by Sylvia Nasar Faber and Faber Limited [1998]
At the age of thirty-one, John Nash, mathematical genius, suffered a devastating breakdown and was dianosed with schizophrenia. Yet after decades of leading a ghost-like existence, he was to re-emerge to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim. The inspiration for a major motion picture directed by Ron Howrad, Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a dream about the mystery of the human mind, a triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love.
PS: I simply do not have enough education to comment on this book on a great mathematician despite his troubling social life, disturbing mind set or spectacular prize winning streak. Do not miss it.
by Nicholas Sparks (Rs. 295\-) Time Warner Books [2006]
Landon Carter would never have dreamed of asking Jamie Sullivan out, but a twist of fate throws them together. In the months that follow, Landon breaks down Jamie's natural reserve and begins to get to know her and to fall in love. But then he discovers that Jamie has a reason for not letting people close-- a secret that will break his heart.
PS: I was very touched by the story line. On a sunday night, it is the best book to teach the children morals of bible. Just wondering if such kind of goody goody two shoes people exist in real world? Hard to believe. Its a good book.
by Amal Chatterjee (Rs. 200\-) Penguin Books [1998]
In the vast city of Calcutta, four very different lives collide: Meena, a pretty middle-class girl, her head full of books and marriage; Putul, idle, amiable scion of the moneyed upper classes, too lazy to notice anything much; John, a young Scotsman in search of his family's Indian 'roots'; and Choto, the slum-dwelling son of a humble servant, making an increasingly perilious job of staying alive.
In a place where poverty and extravagance co-exist, these four young people lead parallel lives, inextricably linked to one another by family, proximity and sheer chance, but for the most part oblivious to the complex web of fate that ties their destinies together. It takes the events of one season to bring them together with catastrophic consequences.
PS: You will get a contemporary scenerio of Calcutta from this novel. Other than that do not expect much. Story line is really weak.
by Sagarika Ghose (Rs. 295\-) A Harper Collins India Original [2006]
When Mia, acutely depressed by the suicide of her father meets karna, a young Indian guru who seems to have walked straight out if her father's painting of the Kumbh Mela, she feels compelled to follow him all the way from London to India. And if marrying Vik, the suave corporate, will help her reach him, then so be it... In India, Mia hears of Indi, Vik's accomplished, inordinately attractive mother who cannot cease raging against the limits imposed on her, by her blindness, her beauty, and her clinging son. To make sense of Indi's anguished attempts to break free, and her own journey chasing a duplicitous love, Mia must travel to the Kumbh, to the heart of her father's painting, where life, she learns, allows another perspective... a stunningly beautiful account of life's distorted perceptions: of reason that blinds, of hate that liberates and of love that strangles.
PS: Good plot, but average writing. Indi's character is spectacular. You will feel sorry for her woes, become proud with her achievements and sometimes you will get completely blank for what to say with her maverick doings. Confused Mia is doing justice to her role. Mithu is almost non-existent.
Vik is disturbed and presents the extreme version of new age children. All he wanted is some love, some attention and a big hearty hug from her parents. Indi knowingly abstained herself from her duty. Today's mothers don't have time for that.
Overall good for reading. The twist at kumbhamela looks interesting but fails to hold it for long. I did not liked the ending for Indi's stubbornness. She lost her lover, her son and still not a single repent!
by Rochelle Larkin (1.75 Pounds) A new English Library Original Production [1982]
Amanda Parish had much to be thankful for. She had good looks. Its not like that, she was obsessed but it would be silly not to acknowledge what men, other women and her own mirror told her. She had talent and a job. Her jewellery designs earned her good money and professional respect. She had good friends and a stylish social life. Marriage? No, not any longer but the divorce had been amicable. Alan still played his part in supporting and caring for their much loved son, Tommy. All in all, she was happy and successful. Until she met Joseph... who brought in to her life a chaotic whirlpool of anguish, hope, doubt, danger and love. An overwhelming love that took over her life and threatened to shake it apart...
PS: The narration is good at some places and dragging at some other places. I will say story line is neither weak nor strong. It is a so so book meant for spending your extra time.
by Danielle Steel (3.25 Pounds) Corgi Books [1999]
A grand mother's life in the eyes of her grand daughter: "In my eyes she had always been old, always been mine, always been Granny Dan. But in another time, another place, there had been dancing, people laughter, love...".
She was the cherished grandmother who sang songs in Russian, loved to roller-skate, and spoke little of her past. But when Granny Dan died, all that remained was a box wrapped in brown paper. Inside, an old pair of satin ballet shoes, a gold locket, and a stack of letters tied with ribbon. It was her legacy, a secret past, waiting to be discovered by the granddaughter who loved her but never really knew her. It was a story waiting to be told.
The year was 1902. A motherless young girl arrived at ballet school in St Petersburg. By the age of seventeen Danina Petroskova was forced to make a heartbreaking choice, as the world around her was about to change forever.
