Aftertaste - The Stars' Tennis Balls

I have to confess that any book of Stephen Fry’s finds me lean back onto my a-little-too-dirty, a-little-too-smelly pillow on my plastic brownish chair, chuckling in delight every now and then. Words dance and loop and twirl in his hands, like a provocatively competent tap dancer. He makes you gasp, really.
I also have to confess that when I bought the book, I braced myself for a considerably light, relaxing evening, and like a little girl I was who once smirked smugly at a prospect of a math test, I was – to try to put it precisely – walloped.
It was light, the first few pages of it, but then it turned quite grave. And was I disappointed?
The truth is, that having read quite a number of books, I learned – gradually at times, other times quickly, sternly and quite shockingly – that one should never start any book with a smirk or any method of defence. I did close the book, and let it rest snuggly amidst the stacks of my unwashed clothes, but so I did retract it and continue reading it with an expectation list as clean as, they say, the tabula rasa.
And I got back my delightful chuckle. I got back the warm, snuggly feeling from the pages, even as accompanied by the smutty, smelly pillow.
It is a story in the most rooted understanding of it – what you look for in storybooks, really – and has a beautiful ending if you can refrain yourself from asking why. I know what you’re going to say now…right now…at this moment...but stop.

I have Paperweight with me, but following carefully the instruction given, I take care to read not more than a couple of pages a day. It will be sometime yet before I can post my ‘aftertaste’. Let a couple of eggs boil. Let a couple of fishes die. Let a couple of assignments see that they’re nurtured. Let a couple of baths be taken.

I’m waiting to get my hands on other books, maybe Moab is My Washpot.
‘Men have limitations’, I remember a sad, mourning voice said. Money is miserably mine.