Joy of reading & "The reluctant fundamentalist"

I enjoy getting lost in a book and coming under its spell. A good book is like a wonderful journey through the woods, through unknown but irresistible paths, which makes me feel calm and upbeat at the same time as i explore the pages and savor the experience of being absorbed. Finding a good book is like finding a treasure.I end up with a satisfied, joyous feeling of discovery, a feeling that i have found something which i can come back to again and again.A good book emotionally hijacks me from the real world and i enjoy being a captive to a master story teller!

I enjoyed reading Mohsin Hamid's "The reluctant fundamentalist". I wasn't aware of the writer, i wasn't aware of the book. I think i read the back cover at an airport bookshop and picked it up more than two years ago. But i forgot all about it and only started reading yesterday. It's not a heavy book, 184 pages. The cover says it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007. Somehow when i see a book has been nominated for an award, i get prejudiced thinking that the subject matter might be too complex and the writing might be too serious for my liking. So i have not read God of Small Things or the Jhumpa Lahiri book [can't remember the exact title] The interpreter of maladies.

Coming back to "The reluctant fundamentalist": i found the narration and the style of story telling delicious like a cheese cake which i like to devour slowly, spoon by spoon. Not haste it, as i don't want the taste to fade away or the cake to finish too soon. Does the metaphor sound too cheesy? I mean i enjoyed reading it at slow pace, getting absorbed in the pages. Do i sound snob when i say Mohsin Hamid's English is much more fluid and free flowing and engaging than Chetan Bhagat's?

The story is a monologue of a Pakistani, a Princeton graduate and former high flying corporate executive, who left the American dream after 9/11 and came back to Lahore. He narrates his journey back home and back to his roots to an unnamed, unidentified American  sitting opposite  him at a roadside restaurant in Lahore. I liked reading the book, as it felt like Changez, the narrator, let me in into the conversation. As if i was sitting right next to him, when he was narrating the story.

Mohsin Hamid has a way with  words, he can make up poetic, beautiful expressions. It always amazes me how a good writer can conjure up a beautiful expression with simple, known words. Like a magician...something beautiful emerges from the pages. A good writer takes all the words we know and then comes up with an expression which is surprisingly new, refreshing, unexpected- the whole ends up being greater than the some of its parts. And i have an envious admiration for that kind of power and ability. I feel a good story teller can play with words and form clouds of thoughts for me to get lost. Like when Mohsin Hamid writes: " Status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declines more slowly than wealth" or " it leaves space for your thoughts to echo". 

That is exactly why i liked reading this book. It touched me with a sense of familiarity with expressions i could relate to and also as Erica, whom you will get to know if you read the book, says: "left space for my thoughts to echo". 

Book review: "The 3 mistakes of my life"

After watching " 3 idiots" i was looking forward to read Chetan Bhagat's books. The movie is based on Chetan's "Five point someone". So i picked up his third book " The 3 mistakes of my life" with great expectations. It's got all the ingredients to resonate with indian readers: cricket, religion, racial violence, pinch of patriotism, young romance. Chetan plays himself in the book, a writer cum investment banker based in Singapore.

The story starts well... Chetan gets an anonymous email from one of his readers saying he's going to commit suicide: "I am an ordinary boy in Ahmedabad who read your books. I can't really tell anyone what i am doing to myself - which is taking a sleeping pill every time i end a sentence - so i thought i would tell you...." Chetan manages to track down Govind Patel, who wrote the email, at an hospital in Ahmedabad and flies down to India to meet him. The rest of the book is in Govind's narration about his two friends Ishan and Omi, their sports shop " Team India", Ishan's sister Vidya, a young muslim cricket protege Ali and of course, the 3 mistakes of Govind's life.

I am not a book critic and my views are merely of an ordinary reader. I did not find the book gripping except for few brilliant passages here and there. It seemed to be a concoction of too many things, trying to connect all possible aspects of modern India in one story. The writing style isn't free flowing and seamless, rather like a montage of incidents.

Like "Five point someone" this book too is soon going to be a movie and i think, with the right actors, it'll make a better movie than a book. Chetan's writing seemed more apt for a screen play, than a book.So i am probably not picking up another Chetan Bhagat book, rather i will stick to watching the movie adaptation of his stories.