You really ought to read: The Kite Runner.

Let me clarify that a first novel about boyhood friends flying kites in Afghanistan in the early seventies is fairly far down on my list of things to read. My own tastes run to books that are clever, or literary. I'll throw in the occasional frenetically-pased thriller, but blame that on Hollywood for not providing me with adequately entertaining escapist movies. I'll also read truckloads of chick/ lad lit, for two reasons: one, it's awfully entertaining, and two, because lending libraries exist to liberate me from the guilt of shelling out hard-earned money (and giving up precious shelf space) for the likes of Lauren Weisberger and Mike Gayle.

I do read Asian authors, but the writers I adore -- Murakami, for instance -- could hardly be termed representative. Indian writers I give a fairly wide berth to, though I must admit to reading quite a bit of Amitav Ghosh (who staggers me with his attention to detail); Upamanyu Chatterjee; the tiresome, but quite brilliant, Rushdie; and Jhumpa Lahiri.

This isn't the most favourable mindset with which to approach The Kite Runner. It's a novel about two boys growing up in pre-Taliban Afghanistan. About how the class in which we are born has everything -- and, simultaneously, nothing -- to do with whom we become. About the frailty of men, the bonds between fathers and sons. About old-fashioned notions like honour and tradition, about harsh realities like survival and the construction of a life far, far away from your own country. It's incredibly rich in detail, and lyrical in expression. And it's unputdownable.

I started it during the runup to the first of yesterday's World Cup matches, and, before I knew it, I was curled up on the couch, telly on 'mute', bookmark discarded (I must have known I wouldn't need it again). Moved to tears more than once, yet unable to stop reading. I put it down late last night, and my head was too full of its images to concentrate on Italy vs. Ghana.

It's a wholly original book, but, in many ways, it reminded me of some of my favourite writers and characters. When its narrator, Amir, speaks of feeling like a phoney when he is with someone as pure as Hassan, the kite runner of the title, I'm reminded of Holden Caulfield, and his sister, Phoebe. The portion of the novel when Amir returns to an Afghanistan very different from the one he grew up in takes me back to Suketu Dalal's return to Dariya Mahal. The lyrical writing evokes Shantaram, and Snow.

I loved it for the very reasons it is so different from the books I usually read: its wealth of emotion, and its clearly Afghan (read, unambiguous) culture. After all, I couldn't make it through that other supposed masterpiece it is most often compared to -- The God of Small Things.

I dare you to put down: Incendiary.

It's a Christmas stocking of a book, and I couldn't wait to pull it apart. I mean, how can you put down a book written entirely in first person -- with a stream-of-consciousness-type disregard for punctuation, a supremely unforgettable heroine, mad devotion to the Arsenal, outrageous amounts of emotion, and a poignant understanding of the times we live in -- that opens with the words: "Dear Osama".

It's also a debut.

Sure, it's a book about how terror attacks have changed the emotional landscape in which our children will grow up in almost as much as they have altered the physical one. But, more tellingly, it's a portrait of a mother drawn in broad strokes of fear, passion, humour, coarseness, and courage. She's an absolute triumph of characterisation, and to describe her in too much detail would be to ruin a ripping good read. Suffice to say, she manages to charm you one minute, and move you the next, and then, when you least expect it, pose an incredibly intelligent question about the very nature of our lives.

Chris Cleave shifts emotional gear effortlessly, and as the story -- and his heroine's life -- unravels, it reveals greater and greater depth. What could easily have remained a well-written but sentimental story of loss opens up into a staggeringly mature piece of writing about the way terror has permanently changed our world.

There is no raving and ranting about the pointlessness of terror, just an utterly subjective maternal point of view. No rush to judgment about Islam and jihad; in fact, an air of bewilderment at the extent to which anti-terrorism measures marginalise Muslims. No moralising or doom-saying, but some damaged emotion that sounds surprisingly like hope.

For a book about the reality of terror, it's surprisingly wrought with hope. After all, it's in the form of letters written to convince Osama bin Laden to change his ways. And, even though it's set in the near future (the Gunners have moved from Highbury to Ashburton Grove), Thierry Henry is still with the club.

Oh, you must read: Cloud Atlas.

There is ambition, and then there is this. Easily the most awe-inspiring experimental narrative that I've ever read. Entertaining. Enviably sophisticated. And so alarmingly well-written that the experimental pattern of the novel is never -- not for one page, one paragraph -- anything but background.

You can't help but notice the distinctive pattern, true. But to see it as something separate from the stories (story?) that form the foreground of the book is quite impossible.

Separate stories. Separate genres, even. Separate narrative voices. Separate protagonists, or 'overlapping soloists', if you will. And one stunning narrative that reaches across all of them to tell the fundamental story of good versus evil. It's a rollercoaster of a story that travels through art and envy and fear and loathing and curiosity and intelligence and the future of the world as we know it.

When I finished the book, I put it down beside me and just sat there, drinking in the feeling of such an immense piece of writing.

It's David Mitchell's third book, and I'm certain to look for the other two -- in a while. For now, I'm going to savour the aftertaste of Cloud Atlas.

Not since AS Byatt's Possession have I been so blown away. Not for many, many years have I been -- so much -- just another reader.