IMPORTANT

I have been very lazy and wrote very little in past several months. That doesn't mean that I am out of inspiration and stories. I have lots of unwritten entries all done in my head waiting to put them on the screen for long, long time.
Now that I write more readily, I have decided not only to write about current stuff, but to honor the "old stories" and write them too. These old, unpublished posts will be "published" on dates when they should have been written, in retrospective.
That is why I encourage a reader that comes here to browse the old posts too, because some of them will be newly published.

Sorry for the confusion & here's the list:

1. The Oxford Murders (May 20, 2008)

You are what you read?

To read or not to read... this particular book?
Indecisive as I sometimes get, it took me a while to answer this question. In the end, it wasn't much of a surprise that I took the book and read it: it was thin, it was talked about, infamous even. Perhaps curiosity got the best of me. OR, perhaps it was a great learning curve.
It took me an hour and a half, and I wasn't reading fast either. Now THAT is a piece of serious reading!
The story is sad. Unfortunately, I don't think that teenagers drowning in hormones will look at it that way. The book is a hit, and I'm sure that too many young readers will regard it as a guidebook rather than as a warning. If even one person takes it this way, it will be too many.
I the world ruled by television that offers half-digested, ready to consume, instant entertainment, I'm am a passionate advocate of books and reading. But sometimes, like now ,after reading this particular book, I have to ask myself whether in some cases is better not to read at all than to read just anything?
From a different prospective, reading this book has been an unexpected reassuring experience for me: I got to realise that not only Dostoevskys get published. Even more so if you live in Serbia.
The recipe for success: simple story, few pages, large font, promiscuity and violence, bad language. Voila! You've got yourself a best seller! Sadly, I'll have to pass on it. If it takes to write at this level to be popular and read, I'd rather be neither.

PS. I still haven't decided whether it would be too embarrassing to write this title in the list of books I've read. I'll have to ponder this some more...