My freshman year of college, I was assigned Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in a mandatory first-year literature course. Though I was an avid reader and had always been fond of English class, I didn’t approach the book with much excitement. Most of the books I cherished up until that point had been discovered on my own – assigned literature had a tendency to leave me cold. So it was with a sort of disengagement and hurry that I started reading the book one night.

I jolted into focus at the seventh sentence: “Oh spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world.” Sure, the theme of the sentence piqued my interest – as an Indian-American, I am always particularly drawn to stories on identity and nationalism, especially when they involve India. But it was that “oh spell it out” that brought me back to my senses, and struck something inside me. It evoked the same sort of rush I had been feeling through the first (purposefully) stumbling sentences – a tumbling of words, mirroring the tumbling of the protagonist into the world. “This book,” I thought, “this book is special. I feel the words inside me.”

With each page I grew more absorbed and more in love with Midnight’s Children. Not just for the plot, which masterfully reveals reality through absurdity, but for Rushdie’s precise and visceral prose, which manages to evoke complex feelings and themes through unique phrasing. A common complaint I’ve heard about Midnight’s Children, and Rushdie in general, is the sheer volume of prose he employs. Couldn’t he convey the story and themes without half of these descriptions and narratives? But, as the protagonist of Midnight’s Children, Saleem Sinai, says, “To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.” Rushdie’s style and language allows the protagonist’s world to seep into the reader so thoroughly, that the reader understands the life of Saleem Sinai in her bones. How better to explore themes of identity and belonging?

Please, assign yourself Midnight’s Children.

Jhumpa Lahiri has achieved literary success and even an adaptation from page-to screen for her novel, The Namesake. Still, it's worth noting that it all started with this 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. The nine stories in this volume are remarkable in the way they capture character, create tension, and reveal, in seven of the nine, the immigrant experience in America, even though the characters themselves may not be first generation immigrants, but rather members of the 1.5 generation.

Steeped in Indian, specifically Bengali, culture despite having been born in the U.S., Shoba and Shukumar, the primary characters in A Temporary Matter, are a married couple living apart in the same house until the lights go out. The electric company's enforced nightly power outage brings these characters together in the dark to reveal secrets. No need for a spoiler alert if you know this much, but be assured that by the end of the story you will have that moment where you judge one character and then the other and then have to find a middle ground as we do in our own lives.

Every story, except for the two set in India, presents the reader with sets of binaries, cultural or social contrasts that may or may not get resolved on the page but always continue to resonate in the reader's mind. In Sexy, we see the obliviousness of a young woman who is living in the midst of the same dicey circumstances that a co-worker describes daily, though she has no clue until the very end that she may be culpable. In Mr. Prizada Comes to Dine, Lahiri takes to task America's deliberate closed-mindedness about other cultures and in This Blessed House we see the conflict between free-spiritedness and deliberateness, the literature lover and the engineer, as played out against the background of a new marriage.

The title story, Interpreter of Maladies, investigates the two cultures side by side as American-born Indians return as tourists to India with their offspring. The lack of connection between the two cultures is apparent through the eyes of their tour guide, or interpreter, as is the romanticizing of "the other" on both sides.

Throughout the volume, the language is evocative and lovely, with vivid characterizations emerging through both action and dialogue. But it is in the final story, The Third and Final Continent, written in the first-person voice of a onetime Bengali bachelor who has traversed the world from India to London to Cambridge, Massachusetts, that we see the ineffably moving journey of evolving from immigrant to inhabitant. In fact, every story in this slim volume is guaranteed to resonate for long after you've turned the last page.

Dark, funny, compassionate, and grotesque are the words to describe what is filtered out of Rajesh Parameswaran's imagination in his first collection of short stories, I Am An Executioner: Love Stories. Dropped into complex situations, these tragic and strangely loveable characters are deeply confused about the choices they are making. You'll want to reach out to each of them, grab them by the shoulder and say, "Friend, please, take a second to look at what you’re doing here." But I assure you they won't listen.

