Botanising the bookshelf

"Pick out a few books for me" she said, so I stood up, and ran my finger along the rows of books. It first came to rest on Michael Ondatje's 'The English Patient' - a modern master piece in every sense. The prose is as sparse as the story line is moving. One can almost smell the desert. Peter Hoeg's 'Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow' is a more left-field choice - part murder mystery, part philosophical treaty, perhaps a tad overly intellectual, but still richly rewarding. Hoeg's subsequent writing just got a little bit too weird. Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Remains of the Day' is an astonishing snapshot of a lost time, and a sorrowful, restrained romance. Nobel price winner Doris Lessing's 'The Democratic Terrorist', a story of idealism and misguided yoof, is all the more pertinent today. Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' made an indelible mark on me as an impressionable 20-year old - love, war, idealism. Arturo Perez-Reverte's 'The Fencing Master' is a book I would have loved to be able to read in its original Spanish. A murder mystery, and an insight into the Zen of the bladesman in a life-long quest for the indefensible thrust. Most of Perez-Reverte's earlier works are great - but his latter ones went a bit.. wanky. Finally, Umberto Ecco's 'Focault's Pendulum' - a challenging read with untranslated stretches in Greek and Hebrew, but a very interesting history of the Masons, a sort of Da Vinci Code for grown-ups.