Every time I feel like reading Shantaram - I tell myself it's too large to read along with my daily routine... So will try it out on a holiday, maybe. Same thing happened with 'A Suitable Boy' - because of the sheer size, I have stayed away.
Yes I agree about Love In The Time Of Cholera... in fact anything that Marquez has written except as I mentioned 'Autumn Of A Patriarch' and to an extent 'Chronicle Of A Death Foretold', which I found too tedious. 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Of Love And Other Demons' and 'Love in The Time Of Cholera' are all classics. In case you haven't read his short stories book 'Strange Pilgrims', do check it out - an amazing collection with some wild imagination strewn all over. Another Marquez book I enjoyed is the true-story-based 'Story Of A Shipwrecked Sailor'. Strangely, the cover spells it 'Sailer' - though it's correctly spelt elsewhere in the book

Have updated the thread subject now

The only 2 Marquez books I have read are 'Love in the time of Cholera' and 'One hundred years of solitude' and found both of them brilliant. Need to read more from him.. Thanks for the recommendations.....

Yes - I have also not been able to start 'Shantaram' so far for the same reasons... In fact, it is one that I have with me for some time now but not been able to read.... Lets see when...

Good u changed the subject line... Here's a list of some fantastic books I've read this year, with comments. Am not mentioning some of the disappointing ones like The White Tiger

1) Sophie's Choince - William Styron: Absolutely amazing and very disturbing book on Nazi war atrocities. The book was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep, but here, I loved the writer''s style and attention to detail
2) A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess: A description of teenage violence, it falls under what's known as 'dystopian fiction', which deals with negative traits of human behaviour. Burgess uses a completelty different slang language... you won't understand many words in the first 10 pages or so, but as the wrords and phrases get repeated, it's marvellous
3) Animal Farm - George Orwell: A very short book which is a satire on the Russian regime under Stalin... It talks of life in an animal farm, and if one replaces specific animals with Russian leaders like Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Trotsy, it' brilliant
4) Strange Pilgrims - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Have mentioned this before. A collection of short stories written in Marquez's quintessential 'magic realism' style
5) A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway: A love story set in Italy in the backdrop of World War I, it talks of the terrible effects of war
6) Paths of Glory - Jeffrey Archer: A tale of mountaineerr George Mallory's attempt to conquer Mt Everest. Very well-written and inspiring
7) Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse: The story of a man's quest for speritual bliss, set in India and written by a German Indophile
8) Devdas - Sarat Chandra Chattopadhya: Translation of the Bengali original. I've seen the Bimal Roy's and Bhansali's Devdas, and also Anurag Kashyap's Dev D, which was a modern interpretation... Despite knowing the story, I enjoyed the book immensely
9) Untouchable - Mulk Raj Anand: A day in the life of a 'bhangi', it talks about the scourge of untouchability
10) Maximum City - suketu mehta: Have mentioned it before
11) The Diary Of A Social Butterfly - Moni Mohsin: A Pakistani writer, Moni is absolutely hilarious as she takes a dig at the world of materialistic and society-climbing people. Of course, as her language is a mix of English with Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi words thrown in regularly, it may not be admired by those who don't use those Punjabi and Urdu words
12) The Struggle - Hewidi Holland: The story of the African National Congress, and how it help achieve freedom in South Africa. The details on apartheid, Nelson Mandela and other SA leaders are superb
13) Bhairavi - Peter Lavezzoli: A description of how Indian music has created an impact in the west
14) The Music Room - Namita Devidayal: The biographical story of singer Dhodutai Kulkarni
15) Pigs Might Fly - A biography of Pink Floyd

I don't know, but for me Kite Runner is one of the best books that I read in recent times. It showed pathos but the way it has been put down, it gave the real picture of whats happening there. It was too gripping and I could not put it down till the end.

Alchemist is a good book but I don't get the level of hype that has been created for it.

Try it out Naren Bhai. I won't say its a book of literary acclaim but its nice. In a very simple language he has shown the incidents from day to day activities. Every character has different characteristics and the way he has put those down with their actions, its wonderful to analyse.

Fine.. Will read A Suitable Boy, but preferably when on holiday.
Just finished reading two Sudha Murty books back to back - 'Dollar Bahu' and 'Gently Falls The Bakula'. The former is quite popular, probably because of its telesoap-like story (it was also converted into a teleserial). It's predictable at times, but in its own way, it's very readable - mainly because of the way Murty uses the dollar as a leitmotif (recurring theme). Personally, I preferred the latter - which talks of a husband-wife relationship turned sour. Again, the basic storyline may be nothing new, but the difference lies in the way the book is constructed. Here, the bakula (a flower worn by women on their hair) is the leitmotif...
The wife of Infosys chief Narayan Murty and a social worker in her own right, Sudha Murty has excellent prose and storytelling abilities. Simple language, relatable characters and situations, and good use of metaphors enliven her writing. I personally identify with her subjects as in both books, the beginnings are set in my hometown Dharwad and its twin city Hubli... So many of the things she mentions are things I've encountered at some stage, if not grown up on.
There's another book 'Wise and Otherwise' that I want to read. Hope I find it somewhere

I finished reading 'Difficult Daughters' by Manju Kapur over the weekend... For a first book by the author, its very impressive.. The writing is very simple, lucid, and with free flow of terms like 'beti' and 'pehenji', the setting is very Indian.... I only wished that the book did not end in a rushing manner that it did....

Immediately before that, I read 'Mistaken Identity' by Nayantara Sahgal.. The concept was pretty interesting, but should have been treated better in my opinion...

KiteRunner is a pretty good book.. I have been at Kabul in my childhood and could relate to quite a few places mentioned in the book... But there are portions of it that I found more dramatic than required - it probably needed more finesse in handling emotions... at places, it kind of gave in to melodrama...