In The Infamous Bengal Ming, the young tiger, Ming, is happy with his life in the zoo. His keeper, Kitch, keeps him well fed and his only concern is what to do about his desire for the lovely Saskia. But life changes in an instant when one poor decision leads to another and Ming finds himself outside of his cage and experiencing the freedom of a real wild animal for the first time.

In The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan, Gopi finds himself in a precarious situation with his wife when he is fired from his job at CompUSA. Desperately needing to keep her happy, he decides to open his own medical practice despite his lack of experience. With a few medical books from the library and a converted veterinary office, Gopi (aka "Dr." Raju) is open for business. How hard can it be?

In the title story, a seasoned executioner turns to the comfort and safety of his job on death row in order to escape the new challenges of his recent marriage. Generally optimistic by nature, he doesn't understand why everyone finds him and what he does so repulsive. When a young girl is brought into the prison, he's left to reevaluate what is important in life.

In the end, these are all truly love stories, as it's love that drives the conflicted to be less than clear in what they do. Parameswaran's stories have appeared in McSweeney's, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Fiction. He writes with a fun, unique voice that gives his characters and their surroundings a closeness that is perhaps too intimate. You'll be left cringing, but still peering through your fingers, from one story to the next.

One of the many differences between a good book and a great book is that a great book isn’t just a great read; it’s a great experience. It sucks you in every time you turn your eyes to its chapters, keeping you fully engrossed while the outside world fades into a muffled din. You cease to see your surroundings — whether sand or subway or sofa — in your periphery. Your personal thoughts dissipate, leaving no room in your mind for anything but the story before you. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is a great book.

From the first sentence — "It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured" — Lin Ford has our attention. Our narrator is a fleeing convict, escaped from a maximum-security prison in Australia, making his way through Bombay. It is in Bombay that he meets Prabakar, an indispensable man who becomes his friend and guide through the slums of the city.

To continue to delve into the plot of the sprawling novel here, in this small space, would not do the book justice. Instead, simply know that it is a story of a search for friendship, for meaning, for love and for identity. It is a search that leads our protagonist through Mumbai, into war in Afghanistan, along the shores of Goa, and beyond. It is the kind of book from which you’ll extract passages worth highlighting and sharing and referring back to. And in addition to all of this, there's an element of autobiography.

Roberts is, in fact, an Australian ex-convict and a recovering heroin addict. He escaped Pentridge Prison in 1980, where he was serving time for bank robbery, and settled in India, remaining there for ten years. Ultimately, Roberts landed back in prison and finished serving his time. In spite of the parallels between Roberts’ life and Lin’s life, however, Roberts insists his book is fiction — and so can take creative and linguistic liberty, which only adds to the book’s beauty.

Ultimately, readers, Shantaram is a book that gets you unstuck. It is likely a different kind of book than most everything you’ve read and different than the kind of book to which you usually gravitate. It’s the book that grabs you and takes you on a journey unlike any you’ve heard of, down a different path than you’ve ever been on, expanding your willingness to read outside "your" genre, as it's done for many. Upon finishing Shantaram, this reader wanted more. Immediately, thoughts of travel to Goa and Mumbai started drifting in; research about the ever-ongoing movie rumors was undertaken.  But nothing — nothing before and nothing since — has satisfied in quite the same way that Shantaram did. Enjoy it.

It's not often that I go into a book not really knowing anything about the story or the author. Such was the case with The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger, though. For some reason I was expecting more of a women's commercial read. Perhaps it was too many books from my past coming to weigh on my judgment, or, it may have been the frame of mind I was in -- having just gotten married myself and being extremely happy, I was expecting more of the fairy-tale story we read in other books.

