Back To The Books

One of the disappointing aspects of my recovery has been that I didn't grasp the opportunity to get more reading done in the time afforded me. Once I came round in ICU and was freed from being tied down (a massive relief, I can tell you) I asked Noi to bring in a couple of old Stephen King novels off my shelves for rereads. There was a simple logic involved here. It was some years since I had read Misery and The Stand and I thought both would slip down easily at the story-telling level in a period of convalescence, with Misery in particular having a vague relevance to my current situation. Beyond that simple logic, the work of SK had featured in one of the fantasy sequences in my delirium - specifically the full length version of the The Stand, which I've never read - and that in itself had sort of planted a sense of enthusiasm for a fresh encounter with material read in my distant past.

In the event, I only managed a full read-through of Misery, finding myself deeply impressed with the sheer intensity of King's prose, especially in the early sections of the narrative in which he's at his most tellingly poetic - and I mean poetic in a way that never loses sight of narrative drive. I think I would have gone on to read The Stand in its entirety, in fact, I was cutting between the two novels as I approached the end of Misery, but Fuad arrived with a pile of books culled from Fifi's shelves and that put an end to my single-minded pursuit of just the one text. Must say, I was struck by the sheer detail of the world King brought to life, and death, in The Stand - I suppose this is true of all his work, but the epic scale involved emphasised just how richly textured a world he effortlessly conjures, from chapter to chapter, from viewpoint to viewpoint.

Anyway, once I found myself staring at a pile of books on my beside table I couldn't resist sampling bits of one after another, encouraged by the fact there were a couple of anthologies in there. The result was that I put The Stand to one side and ended up reading only one more book from cover to cover. This was the excellent If the Oceans Were Ink by Carla Power. The subtitle gives a clearer sense of what the book is about: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Qur'an. The American author's friendship with the somewhat conservative Sheik Mohammed Akram Nadwi is full of surprises, even for a Muslim like myself. The book served as a welcome reminder that, contrary to some people's expectations, there's nothing monolithic about the faith (or any of the major faiths for that matter) and the sheik's various perspectives helped me open up my own, fruitfully and healthily, I hope.

I have one further excuse for not getting enough reading done. The doctors made a change to my medication, this being the pills I have to take to ward off any further seizures. The original prescription had no side effects upon me at all in terms of drowsiness; in fact, I really didn't sleep very much once I came round in ICU since I wasn't doing very much and just didn't seem to need much rest. But with the new pills came an irresistible drowsiness, manifested in the form of constant napping. Much as I enjoyed the restful shut-eye it came at the cost of making real progress in reading anything of note. And I'm still dealing with the situation.