PS: In this novel a simple box, filled with mementoes from a grandmother, offers a long forgotten history of youth and beauty, love and dreams to be felt by her granddaughter. If you have some time to kill, you can read it as timepass. But do not expect anything extraordinary out of this book.
by Jhumpa Lahiri (Rs. 150\-) Harper Collins Publishers India [1999]
Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant stories tell the lives of Indians in exile, of people navigating between the strict traditions they've inferited and the baffling New World they must encounter every day. A young couple exchange confessions each night as they strrugle to cope with the loss of their baby and their failing marriage [A Temporary Matter]; Mr Pirzada, whose watch is always set to Dacca time, worries about his family back in Pakistan [When Mr. Pirzada came to Dine; an Interpreter guides and American family through the India of their ancestors and hears and astonishing revelation [Interpreter of Maladies]; how comaprison and greed of neighbors turned them inhuman towards an old tatttered lady [A real Durwan]; a young Midwestern woman os drawn into a tantalising affair with a married Bengali man [Sexy]; the eccentric, nervous Mrs Sen needs to learn to drive if she is to keep her job minding eleven-year-old Eliot after school [Mrs Sen's]; a new couple's trials to adjust with each other's whims [The Blessed House]; a poor middle aged lady's plight to get married [The Treatment of Bibi Haldar] and an old lady unknowingly becoming the bridge between a new awkward couple [The Third and Final Continent].
PS: It is a book of interesting short stories. Good for people who are impatient with big books and long stories. Can keep it with you while doing a journey...
by Chetan Bhagat (Rs 95/-) Rupa & Co [2005]
In Winter 2004, a writer met a young girl on a night train journey. To pass the time, she offered to tell a story. However, she had a condition: that he make it into his second book. He hesitated, but asked what the story was about.
The girl said the story was about six people working in a call center, set in one night. She said it was the night they got a phone call. The phone call was from God...
PS: Good book to read. May be you will feel a bit drama towards end, but enjoyable.
by Jeffrey Archer (2.99 Pounds) PAN Books [2004]
6 days, 13 hours and 37 minutes to go.....
Florentyna Kane is elected President- the first woman President of the United States.
At 7:30 one evening the FBI learns of a plot to kill her- the 1572nd threat that year. At 8:30 five people know all the details. By 9: 30 four of them are dead.
FBI agent Mark andrews alone knows when. He also discovers that a Senator is involved. He jas six days to learn where - and how. Six days to prevent the certain death of the President.
PS: A so so book, you can use to kill your time.
by Orhan Pamuk(2. 75 P ounds) Faber and Faber Limited, London[2004]
As the snow begins to fall, a journalist arrives in the remote city of Kars on the Turkish border. Kars is a troubled place-- there's suicide epidemic among its young women, Islamists are poised to win the local elections, and the head of the intelligence service is viciously effective. When the growing blizzard cuts off the outside world, the stage is set for a terrible and desperate act...
PS: A nobel prize winner's book indeed. I took almost a month to finish the book as after 20 pages, the drab scenerio of the story took me to sleep every time. I believe religion is meant to support human kind, to uplift fragile human faith, to make them believe in their precious lives and its better conduct. After reading the book, I just wanted to ask everybody, if the so called protocols in holy books allow the fragile human mind to more unstability, can we call them as religion?
by John Updike(3 pounds) Penguin Books [1994]
A varied collection of short stories. All of them indicated towards the unseen. All of them indicated towards the ether spreading beyond life.
PS: But frankly, I was unable to understand many of the short stories of this ollection. I felt bored while reading the book
by Paulo Coelho(Rs 195/-) Harper Collins Publisher [2005]
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of the readers forever. Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist is such a book. With over 20 million copies sold worldwide, and translated into 42 languages, The Alchemist has already achieved the status of a modern classic.
This is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shephard boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him. This story teaches us, as only few can, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path and above all following our dreams.
Paulo Coelho was born in Brazil and has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. The recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, Paulo Coelho is a storyteller with the power to inspire nations and to change people's lives.
PS: It is a good book. I enjoyed reading it.
by Amitav Ghosh (Rs 190/-) Ravi Dayal Publisher, Delhi [1996]
Antar, a computer-bound Egyptian clerk in New York, accidentally unearths the abandoned ID card of an old collegue, L. Murugan. Antar remembers him as the man who once described himself as the world authority on Ronald Ross, the Nobel prize-winning scientist who solved the 'malaria puzzle' in Calcutta in 1898. He finds that L. Murugan disappeared in 1995 on an obscure mission to Calcutta to prove a malaria theory of his own.
As Antar begins to unravel the puzzle before him, the novel traces the adventures of the enigmatic L. Murugan and the strange truth of what took place, years before in the tropical laboratory of Ronald Ross. They are events which haunt and twist the fate of characters from the past, present and futures and come to reveal the true nature of the 'Calcutta Chromosome'.
PS: God save me. This is the first time I read a book twice and failed to understand the story! But read the reviews online. They are saying it is extraordinary, wonderful and blah blah... Read and judge yourself.
by By Erich Segal (2.53 Pounds) Bantam Books
Its is the moving saga of five extraordinary members of the Harvard class of 1958 and the women with whom their lives are intertwined. Their explosive story begins in a time of innocence and spans a turbulent quarter century, culminating in their dramatic twenty-fifth reunion at which they confront their classmates- and the balance sheet of their own lives. always at the center; amid the passion, laughter, and glory, stands Harvard- the symbol of who they are and who they will be. They were a generation who made the rules-then broke them-whose glittering successes, heartfelt tragedies, and unbridled ambitions would stun the world.
