Comments on Reading Tonight

Umm, is my eyesight going or is the cover of that book blurry?

It's supposed to look like that, PopTart. It's kind of a promise that the book is "edgy" and will "blur the edges of reality" just the way Pirsig's book did.

Totally agree with your praise of Tariq Ali, but I have to give a plug for his Islamic History novels which are anything but wooden. I've read Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (Spain in the 1400's), The Book of Saladin (Twelfth century Cairo, Damascus & Jerusalem), & The Stone Woman (decline of the Ottoman Empire). Learned a tremendous amount about the spread of Islam, but also really enjoyed the stories. I've got A Sultan in Palermo on my list of books to get to shortly. Generally he is a much stronger political analyst than fiction writer, but these books are frickin' great.