More books!

I can't believe it but I finished two books in the last four days. One clunker, Body Surfing, by Anita Shreve; and one that was fairly good, not great, but at least tightly written and compelling: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Haid.

I have loved a couple of Anita Shreve's books, particularly Fortune's Rock and even The Pilot's Wife. Given those books, this one just seemed kind of like a cop-out. I couldn't muster up any interest or sympathy for any of the characters. All in all, it was just a kind of blah book.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist was more interesting and quite beautifully written. It was about a Pakistani man who in 2001 graduated from Princeton as a scholarship student. He gets a highly paid job as an analyst for a vaulations firm where he is the most successful of all the new hires. Then comes 9/11. As a Middle Easterner, he increasingly feels like an outsider, and bitter towards America. It was told in the first person during a lunch meeting with an American. It was pretty short, actually, but I didn't get the impression that there were a lot of loose ends.

I started the Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian. Good so far...