One of the dorkiest things about myself I have ever confessed

I really like reading articles about books I have just discovered. Whenever I discover a new book that I like a lot, if I have any reason to believe that people would have written articles about it, I log on to the MLA International Bibliography and run searches for it. I've done this for ages. I read a zillion articles on Angels in America, I remember quite specifically.

It was very trying not to have any power. My sustaining-myself-through-the-hurricane book, which is very long and I haven't finished it yet, is shaping up to be a much more raving success than, actually, I had anticipated, and there are a bunch of articles about it on The Internet. Only six with linked full text on MLA, but whatever, I can find more, I haven't even looked at JSTOR and Project Muse yet! But anyway, while the power was out, I really wanted to read such articles AND I COULD NOT.

...I will never be cool. I read scholarly articles on purpose for fun.

I did discover that Salman Rushdie, alas, doesn't like Paul Scott. He dislikes him so much he used the phrase "big brown cocks" in his critique - I swear to God, he did. But I hope Salman Rushdie is oversimplifying, because I am really enjoying the way Paul Scott writes, all loopy and swirly, and I don't want to have to hate him for being a racist and a paternalist and using a lame and overdone thing to evoke the Indians-are-scary vibe. We'll see.

Edit to add: I finished my book. I still think Salman Rushdie was oversimplifying, and I still like the loopy swirly way that Paul Scott writes, and we will see what happens with the second book, which has "scorpion" in the title (not as nice!). But I can see Salman Rushdie's point - in the end it was more classist than racist though, I'm sorry to report, classism with racism all mixed in. Not flagrantly, and I know I'm always very, very displeased when somebody gets raped in a book, so I may have been cranky, but I think there was a definite undertone of, you know, educated Indians are Good Indians and peasant Indians are Bad Indians. Not very nice. I wish I hadn't liked it so much up until rubbish Daphne's rubbish letter to her rubbish aunt, because I feel rather let-down now. I want to write Paul Scott a letter and ask him why he wasn't free of prejudice so that I could love him with an uncomplicated love like I do Atticus Finch.