Pather Panchali taught me what slow reading is

Not much happens in the usual sense. A poor family in a Bengal village, a boy and his sister, an old aunt, the seasons going round. And then you realise you've been holding your breath for ten pages because the children are running through a field to see a train.

My grandmother read this to my mother, and my mother gave it to me. I don't think I understood what Durga meant to Apu until I had to leave home myself. If you only know the Satyajit Ray film, the book goes much further than the film does.