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".