking up and finally reading a book. Got this from W with high recommendations. Never got to read it and somehow it latched along when I made the move back home. With it insisting so much taht I read it, why should I not oblige.

Of the previously reported, Hayek I am trying to plough through, ploughing being such a task.

Another reason I can't really make a headway is that I keep it at work, hoping to snatch some time and finish it.