Well, I’m getting situated in my new office. I brought in a chair of indeterminate Swedish heritage and a very nice rug that I have on (semi-) permanent loan from my brother. So, now I have a comfy reading corner, now I just need a pipe and a reading jacket.

During the holiday season with all that’s going on, it’s a bit hard to get some good reading time in. I am taking great advantage of this slightly less hectic time to get started on a whole host of books I’ve been eyeing for some time. I may have spread myself a bit too thin, I think I have about five books I’ve started in earnest in the last week.

One in particular that I am excited about and really enjoying is the new Martin Amis book House of Meetings (Knopf $23). It’s been a roller-coaster review ride for him the last few years, with his last effort Yellow Dog summarily panned. But this new one is something else!

A few years back Mr. Amis stepped outside of his usual genre and wrote a small book called Koba the Dread. Born of a joke his friend Christopher Hitchens made in reference to his and many other intellectuals' past support for and participation in communism, a reference to an idealism long gone. Even Amis’ father Kingsley had been a devoted communist for many years, before pulling an about face in his older age. This book explores the Soviet experiment and the atrocities that resulted. His central theme questioned how ambiguity of Bolshevism has never allowed for the horror to be fully recognized as it is with the Holocaust.

In House of Meetings, Amis writes the novel of this argument. He creates a character, mean and old, recounting his life story to his American stepdaughter Venus. This recollection is also his final journey back to Russia, back to the gulag he and his brother spent many years interned. Crisp and sharp, Amis’ prose draws a man burdened by his imprisonment, but also by his freedom, his survival.

I haven’t finished it yet, but am well on my way. Amis writes like only Amis can, with a razor wit, but this time without any detours in show-off verbosity. The monologue form suits him well.

House of Meetings hits the streets next Tuesday, January 16th so look for it then.

Another book I picked back up after starting some time ago is the tome Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (HarperCollins $29.95). This is HarperCollins' darling of the season and for good reason. A labyrinthine cast and story takes the reader through the living, breathing streets of Mumbai following the detective Sartaj Singh’s trail of the city’s seedy underworld and the gangsters who inhabit it.

This book weighs in at 900 pages, so I'll keep you posted on my progress.