Athens leftover and a boarding lounge

A while back I mentioned my search for Greek contemporary fiction during a recent stay in Athens. I did not give up on my search afterwards. I finally found one of the books I was searching for initially. I found The Scapegoat on Amazon and gladly grabbed the solitary copy that was available.

Amazon has this knack of sending you recommendations based on your past purchases. I had bought a copy of Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry almost a year back. While I have still not read it, I know it is a good book and recently I got a recommendation for Family Matters and decided to buy it.

Book recommendations come from strange sources. I am open to all of the media they come through. Months back I was transiting through CDG (Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport). While lounging in the boarding lounge and leafing through the pages of the free copy of New York Times I found lying around, I read and enjoyed this very humane piece. By the time I boarded, I had decided I wanted to buy the book. By the time I switched off my phone for take-off, I had completed the order on the Amazon app. Weeks back, the book arrived off the post.

In the same order in which I bought Once More We Saw Stars, I also bought Faith In the Shadows. Voltaire famously said that “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one”. Even as a man of faith, I am wary of certainty. As uncomfortable as doubt is I am fairly convinced that my faith is big enough to handle the questions that it warrants. I often gravitate towards Christian books that discuss such. Austin Fisher is one of such writers. In an age where fundamentalism is in fierce competition with insipid liberal theology, He threads that fine line that embraces doubt in sincerity and out of it come out stronger in his faith.

Earlier this month, the world celebrated James Baldwin post-humously as he would have turned 95 years old. It was a good time to add one of his excellent collections of essays to my library. I got Dark Days. A small powerful book.