You’ve heard of Goodreads and of course book reviews on Amazon etc.
I’m inventing Midreads or the Midway Review——reviews of books when one is about half-way in. I’m on page 92 of 278 pages of Tim Parks “Sex is Forbidden,”
the novel about the ashram where he supposedly changes his life and changes
the kind of novel he now wants to write. By page 92 the book is humming along
nicely. He clearly has written lots of books and is confident in every move the
book makes. He’s got a clever set-up, Beth the woman who works as the ashram,
the newcomer visitor she is sort of stalking and secretly reading his secret and
forbidden diary, the other characters in the ashram, both permanent and visiting, the guru himself and his main disciple, the whole scene of people coming to find ways to deal with their terrible lives.
Beth is funny and the book is bound to get funnier, we think. She is plagued by
all the same human failings we all would have if we tried hard to get into the
devotedness of ashram life but just, finally, couldn’t. She has tried, tries, to be
competely calm, meditative, simple, focused, mindful, charitable, in the moment.
But she can’t quite bring it off. She hungers, again, for male relationship in spite of the ruined ones she has tried to move on from. She loves the illicitness of reading the strange man’s diary, which she had found and keeps going back to
whenever the forbidden chance to do so presents itself. His life as he writes it
in his diary book is a mess. He scourges himself with remorse and confusion
about what to do next, who to try to be, who he wishes he had not been.
Beth dislikes fat Marcia but is forced to help her and be kind to her. She is
learning a bit more about the saintly Mi Nu who lives apart in the bungalow
and not with the community proper. Beth is not as much a mess as she thinks
she is, and we forgive her her faults more than she does so far.
After I contact my website developer in Silicon V, I will finish this brilliant
midway review. First I will get the website up and running, with all future rights in my name alone, all profits and tie-ins will link to my financial accounts, and then everyone can sign up, a new social media site will be born and people
will relish talking to each other about the books they’ve started but not yet
finished and they will feel doubly liberated to know they need never finish the
book to enjoy all the rights and privileges of MidReads and the MidwayReview.
I might eventually sell the rights to MidwayReview to the University of Chicago since they often use Midway as one of their tags for themselves.
Tim Parks will have to keep googling his book to find out sometime in the future
just how much I liked it or not after I’ve finally finished it.
all of the above copyrighted and registered to me; all rights reserved; all legalities certified and justified. No poaching. Only filty lucre and praise.
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