Too many books to read, such little time

I often marvel at how I can pick up two to three books simultaneously and start reading them. I love fiction. So I start a novel. But I'll always be reading some non-fiction as well. Forget the compulsory newspaper and magazine. It'll be some new non-fiction novel about economics that I just pick up and start to read.

Granta magazine is one that I've just started to read. I picked up an old copy in New York but I thought that the issue they were covering was interesting. It was on how America sees the world. Not on how the world sees America - they covered that post 9/11. But on how America, that megalithic empire, views the rest of us.

I think that our viewpoint of America was covered best in the introduction. A quote from Graham Greene sums it up well, when talking about Pyle, the supposedly benevolent American in The Quiet American - "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused." Sums up the American Foreign policy to a T don't you think?

I've also decided to start another Dan Brown type novel - called The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury. What is the secret of the Templars is what prompted me to buy this book at the Delhi Book Fair - which I just happened to stumble upon on one of my sojourns to Delhi. The Knights of the Templar were a military order of the Roman Catholic church and existed more than 700 years ago. They were originally formed to fight in the Holy Crusades and to protect Christians during the Holy War. Interestingly, they were supposed to protect the Holy Grail as well.

Books transfer you to another time and place. Whether it be Thomas Friedman's analysis of globalization or Milan Kundera's listlessness... books always give you something to think about.

I have one more Kathy Reichs to finish. Bones to Ashes promises to be quite a good read. I do love a good mystery.