Emma by Jane Austen

I just love reading classics. The plot, the characters, the backdrop is almost always so amazing, there is so much substance that when you finish reading the novel, you end up craving for more and wish the story never ended. Jane Austen's Emma is no exception in this regard. Very entertaining, Emma is the story of Emma Woodhouse, a rich girl, who is very imaginative, loves doing match making of her friends but herself is not interested in matrimony. Her passion for match making proves to be fatal at one point and she ends up making so many blunders and messes up herself and the people around her in this process. Funny and full of rich irony, Emma was refreshing, after reading some heavy stuff. Just loved it.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

'Nothing can cure your soul but your senses and nothing can cure your senses but your soul.'

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is the story of a boy who sells his soul for his youth.

Dorian Gray is a young boy whose life changes due to two people - the artist who makes his portrait, Basil Hallward & his friend Lord Henry. Basil worships Dorian, he makes him conscious of his beautiful youth. Dorian is introduced to Lord Henry via Basil who eventually influences him greatly into a sinful life. For Lord Henry, Conscience and Cowardice are the same thing. When the portrait is complete, Dorian becomes terribly sad, he feels that this picture will mock him when he grows old and make him sorry for his lost youth and in that moment he says a prayer in which he is ready to trade his soul for his youth. His wish gets fulfilled. Dorian leads a double life and seeks great pleasure in doing the most gravest acts. The burden of all his sins is borne by the picture, the man in the picture becomes old, ugly and wrinkled after every sin that he commits while his youth remains intact in real. Even at the age of 40 he looks like how he looked when the portrait was made. He hides the portrait from the world as he is scared to reveal the darkside of his soul. The innocence on his face, makes it impossible for anyone to believe that he is capable of doing all those hideous acts. But when he has a close call with death, he starts feeling terrorised by his acts and guilty too.
You can run away from the entire world but you cannot runaway from yourself. There is no escape. There is no refuge. The most difficult thing in the world is to face your inner self which you may call your conscience. Every human soul consists of God and Devil. The conscience is the representative of the God.
When he dies, Dorian's staff fails to recognize him because the face of the dead man lying beneath the portrait of their master is all wrinkled and old, unlike the young Dorian in the picture.
By the way, it will be so cool if you could be young all your life

Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

"He who knows the 'why' for his existence, will be able to bear almost any 'how'."

Internationally renowned pyschiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, through his book, Man's Search For Meaning has shared his personal experiences and of others. It is the inside story of a concentration camp which deals with the sufferings of the common prisoners in small camps where they were stripped of literally everything and left with their naked existence and whose existence was just a number.

According to Frankl, everything can be taken from a man but one thing: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind even in such terrible conditions of pyschic and physical stress. If there is a meaning in life at all, there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

Man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his suffering or not.
Attitude was what made the difference between the prisoners who survived and the prisoners who perished.
I can tell you from personal experience that you don't need to be in a concentration camp to experience that sought of mental torment, sometimes in life even though everything seems absolutely normal on the surface but there may be some constraints, not necessarily physical which can lead you to question about your existence and a phase where you feel absolutely blank and stuck and don't know what to do.
Well I'm a strong believer of karma and I know that whatever good and bad experiences that we go through in life depends on our karma but we all have the freewill to choose what what we want to make of our life in spite of being trapped in the cirlce of karma and this is what even the author is trying to convey through this highly inspirational book.
AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ.

The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

Based on the life of Paul Gauguin, a leading Post-Impressionist painter,
The Moon and Sixpence is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius.

Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art. As Strickland pursues his artistic vision, he leaves London for Paris and Tahiti, and in his quest makes sacrifices that leave the lives of those closest to him in tatters. Through Maugham's sympathetic eye Strickland's tortured and cruel soul becomes a symbol of the blessing and the curse of transcendent artistic genius, and the cost in human lives it sometimes demands.

Maugham's this novel is nothing less than a piece of art itself, written so simply but with so much depth in it. The way he has etched his characters to present his take on life, ideal love, beauty, happiness, spirituality, human nature, ego, society and relationships is simply brilliant. He has shown what ideal love should be. I got really confused in the part when Charles's wife can forgive him for infidelity but cannot forgive him for the fact that he left her because he wanted to paint. I couldn't understand the logic at first but realized that she could forgive him for his deceit because then that would increase her pride and self-importance.

Love should not be a bondage but a bond between two people with enough space and freedom to fulfill one's aspirations and help each other in being what one wants to be.

A delight to read, this novel was just unputdownable.