Sexual deviance, here we come!

Current book: Midnight's Children
Pages read: 350-373

Well, I'm a horrible slacker and only read 23 pages, so there's not too much to say, but those pages were chock-full of incest, if it makes you feel any better. Saleem's in love with his sister. Heavy. It's actually not as bad as it seems because of the fact that Saleem was switched at birth with his parents' actual offspring, so really they're not blood relatives. That said, Rushdie makes the point that if you're raised as siblings, you're siblings, and the social taboo is really the part that matters. So, incest. Woohoo! (Has anyone else noticed that incest is ridiculously prevalent in books - especially "great literature"? What is that about? I'm not just talking marrying your second cousin Jane Austen-style, either.)

Aside from developing incestuous tendencies, Saleem's also developing kinesthetic ones. His sinus surgery endowed him with a heretofore-unknown sense of smell, but one that is preternaturally acute. (Ok, I may have designed that sentence purely to use both heretofore and preternaturally. But can you blame me? Don't answer that.) He also claims to be able to smell the sacred and profane, the pure and the corrupt, happiness, sadness, anger, and all the rest. Again, pretty intriguing. I'll read more tomorrow and see where all of this goes; I'm not too far from the end.

Oh, also, Rushdie used the word disorientated. Pardon me while I retch for a moment. You know, the British get a lot of things right, but that's one I find unforgivable. Do you orientate people to a new school? I didn't think so. Christ.