it’s just the best book ever. I inhaled it – from page 1 I was hooked. This was the first Eco I read and it’s still my favorite. It opened a whole world for me about early Christianity, fundamentalism, and crime. Eco is supremely gifted – I guess he’s the thinking person’s Dan Brown :) I recommend Pahmuk’s “My name is red” after this :)

I suspected somewhere around page 400 that this was going to turn into a series. We’d only reached him at age 14. URGH. I’m going nuts now that I’ve finished it – I can’t wait until APRIL next year to find out what happens next. There should be a law. Give the author his advance. Let him finish ALL the books in the series and THEN release them en masse. GRRRR

This was my fifth attempt in 13 years to read this book. I’ve left 3 copies on planes, 1 in a train, 1 got lent to someone who didn’t return it. maybe I just wasn’t ready for it whenever it came to me before ;) This time though, I found it funny and mostly engaging but … a bit contrived. Still, I’m glad I’ve finally read it.

February 2009: after reading two stories about evil, massive crimes peopled with sick, twisted minds set in Europe (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “A Small Death in Lisbon”) followed by the depressing “A Thousand Splendid Suns” about misery in Afghanistan – I so need something lighter, more hopeful and transportive that can give me a wider perspective of the human experience. “Pico Eagle,” I turn to thee ;)

There’s a dead blonde Portuguese girl in 199x and a progrom of genocide in 1940s Berlin – for a while, I could not fathom how the parallel stories would intersect in plot and in time. But Wilson pulls it off beautifully. A riveting tale of vice and greed plus the humanity that stops us from becoming animals, I guess. (Ok, I take that back. Animals have more logic, law, and grace than we do.)

this was better than I expected. Like “Kite Runner,” this too dipped into the realms of a Bollywood film – somewhat predictable, somewhat melodramatic – but then, that’s our shared khoon, this subcontinental emphasis on imagining everything larger than life and still ending happy(ish)ly :)

I wish I’d known this was a kid’s book. Only 50 pages in did it strike me that the kid WAS the protagonist, not the old beggar. The imprint (scholastic) should have warned me off but having read two reviews of this, I am surprised neither reviewer mentioned it was a young adult’s read. Oof. Still, it was fun after I revised my expectations!

Shamsie never disappoints. This book is one of her earliest (the earliest?) and she’s come a long way since – sylistically and also in plotting more complex stories. But her voice is still fresh, her lyricism intact, and as always, I was transported across the border, into the lives of astute, savvy, modern Pakistanis who quote poetry – both Ghalib and Shakespeare – as they pick apart the political upheavals around them.

This is her youngest protagonist yet (which is what I get for reading her earliest work last) but I did like him and his journey very much. The book could have been a bit tighter but I did consume it swiftly, regardless :)

The tone of the book just didn’t work for me. it’s not the stories, which are precociously titilating – audacious, even – or the protagonist’s character. It’s really the author’s sotto voce that rings really false. It’s like she’s trying to prove a point and the defiance takes away from the story. oof.

Another favorite. I absolutely love this film. Everything in this – comedic timing to dialogue to performance – is spot on!