While I didn't get the story I was expecting, I did get a beautifully written, rich, layered, and sometimes-funny novel. The newlyweds in this story, George and Amina, face the same challenges many couples do: learning to live together, trying to navigate different communication styles, appreciating each other's wants and desires, facing the families as a united front, and agreeing on the right time to have children.

What makes George and Amina's marriage different than what many of us have experienced, however, is how it came to be. They met on an online site: George in Rochester, New York; Amina in Dhaka, Bangladesh. After a months-long courtship via e-mail, George flew to Bangladesh, where he and Amina spent days getting to know each other, culminating in an engagement.

The majority of The Newlyweds explores their relationship after this meeting. Amina's move to Rochester isn't quite the fairy tale she had hoped for. Besides just the shock of moving from Bangladesh to the U.S., she must learn to become comfortable with who she is. The novel is rich with what it means to navigate these differences and difficulties: religion, politics, expectations, secrets, language, family.

The author's inspiration for this tale was born from a true story. While traveling in Asia, she met a woman who was on her way to an internet-facilitated marriage in the U.S. Now a friend of the author, the woman granted permission for her life to be used for fiction.

Freudenberger has been named a New Yorker "20 under 40," won numerous awards, and had two previous books named New York Times Book Review "Notables." Her new tale of romance and relationships in the modern age only proves she is a writer to pay attention to.

A Fine Balance is a haunting tale of morality, struggle, perseverance, and ultimately, love. Set in India during the mid-1970s, we get a glimpse of a country filled with corruption and turmoil so intrinsic it is difficult to see what good can come from anything. With beautiful prose, Rohinton Mistry takes you into the lives of four people with such great detail, it would be nearly impossible to forget their stories.

Ishvar and Omprakash Darji, an uncle and nephew duo, time and time again experience pain, with small moments of hope. Early on, Ishvar's father sends him and his brother to learn a trade and they return as tailors, only to experience resentment from higher caste members because of their near-success. This and other injustices lead to the brutal murder of Ishvar's brother, an event not rare at this time within the caste of chamaars, or "untouchables." With their family destroyed, Ishvar and his brother's son, Om, set out to find work in a city.

Mrs. Dina Dalal is a traditionally wealthy widow, living in the flat of her deceased husband, the love of her life. Her struggle for independence from her abusive brother is both tragic and inspiring. It is Dina's flat that becomes a haven, not only for the tailors but also for Maneck.

Maneck Kohlah initially comes into play as one of Dina's paying boarders. He has been sent by his parents to attend college, leaving the mountains that he loves to study refrigeration and air-conditioning, "an industry that would grow with the nation's prosperity."

As these characters' journeys unfold, we witness just how intertwined their lives really are -- and see that in spite of all that they have been through, strangers can become family. A Fine Balance will change the way you think. One quote that really resonated with me, that Mistry references multiple times is, "You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair." With all of life's devastations, and we've all experienced some, this heartbreaking narrative is a true testament to happiness being found in the smaller things in life.

How far would you go to resolve your financial woes? To "make a killing"? Aravind Adiga brilliantly tackles this question in his novel Last Man in Tower, in which the residents of Vishram Society, a cooperative apartment building in Mumbai, are faced with a sudden opportunity. In Vakola, a rapidly changing neighborhood on the border of a slum, land has become a hot commodity in a city that is desperately crowded. Dharmen Shah, a scrappy real estate mogul, is prepared to pay a princely sum to buy out the current occupants so he can tear their building down and build a new luxury apartment tower. However, they must all agree to take the money and move out -- and they don't all agree.

As time wears on toward the developer's deadline, neighbors are pitted against neighbors, families are torn apart, and long-buried dreams come to life. The clashes reflect the changing nature of Mumbai itself, where, in real life, a notorious slum lies surprisingly close to a star cricket player's nine-million-dollar mansion.

