Ranking books 

1984 I am embarrassed to admit that I once dismissed this book. Under the influence of popular literature, I judged it without reading it and moved on. It was only during my postgraduate studies that I returned to it, and I could not believe what I had missed. The language, the image of Big Brother, the lines — war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength — and above all the concept of doublethink showed me how power does not just control bodies but controls the very words people use to think. I read it differently the second time because I was a different reader. 

The Stranger This was my first encounter with this kind of writing and it genuinely unsettled me. What stayed with me was the protagonist's complete detachment — from grief, from consequence, from what society expects you to feel. I had not encountered a character written this way before, and it made me question what we mean by a normal human response altogether.

Metamorphosis What draws me to this novel is not the transformation itself but what follows it — the family's slow, quiet indifference. Kafka does not dramatise the horror. He lets it settle in like routine. That felt truer and more disturbing to me than any overtly nihilistic work I have read.

The Great Gatsby I will be honest — when I first watched the film, I was genuinely moved. It felt like a pure love story. It was only later, after I began to understand deconstruction, that I saw what was actually there — a man not in love with a person but obsessed with an idea of her, a materialist chasing a green light that was never meant to be reached. That shift in my reading felt like a small but significant moment in how I began to engage with literature.

Animal Farm What amazed me was how Orwell managed to depict the mechanics of political betrayal through animals in a farmyard, and how precise it remains. The line "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" stayed with me long after I finished reading because I realised it was not just about Orwell's time — modern leaders use the same logic regularly, just without saying the second half aloud.

The Only Story What interested me most about this novel was its subject matter — a relationship between a young man and an older woman, Barnes does not glorify the relationship. He shows its weight. The line "Would you rather love the more and suffer the more; or love the less and suffer the less?" suggested to me that love stories are not only about bright beginnings but about what they cost. 

Canterbury Tales I first read this as something enjoyable — the variety of characters, each with a different personality and story, created an almost visual world in my mind. It was only later, after encountering Roland Barthes and the idea of the death of the author, that I understood I had been reading a sharp social critique all along — of class, power, and human hypocrisy. Canterbury Tales taught me that awareness changes what a text is. 

The White Tiger What I found compelling here was the narrator's unapologetic voice. Balram does not ask for sympathy and does not pretend that corruption leads neatly to punishment. The novel made me uncomfortable in the way good fiction should — by showing a version of success that does not fit the moral frameworks we are usually given.

Life of Pi What surprised me most was the novel's two parallel stories and the question it leaves open at the end — which one is true, and does it matter? I connected this later to what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues about the danger of a single story — that multiple, contradictory versions of events are sometimes more honest than one clean narrative.

Sherlock Holmes What amazed me about Holmes was the sharpness of his observation — the way he built complete pictures from fragments that others walked past without noticing. The line "You see, but you do not observe" struck me as something that applied far beyond detective fiction. It was one of the early things I read that made me want to pay closer attention — to books, to people, to the world.

Harry Potter This was the first complete series I read from beginning to end, and I read it entirely on my own terms — no guidance, no theory, no purpose. I read it because the reading felt alive. It created a world entirely outside of the real one, and looking back, it was this series that first made me understand what reading could feel like when it was chosen freely rather than assigned.

The Alchemist I genuinely enjoyed reading this book at the time. It gave me energy and a sense of possibility. I accept now that it belongs to a phase of my reading where I was looking for direction rather than complexity — but I do not dismiss it. It was part of the journey that eventually brought me to harder, stranger, more demanding books. 

Tuesdays with Morrie I read this during the same period — a time when I was drawn to books that offered comfort and life lessons. It moved me genuinely. But I understand now that being moved is not the same as being challenged, and this book, as much as I valued it, did not ask me to question anything.