Showers wash/ All my cares away/ I wake up to a/ Sunny day.

Five months of books. Of words read, savoured, and, by now, forgotten. A few linger, and those I cannot ignore.

THE ROBBER BRIDE
MARGARET ATWOOD

Zenia is every woman you know, mixed up with little bits of yourself. (Or the reverse, if you're me, but that's pretty damn unlikely, isn't it?)

It's a lovely read: light, unassuming, and sure-footed. As someone I know commented, it's the sort of book you believe no man should read, because it lays bare the inner workings of every woman's heart and mind.

HOUSE OF LEAVES
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI

Mysterious, engaging, and quite astonishingly scary. It's an ambitious debut, that I've heard, more than once, compared with White Teeth. And it's true, they share a great deal: a perfectly self-assured voice, a refusal to be dumbed down, and a strangely endearing density.

It taught me a new word: ergodic, meaning a kind of literature that requires effort to be read.

It's a lovely book, on many levels, and I'm just surprised I haven't run into it earlier.

SACRED GAMES
VIKRAM CHANDRA

Took ages to make my way through this one, as it was simply too heavy a book to carry around with me. Was completely worth the effort, though, since it's beautifully written, and, in combination with Shantaram and Maximum City, forms a sort of 2006 Bombay trilogy for me.