As for Riddley Walker, the book looks harder to read than it is. The recent paperback from Indiana contains a brief lexicon of the portmanteau words. No, I should have and meant to, but I sometimes find books with a heavy drug content a bit offputting. There's a story there but not for now. It's not one of my favorite books, but the prose is so gorgeous that I can almost forgive its leisurely pace and self-indulgence.
Indian fiction is very hot.
ARundhati Roy's Booker Prize winner The God of Small THings is awash in brilliant similes and a heartbreaking love story. And there are a half dozen others I have yet to read, in particular Rohinton Mistry. Of older Indian writers my favorite is G.V. Desani for his unique masterpiece, All ABout H. Hatterr, one of those books that is always being rediscovered. Speaking of Gorey, i don't think he'd be politically correct in these post-Littleton days. In Cold Blood are next on my list, I want to read more Shakespeare, etc.