Reading is a great
habit to have a successful, peaceful and smart lifestyle. There are profound benefits to developing your reading habit. Below are the 10 books that can help you fuel your reading
habit
1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
This story is about
a Shepherd boy from Spain whose name is Santiago. He encounters the dream about
treasures that are lying inside the Pyramids of Egypt repeatedly.
One day, he goes to
the town to sell some of his flock. At that time he came across a tramp-king
and a gypsy woman. They urge him to ‘follow his omens’ and leave the world he
knows. The gypsy points him toward the pyramids of Egypt, where she says he will
find treasure. Santiago crosses the Mediterranean and Sahara to find his
treasures in Egypt. Along the way, he meets many spiritual messengers, who come
in unassuming forms such as a camel driver and a well-read Englishman. He
learns a whole lot of new things from everyone he met and he was living a new
life every day throughout his journey.
The book details his
journey and the various encounters that he experiences when following his
dream. Did he reach Egypt? Did he find the hidden treasures?
2. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Amir is the son of a wealthy Kabul merchant, a
member of the ruling caste of Pashtuns. Hassan, his servant, and constant
companion and best friend, is a Hazara, a despised and impoverished caste. Hassan had always gone out of his
way to help Amir. Whenever they were in trouble Hassan used to take stand for
Amir and always saved him from any ruckus. But when Amir's time came to pay
Hassan back for what he had done for him, he backed out. He betrayed his own
friend who had always been there for him like his own brother. Amir pretended
as if he didn't see anything. Little did he know that thing will haunt him
forever and even after 26 years he will not be able to sleep peacefully at
night.
So this is the story
of Amir's search for redemption and peace. That how he returned back to a new
but jeopardized Kabul from his comfortable life in America and how he got his
peace back somehow but in broken pieces.
The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country
that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading,
the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of
the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told
against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last
thirty years, The
Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic
3. Malgudi Days by R K Narayan
Malgudi Days is a
collection of 32 short funny and witty stories. The stories happen in Malgudi,
an imaginary town located somewhere on the banks of Sarayu. The stories carry
the scent and sounds of these villages and you instantly blend into the
situations in the stories. You will feel as though you are the character in the
story yourself and that is the secret behind the success of this immensely
popular book.
Rather than
revolving around a particular plot these stories wander off dreamily. Each of
the stories describes the relationship between members in a family, the various
social taboos prevalent in the mid-nineties. All the stories will seem faintly
similar but they are vastly different from each other. The stories deal with
the most ordinary men and women and that makes these stories extraordinary.
Each story deals
with simple people and simple issues they are faced with in real life. The
stories instantly establish a connection between the reader and the characters.
Some of the stories are humorous while others will shake your soul so wildly
that you might cry. Any way I can dare to say that once you read these stories
the memories will last you for your lifetime. You will carry them to the grave!
Indian villages
which are often depicted as poverty-ridden, infested with epidemics, occupied
by good for nothing illiterate fellows have another side to them. They have a
charm, a charm that I cannot explain. This charm is depicted and presented in
each of the stories in this book. Each story is so full of humanity and will
invoke that part of you which you have forgotten in this deplorable rat chase
called life.
And the endings of
each story. They are also special. The author will never reveal what happened
at the end and will leave it to your imagination. It will make you go mad
thinking about what would have happened.
4. Train to Pakistan by
Khushwant Singh
“In the summer of
1947, when the creation of the state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten
million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the
monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India
was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a
scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of
these villages was Mano Majra.”
It is a place,
Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel,
where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years.
Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent,
incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees,
bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to
Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss
of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose
love endured and transcends the ravages of war
5. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki
Murakami
‘Kafka on the Shore’
is a story about a fifteen-year-old teenager, who runs away from home. He
decides to leave his home in order to find his lost mother and sister, but
mostly, as it’s described in the book, to get away from his father. The father
figure has been shown in a negative light, but not much into detail. His fate
lands him to a distant town, where he meets a gay friend, who helps him through
a big part of his journey. He also meets two exceptional women, who could have
been his mother or sister, and ends up copulating with them. This is one phase
of the story. Simultaneously, Murakami introduces you to a simpleton
sexagenarian, Nakata, who has kind of lost his reasoning abilities in an
incident which in some way is related to the extra-terrestrial. Nakata,
although not so bright, has a weird gift of talking to cats and making fish
fall from the sky. Somehow, Kafka and Nakata’s destinies are interconnected,
and the whole book is about their journey. The book is extremely engrossing and
entertaining. Now, as it usually happens with Murakami’s work, some of the
questions have been left unanswered and some events have an open-ended
interpretation.
6. The Secret
"Your power is
in your thoughts, so stay awake. In other words, remember to remember"
This book primarily
focuses on 'Law of attraction' and 'gratitude'. It portrays how your thoughts
affect the reality you live in. It shows how aligning your thoughts with the
same vibrational frequency of the universe changes your life. The Secret is a
key to unlock the ample potential that lies within every human being. This book
is still the bestselling book in inspirational writings besides being published
a decade back.
7. The God of Small Things by
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy’s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal
parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama,
it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day
in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken
irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an
event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and
intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting
dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small
Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed
career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated
8. The White Tiger by Aravind
Adiga
Introducing a major
literary talent, The White Tiger offers a story of coruscating wit, blistering
suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating,
and utterly inimitable narrator that this millennium has yet seen.
Balram Halwai is a
complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course
of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram
tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life—having
nothing but his own wits to help him along.
Born in the dark
heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his
village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians, and the rich man's son. From
behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation.
Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for
girls, drink liquor, and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns
how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie
Walker Black Label bottles.
Balram teaches us
that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem --
but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you
want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.
The White Tiger
recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative
genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply
endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing
sensation —and a startling, provocative debut
9. The Hungry Tide by Amitav
Gosh
This book explores
the journey of a Bengali-American cetologist, Piyali Roy who embarks on a
journey to conduct a research on the Orcaella Dolphins inhabiting the
Sundarbans. On her way to Sundarbans, she comes across Kanai, a businessman who
offers her to visit his place Lushibari and later becomes her translator. Along
with Fokir, a native fisherman, Piyali traverses the forests, bãdhs, rivers,
moon, villages of the dazzling archipelago.
It is a story painted and sparkled with
adventure and history, separations and togetherness, happiness and unhappiness,
told and untold truth, the inevitability of life and death.
10. Lives of Others by Neel
Mukherjee
Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his
family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in student unrest, agitation,
extremist political activism. Compelled by an idealistic desire to change his
life and the world around him, all he leaves behind before disappearing is this
note.
The aging patriarch and matriarch of his family, the
Ghosh's, preside over their large household, unaware that beneath the barely
ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. More than poisonous
rivalries among sisters-in-law, destructive secrets, and the implosion of the
family business, this is a family unraveling as the society around it
fractures. For this is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable
change: the chasm between the generations and between those who have and those
who have not has never been wider. Ambitious, rich and compassionate, The
Lives of Others unfolds a family history and anatomizes a social class in all
its contradictions. It asks: Can we escape what is in our blood? How do we
imagine our place amongst others in the world? Can that be reimagined? And at
what cost? This is a novel of rare power and emotional force.
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