Zadie Smith: White Teeth

Wow, did this book take me long to read! More than one month. I do not know if it is a good idea to set up a list of 10 books and then force oneself to read them all consecutively. Because in the meantime I bought a bunch of other books one by one but cannot read them. E.g., William Styron's "Sophie's Choice" (I even bought the DVD). I have wanted to read this book for a long time, Styron's recent death made this reading wish even more urgent. But I have to finish the other two books in the list of 10 first.

Also, I come to a point at which I doubt if I have to make my reading life public. Who is interested in my reports anyway? No one. So I write these hesitant outpourings for myself, diary-style. One thing is clear: this is the last time I write a literary blog. It is much more interesting to read those of others, e.g. Of Books and Bicycles, The Elegant Variation, The Millions.

Back to White Teeth: if I lived in the heterogenous environment of London which the book is about, I would have finished it in a much shorter time. My strongest impression for the book which went on and on, was the end which surprised me: the recombinant mouse disappears, and so does this - recombinant - book: after one month of reading snippets and snippets of the novel, not much to remember is left.