Second thoughts on NYC, not so summery feeling and Google trawling

Been away a while- in New York- which is slowly growing on me.

I didn't take to it the very first time, something about the vast numbers of towering buildings crammed into such a small place sparked off a claustrophobia-like feeling in me- hardened city lover that I am- But, following this, my third visit, NYC is beginning to grow on me.

Been back a while now but twice in the last month when I tried to blog, blogger was down...unfortunate timing..

Anyways...

The sun is out, real summer is here and everyone is as usual relishing it. In the square outside various bodies are sprawled in varying degrees of undress, united in the universal English ritual worship of the sun, a ritual you cannot understand until you live through your first dark, dank, winter. I must say I'm beginning to think summer's overrated, frankly- sweaty feet,the lethargy that the heat confers on you,itchy eyes, throat and face (if like me you suffer from hay fever)....the list goes on. I suppose it's the idea of summer that we love so much...not really the real thing

Been reading a prodigious amount. Of note were Rachel Cusk's In the Fold- a beautifully balanced English social commentary which is one of the successful examples of where a writer manages to convey a deeper meaning without distorting the beauty and pace of the story..., Leila Aboulela's Minaret which again successfully presents a sympathetic almost subtly proselytizing picture of Islam but because the story and language flow so well, it doesn't grate quite in the way that you would imagine the proselytizing might.

Also enjoyed Gerald Donovan's Doctor Salt, a kafkaesque commentary on many social issues, psychiatry, drug companies, contemporary American society- witty and spare- it read well....As did Romesh Gunesekera's new book The Match which is different in style from Reef his other book that I've r

Looking forward to reading Wole Soyinka's You Must Set Forth at Dawn, which (unusually for me) was the ONLY book I bought in New York....but somehow nothing elseseemed to capture my attention while I browsed in Barnes and Noble. Perhaps I timed my visit wrong- maybe this is the famine season for American literature. I did try to get two other books - Caine Prize nominated Laila Lalami's Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Emily Raboteau's The Professor's Daughter without any luck- they weren't in stock. I know I should just buy them off Amazon, but frankly I prefer doing my book shopping live, so I can browse through, flick through and dillydally before I finally decide to buy or not...call me Luddite if you like...

Over in Naija, the hustling for the now obviously soon-to-be-vacant Aso Rock continues apace - with even third termites (an apt appellation borrowed from Thisday's Simon Kolawole) who had sworn that no one else but Baba Obasanjo could rule Nigeria post 2007, jumping into the race....

And in the UK, I am beginning to fear that Labour might actually need to find someone else other than Gordon Brown to give David Cameron a good run post-Blair. The problem is as I see it, that everyone is disillusioned with Blair, and Cameron offers a fresh (even if blank and policy free) alternative. Those Labour supporters who have a strong historical aversion to voting Tory don't hold the deciding votes- it's the more easily persuadable middle of the roaders that do. And when it comes to a contest for the hearts and minds of these fairly fickle bunch between dour Gordon and smiley Dave, guess who's going to win.....

I notice Google's cofounder Sergey Brin has finally admitted that the company had compromised its principles by yielding to censorship in China.When I blogged on this a while back http://snipurl.com/ro5f , a nice anonymous person posted a link to an article which they claimed "provided some perspective". I remember marveling at what I immediately assumed was an exercise in damage control by some corporate bods- trawling the blogs, to find blogs critical of Google and posting helpful balanced links on them....Nice work if you can get it