The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

Funny isn't it, when you read a book, and when you eventually get involved in it completely, the characters' lives start imitating yours, their feelings start becoming yours and you then realize that what in fact you are thinking and feeling and the arguments you are having in your head are exactly what goes on in everyone's heads, and also the fact what you think you only experience, has actually been experienced before, and has been going for centuries, its just that you are very new to it.

Right now i probably sound confusing but all these thoughts have been going on in my mind due to the reason that i have just right now completed reading this really serious book, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", and although initially i didn't really like it, as a matter of fact i was a little too quick to criticize it, i never gave the protagonist's character the time to develop. I had already become biased against him and had already formed an opinion of him and pictured him to be as someone i actually know and although it was very much like him initially, however i was wrong. I had been too quick to decide, and as the story developed i realized that the protagonist was just a confused person in life, someone i can relate to, someone that anyone can relate to, and the fact that all the mental anguish he was suffering with, is so common in our society and in our generation and particularly in my generation that while reading his story i could detach myself from the mental anguishes going on in my head and probably have a more positive outlook on life, also giving me the feeling as if i am some third person looking in, in my own life.

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

I never knew i could ever cry while reading a book. I've never cried in movies and i definitely never cry in front of people, but if there is anything that has moved me, it is this book.

I don't deny, its not probably the sort of book you read to kill time with and its not the sort of book that you can do light-reading with, but it is the sort of book that shows you that the life that we are living is so amazing Alhamdulillah, and the realization that our suffering is nothing in comparison to what a million people are suffering right now...

This book delves into the lives of two afghani women, and the torment and suffering they endure during their lives. While reading it, you realise how much pain a person can endure for the people they love and yet be able to survive all of that. It is very impressive and yet at the same time saddening that there can be so much suffering and torture, however at the same time, there is hope. A hope for a better future, a hope for a better life and always a hope that everything will be fine eventually...

Before i leave i'd like to end with this quote by Saib-e-Tabrizi,

"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,

Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls"

"Sleeping Around" by Julie Highmore

Such a dumb book and soo predictable. Although i don't deny i actually enjoyed it, it was light read, a good timepass, since i had nothing better to do!!!

What i am actually talking about is this book by Julie Highmore, "Sleeping Around". A very apt title, since that is what everyone in the book seems to be doing!!! It is more like a Desperate Housewives episode, all women in the neighbourhood falling for the same guy, who apparently cannot decide if he is in love with the person he is sleeping with, or with the wife who left him after coming out clean of her previous affair.

What i didn't like about this book is the fact that the writer wouldn't explain much as to what was going on in the characters' heads. It seemed very abrupt, the changing from one scene to the next, without actually giving us the results of what happened. It seemed more like as if she got bored of writing the current scene and didn't find time to finish it off, and probably woke up the next morning and started afresh with a new scene. And the story was very usual, and as i earlier mentioned very predictable.
However, it is probably meant to be a light read, for people in dull moods and who don't want to do much serious reading. All in all, it is an "okay" book, definitely not worth spending money on!!!