I picked up Pat Barker's The Ghost Road, winner of the 1995 Booker Prize, short after my last semester started. It was a rougher start than that of the semester because a clear chasm sits between the first two chapters. I later realized it's simply a result of multiple story lines and being the third volume of a trilogy set in the end of the First World War.

The semester turned out to be as rough as the book. I couldn't keep the reading going. It was only after the semester ended that I started reading the book once again during the 24-hour trip back to Taiwan. Little did I know that sitting at my economy-class seat would propel me to finish the book. I was busy finishing the story while my plane, a Boeing 747-400, took off from Kansai International Airport--the intensity of the ending was such a perfect match to the intensity of an airplane talking off.

Read reviews:

• Shell Shock by CLAUDIA ROTH PIERPONT from The New Your Times
• The pity of war from Guardian Unlimited Books
• A Book A Week by Becky