That second comment there was a bit off the cuff and was based mostly on my first attempt to read his work way back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth :) I am now a big fan of Rushdie's sense of humour as well as his thoughts. I started reading The Satanic Verses soon after the blasphemy controversy first broke out. But I never finished the book because my adolescent mind found the subject matter too abstract and the humour dry and with the short attention span I had back then, I quickly let the book gather dust. Shalimar the Clown is my second attempt at Rushdie. I am loving it so far. I can relate to a lot of what is in the book - the people, the places, the ideas, the stories, the emotions, the observations. I don't find a lot of time for reading other than when I travel or am on vacation but I am going to make an effort to devote more time to this book. I love his narrative and his astute observation of human behavior - something all good writers posses- but Rushdie, I have found in this book, does so in a style that is pretty captivating. At least so far. On the flip side, what I am trying to cope with in this book, as I do when I read some of the other great books out there, is the amount of detail. Over the years, my mind has been trained to cut through the chase and sniff out the moolah and there are times when I skip a sentence or two, if not the whole paragraph, because I consider some of the elaborate details not pertinent to my understanding of the story. However, I am trying to change that because I have realized you need to let the author set the context the way he or she wants in order to truly appreciate the story they are telling. I have been able to do it with Naipaul and I think I can with Rushdie too. But to be honest, a lot of it is just a function of your mood - there are times when you are relaxed and patient and you appreciate depth and other times when you are not and tend to hurry past the details. I have a handful of books to keep me occupied for the next six months, but I would like to pick up The Satanic Verses again and also read his other books some time next year. For now, my comments about Rushdie are based mostly on my current reading of Shalimar the Clown and on his interviews and other write-ups. All right, gotta head out in bit. Hope you both have a good weekend.