Adiga, who won the 2008 Man Booker prize for his debut novel, The White Tiger, virtually turns Mumbai itself into a character. The overcrowded train compartments, the half-built concrete towers, blue tarpaulins flapping in the monsoon rains, water that trickles from kitchen faucets, greasy samosas, schoolchildren studying astronomy, raw ambition, undying patience: This is modern India at its best and at its worst, but the underlying tragedy is universal.

The novel's characters are complex, and the author gives us a chance to understand the impurity of everyone's motives. In this city, virtually everything is for sale. "In the continuous market that runs right through southern Mumbai, under banyan trees, on pavements, beneath the arcades of the Gothic buildings, in which food, pirated books, perfumes, wristwatches, meditations beads, and software are sold, one question is repeated, to tourists and locals, in Hindi or in English: What do you want?"

A lesser author would have stopped there, but Adiga forces us to confront our own wants, and our attitudes toward success and failure, more directly. Is it wrong to want more? What if "getting" comes at the expense of the elderly, the sick, the poor, the past? What if saying "no" merely reflects a stubborn fear of change? What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Can India become a modern country without losing its own soul? These are marvelous questions to be wrung out of a simple tale about a real-estate buyout.

As Last Man In Tower moves steadily toward its conclusion, the reader cringes but peers through her fingers to keep reading. The novel is funny, literate, bitter, and profound. It earns our respect, and it deserves our attention.

The New Year is new again. Thank you, lunar calendar; the Year of the Dragon promises to bring energy, prosperity, and change. It’s a second chance to set goals for 2012. But mundane New Year’s resolutions like health club memberships, nicotine patches, and Googling yourself into a state of supreme organization are so one month ago. Forget about Charles Barkley and Jennifer Hudson. Stop worrying about this being the year you’ll finally learn to use Twitter. The Dragon’s Breath Chili-Super Bowl party was a great idea, but it’s time to start thinking bigger. It’s a Presidential election year, an Olympics year, and the year of Tim Tebow, after all. The only thing that’s going to help us through is a good dose of what Kim Kardashian and “Jersey Shore” never, ever will offer. It’s time to add some perspective to your list. Challenge your own opinions, beliefs, and experiences based on something real. Fortunately, this is as easy as adding Behind the Beautiful Forevers to our reading lists. Welcome to the fourth biggest city in the world, Bombay, now known as Mumbai, India. Your tour guide will be Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Katherine Boo.

As a visitor to Mumbai just leaving the airport, you’ll drive by a concrete wall plastered with “sunshine-yellow advertisements” for Italianate floor tiles. The ads read: “Beautiful Forever. Beautiful Forever. Beautiful Forever.” Just behind this wall, Behind the Beautiful Forevers introduces us to some of the most entrepreneurial, hard working, inspiring, challenged children and families, living in the most extreme of circumstances: the slums of Annawadi.

The families and children of Annawadi are accustomed to Boo and don’t pay much attention to her. They live their lives as they normally would, which is what makes this book so engaging and wondrous. Children hardened by twelve-hour work days, little food, and concrete/earthen floors for beds are charmingly engaged with friends, obedient task masters to their parents, and still so scared by a simple B horror movie that they don’t want to go out in the dark. These families are genuine, with so little, working so hard, they’ll remind you of everything you do have. Like that eReader in your hands reading this eBook, or more significantly, the shelter, support, love, and food most of us are all guilty of taking for granted.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a simple fable or formulaic “Slumdog Millionaire” type story. Death-defying searches for scrap metal, fortunes to be had (in garbage and public seed money), corruption on a scale not even Occupy-Wall-Streeters can imagine, adultery, terrorist attacks, and an unending quest for love, support, and justice all keep this book rolling along.

Thankfully Katherine Boo never gets preachy and there’s no overarching message in Behind the Beautiful Forevers, though it’s obvious that a little help can go a long, long way. Supporting one another can sometimes be the greatest gift there is in life. I’m choosing a New Year’s resolution as simple as this.

Bonus: Check out this interview with Katherine Boo on NPR.