C'est la vie!!

Have you ever wondered why the company yahoo has always been denoted as 'yahoo!' or y! (i.e. yahoo with the exclamation mark appended)
The reason is the word“Yahoo” had already been trademarked for barbecue sauce by EBSCO Industries and that’s why Jerry & Filo(founders of yahoo) had to put an exclamation to get a unique trademark for themselves..

Hey
I will be joining the Orbis Terrarum Challenge for 2009
Check out http://orbisterrarumchallenge.blogspot.com/2009/01/rules-and-regulations.html
for the rules and regulations

The book list I would make for this would be :
1. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (India)
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseni (Afghanistan)
3. Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)
4. The Complete Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi (Iran)
5. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts (Australia)
6. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse (Germany)
7. Marley and Me - John grogan (United states)
Will update the list with the remaining books once I decide them

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse could deceive you into thinking that it is a light book ...but the light bit ends merely in its size. You would wonder how a book of just 130 pages could carry so much thoughts, so many learnings and make you reflect on your own life.
After reading Shantaram which spreads over 1000 pages, this book was both inviting as well as thought provoking.
The story is about the spiritual journey of a young lad Siddhartha and how he attains nirvana at the end. Written in very simple language , the contents are powerful . It deals with the soul searching process of two friends Govinda and Siddhartha. Govinda opts to serve Gautama Buddha in order to attain inner peace while Siddhartha moves on. The rest of the story is about how everything in human life is just an illusion and is constantly changing. Towards the end Siddhartha meets Govinda and tells him that 'Wisdom cant be communicated though knowledge can'. Siddhartha's spiritual quest ends when he realised that innder peace is attained not by just following teachings/preachings of great souls but by the the experiences and challenges that life throws at you.
Being a not so philosphical person and being a not so great fan of Paulo Coelho I wondered how I liked this particular book . However it really was an interesting read. I would definitely recommend this soul searching book to anyone who likes these philosphical reads