Finished reading Moon Tiger, and decided in the end that I liked it. It's a short book, but took me a long time to finish because it never grabbed me enough to make me want to keep reading. I continued more out of a sense of obligation than anything else, since I always feel that I should finish books once I've started them unless I actively dislike them, but I'm glad I finished it.

Moon Tiger is told in very short segments, only a few pages long at a pop, constantly shifting setting, time, point of view, verb tense, etc. Often, the same conversation or event is shown from multiple perspectives, one after the other. The main character is a dying old woman who is looking back on the people she's known in her life, especially during WWII in Egypt, where she was a war correspondent.

I didn't find myself very emotionally invested in the story -- people die, but I wasn't really affected -- but I think the book did a good job of developing a complex character and the world around her. Like I said, I decided that I liked it, primarily because I liked the characters.

Next, I'm planning to read Red Earth and Pouring Rain, a novel by an Indian author (Vikram Chandra) which I started reading in grad school but never finished. It's probably more challenging than most of the other stuff on my to-be-read shelf, but it's what appeals to me right now.