03 February, 2008

Five Point Someone

Read this book recently. Ok, don't give me that, "What! You had not read this book earlier?" look. Have had enough of those already. And, I need no more. Probably, I am the last person on earth to have read this book. Everybody seems to have read it.

Anyway, my point is, this is easily one of the most interesting books that I have read. This book gave me several of my firsts. It was the first book:
  • that I finished reading in three days flat. Its quite an achievement, I tell you. Though I must admit that the small size of the book and the large fonts did help my cause.
  • for which I never turned back to check where I had left off. I remembered exactly which page I was on when I last read it, and what had happened in the story till then. Have to commend the writer for this. Its a simple story told simply.
  • for which I did not open the dictionary even once. I hate it when I have to refer to a dictionary whenever I read a book. I am not very fond of expanding my vocabulary, coz I feel that its useless. Why do we have synonyms in any language? Its truly useless I tell you. Also, there should be no place for "degrees of comparison" in any language. Instead of using, "good, better, best", why cant we just use "good, very good, very very good"? The message conveyed is the same. If we do away with synonyms and "degrees of comparison", every dictionary in this world would truly become a "pocket dictionary".
This book is racy, intriguing and realistic, and anybody can identify himself with one of the three protagonists (I found myself closest to Hari and sometimes with Ryan.). However, Sudeep (he is a Nine Point Something, I tell you!) said, "It describes bad things that can (and do) happen here at IIT. But it is highly unlikely that more than one of those bad things will happen to anyone. The book describes an "all things gone wrong" situation." True, and who better than Sudeep to know about it. It, however, is still a must read. (Assuming there are people who have not read the book yet. I know none of these rare breed of people.)

I was so amazed with the writing style of Chetan Bhagat, that I couldn't resist myself from bringing home his "One Night @ the Call Center". I hope it it turns out as good as, if not better than, Five Point Someone.

These (and it includes "The Kite Runner") are the kind of books I like. No 'boy wizard with a magic wand' stuff for me.

P.S. No matter how much a guy would hate to listen to this from girls, it is true that all guys ARE THE SAME. They all think alike and this book just strengthens my belief.

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