Books you're currently reading???

[Sundae]

Just read the excellent We Are a Muslim, Please by Zaiba Malik.
Autobiographical, about growing up in a Pakistani, Muslim family in Bradford in the 70s.
The book is very funny in parts, but it does also include a lot of detail about Islam - some of which I didn't know.

Written in 2010, she includes a polemic against one of the 7 July terrorists (Tube bombing) who it turns out grew up very close to her, albeit at a different time. It brought it all back and made me cry. I was living in Leicester at the time, and pulling a sickie because I'd just had my eyes lasered and they were really hurting. I switched the news on for a bit of background noise, intending to close my eyes, and saw the city I'd once called home being hit harder than the IRA ever managed. I still had friends in London and tried to get hold of many of them, but I couldn't get through. I even checked on the Evil Ex.

Anyway, the book is marvellous. Written with a light touch, the characters engagingly drawn, informative enough to be interesting without being scholarly. And for better or worse she's writing about my part of the world now. I may not know the exact places she writes about in Bradford, as they're housing, but I know a little of Bradford and of course Leeds. She even mentions Otley (yay!) although only as an example of a white-flight destination. Which is reasonable; everyone here is white as ice-cream, except in the Red Pepper, and I think the waiters and chefs there have to roost in the rafters during the day, so as not to scare the locals.

Am 2/3 way through The Mirror World of Melody Black by Gavin Extence. It's very good so far. Without being spoiler-y (unlike the blurb on the dust jacket) the herione suffers from a mental health condition. It's not mine, but there are enough parallels to keep me interested. The author himself has the condition he has written her, so he knows what he's writing about. The story is interesting, but of course we all like reading about ourselves, as UT pointed out
Couldn't help comparing her to myself at various points. FTR she's doing a lot better.