MY
READINGS

FIVE POINT SOMEONE
A must read for anyone staying at hostels during their undergrad studies. Its about three friends and their adventures around the campus and personal life during the time when they were studying at an engineering undergrad school. Chetan Bhagat is pretty straight forward in his writing. Most of initial chapter buildup the interest though the 'longest day of my life' is a bit boring. Overall a pretty decent book.

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THE CHANCELLOR MANUSCRIPT
This book is about the struggle between a writer who has this canny ability to arrange facts in an order that they start pointing to the most controversial of historical events like Nazi regime being funded by American industrialists. Now there are some files which can be devastating for the nation if they fall into wrong hands and interestingly half of them go missing. So the people who want to find these file try to program this writer, without his knowledge of course, and try to locate the file using his ability. In the process things mess up, people cross each other and a whole lot of character die. Over all an interesting reading though at times Robert Ludlum seems to have delved too much on topics which are really not important to the main plot of this book.

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THE DA VINCI CODE
An excellent book with a very cohesive plot. Dan Brown manages to keep the reader  interested through out the book. This books deals with the possibility of Christ being married and the whole cover up of this issue as carried out by certain people. Its really difficult to guess who is the culprit for most of the book but strangely, when the culprit is uncovered, I find it tad too much of a surprise and hard to believe. This book has gotten so famous that recently there were programs on Discovery and National Geographic channel about the mystery spawned by this book.

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THE ALCHEMIST
Paulo Coelho is a writer who writes small simple chapters but manages to hide profound messages in those simple words. This one - The Alchemist is another such marvel of a writing where he discusses wisdom via a story about a shepherd to goes through very interesting and varied experience in life to fulfill his destiny.


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THE DAY OF THE JACKAL
Undoubtedly the best book I have read so far. The basic plot is about a political assassination plan - it conception, execution and the ultimately, the failure. The most interesting thing about Forsyth's writing style is that as he tells the story, he keeps giving hits which make the reader believe in a particular outcome but eventually, something totally unexpected turns out. He describes the scenes expertly without boring the reader with useless details but manages to capture the essential details.
 
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THE SICILIAN
Well to put it simply .. it was bit of an disappointment but not all of it can be blamed on the book because of two primary reasons, first I read this book just after reading one of the English literature's masterpiece, "The Day of the Jackal" and secondly because of all the fuss build up due to it writer being so famous on account of "The Godfather". The writing style of Puzo was a sharp contrast to those of Forsyth and Ludlum. The mafia theme that runs through the book gives it a eerie feel. It certainly does not paint a pretty picture of Sicily where the story is set. Its filled with deceit and treachery ad nauseam. The story moves too slowly and repetitive in details which at times bores. I think it would not be fair to compare it with other books the I have read as it seems to belong to a different genre. May be after I have read "The Godfather", the reputed best in this flavor of literature, I would be able to make a sensible judgment about the quality of this book.

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The Godfather
Much better than 'The Sicilian'. Primarily die to the fact that the story is step up in a city as compared to strange lands of Sicily. Actually it seems that the incidences mentioned 'The Sicilian' took place somewhere around the middle of this story. The story itself is pretty straightforward. There an all powerful Godfather and his family. Then things go wrong and the Godfather gets shot (though survives) and his eldest son dies. His youngest son, Mike, revenges the shooting on his father and runs away to Sicily to hide and returns after some years (this is when 'The Sicilian' story takes place). He rebuilds the empire back and ends up killing everyone who was responsible for death of his brother.  The story is very interesting, rivaling 'The day of the jackal' up till the point Sonny gets shot and Mike's shoots the Turk. After this story looses its cohesiveness and moves at a haphazard pace there after. The final revenge  takes place a bit too smoothly and quickly to be believable (primarily because of the fact the most of the books talk about how difficult it is to kill those who hurt Carleone family). I have not seen the movie yet but still I can say confidently say that Puzo's screenwriting skills must have been much better than his writing to get him the academy award.

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