Laila Lalami

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize was announced yesterday afternoon, and it includes: Darkmans by Nicola Barker, The Gathering by Anne Enright, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, and Animal’s People by Indra Sinha. Several newspapers and a few bookies are giving McEwan as the favorite. Of the six finalists, I have read only Hamid; I have McEwan’s new novel, but haven’t gotten to it yet. The winner will be announced in October.

The amazing Dave Weich interviews Junot Díaz about his new novel, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Toward the end of their chat, Dave asks Díaz what he would consider his greatest weakness as a writer. Díaz replies that “he doesn’t write enough,” but then later seems to remember something:

Díaz: – Oh, I suck at dialogue.

Dave: You suck at dialogue?

Díaz: Definitely. If I were better at dialogue, I’d probably be walking around with a fur coat.

This sounded so strange to me–I think Díaz is actually brilliant at dialogue and have used an exchange from “Fiesta, 1980″ in a class on language. Funny how writers’ perceptions of their work can vary so greatly from those of their readers.

From the first few pages of J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K.

K had never been into the flat before. He found it in chaos. In a wash of water driven through the windows by high winds lay broken furniture, gutted mattresses, fragments of glass and crockery, withered pot-plants, sodden bedding and carpeting. A paste of cake flour, breakfast cereal, sugar, cat litter and earth stuck to his shoes. In the kitchen the refrigerator lay on its face, its motor still purring, a yellow scum leaking past its hinges into the half-inch of water on the tiled floor. Rows of jars had been swept off the shelves; there was a reek of wine. On the gleaming white walls someone had written in oven cleaner: TO HEL.

What gets me is the “the half-inch” of water.

I was delighted to find out, in the middle of my moving adventures, that Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American scholar who had been detained in Iran since last May, was released last week. Now comes news that journalist Parnaz Azima was set free yesterday. Unfortunately, Ali Shakeri and Kian Tajbaksh are still being held in Iran. Perhaps we will hear good news about them in the coming days.

I just emerged from a hellish weekend: We opened boxes, set up furniture, shelved books, hung pictures, and all in 95-degree temperatures. It was exhausting. But, it’s done! It’s done! We’ve been enjoying sleeping in our own bed, eating meals served in our own dishes, lounging on our own sofas, and reading the books that piled up while we were gone.