PS: This is a book, that brought back my student memories, my friends, my fears, my successses and failures; and most importantly my dreams. I remembered those insignificant and mundame moments of my life that I spent laboriously to reach where I am today. Read this. You will feel good.
by Mitra Phukan (Rs 295/-) Penguin Books, India [2005]
Rukmini is married to the District Collector of a small town in Assam and teaches English Literature in the local college. On the surface her life seems settled and safe, living in the big beautiful bunglow on the hill above the cremation ground, seemingly untouched by the toil and sufferings of the common folk below. Yet each time ther is an 'incident' in the district, the fear and uncertainty that grips the town is reflected in her own life. The violent insurgency that grips Assam runs like a dark river through the novel and forms its backdrop. The ending is horrifying and there can be no other 'end' to such a tale, where the personal lives are inseparably entangled with politics.
PS: The novel justifies with the thoughts of an educated self-conscious woman. I discovered many lines in this novel that are parts of my life and my thinking. The questions I ask myself, the doubts I have regarding my life and the ambitions I possess for myself are all here and I am sure many of you will surely align with some parts of this novel. The ending is really horrible. Nothing more bad can happen to a woman when she silently sheds tear for her unborn child, who will not get a chance to meet either of his fathers. The Book has Assamese flavour in it. Only an Assamese writer can write Radhasura and Krishnasura instead of Radhachura and Krishnachura. But enjoyed the pronounciations :).
by Mitch Albom ($19.95) The Warner Books, India [2003]
All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know, it at the time...
On his eighty-third birthday, Eddie, a lonely war veteran, dies in a tragic accident trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his- and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path for ever.
PS: Well... if you need something to put you in sleep then read this book before going to bed..., One chapter and definitely you feel sleepy with high fundmental facts of the author :).
by Amitabha Ghosh (Rs 425/-) Ravi Dayal Publisher, India [2000]
Outside the royal palace at mandalay, a small Indian boy called Rajkumar is helping to run a dhaba. He hears the ominous boom of distant guns; he picks up rumours of a conquering British force; he watches panic furrow the faces of customers, and sooner than anyone can comprehend, the ancient capital of Burma is in chaos.
The British conquest of Burma unfolds before rajkumar's petrified eyes. The king, the queen, and their retinue are exiled to ratnagiri in western India. With them goes an attendant girl, Dolly, whose face haunts Rajkumar for years. Extricating himself from the royal wreckage, rajkumar, a stateless orphan, moves towards a waiting oppertunity- the teak forests of upper Burma. Here, with the help of an itinerant merchant from Malacca, he makes his fortune. But the vision of Dolly will not let go. And so, after twenty years, he journeys to seek her out.
Through the intertwining stories of Dolly and Rajkumar, the history of the twentieth century is told in this book across three generations, spread over three interlinked parts of the British Empire: Burma, with its conflicting undercurrents of discontent; Malaya, with its vast rubber plantations; and India, amid growing opposition to British rule. With World War II and the terrifying Japanese juggernaut, Rajkumar's universe is once again set adrift. In an ocean of refugees fleeing devastation, his family makes a treacherous 1000-mile trek to India. The door to Burma closes behind them, and the glittering lights of an extraordinary civilization are finally extinguished.
PS: Enjoyed the book, but felt depressed after reading it. So much discontent, devastation is gruesome in reading only. Just imagine about the people who beared the burnt during these disturbances... When will mankind understand the atrocities of wars?
by P. D. James (6.99 Pound) Penguin Books [2005]
Combe Island off the Cornish coast offers rest and seclusion to over-stressed professionals who have paid the price of getting to the top. But when one of these distinguished visitors is found hanging from the top of the island's lighthouse, is it murder? is it suicide?
Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are immediately called in: the investigation must be swift, discreet, decisive. However, Dalgliesh has his work cut out, since both residents and visitors to Combe Island guard their privacy well - even when murder makes them a suspect. Does the islanders' reticence betray a knowledge of the crime? Another death and Dalgliesh's own life in danger throws the entire investigation into jeopardy...
PS: I sympathise with the author, But it is a boring book. Total time waste.
by Lavanya Sankaran (Rs 295/-) Headline Book Publishing, London [2005]
In India, as everywhere else, the young want to break with tradition and the old struggle to keep it. Welcome to a world where software billionaires, beggars, and the legacy of the Raj combine and collide, and the clash between old-fashioned parents and their Americanized young is particularly fraught.
The Read Carpet is an extraordinary enjoyable, witty and humane collection of stories as rich and absorbing as any novel. From traditional Indian mothers urging their Westernized children towards marriage, caste-bound chauffeurs and Anglo-Indian convent teachers, to sexual permissiveness, first-class flights, sushi, cocktails and rebellion, Lavanya Sankaran subverts familiar themes of family, love and cultural identity in an outstanding debut.
PS: I enjoyed the stories. They are hip in the sense being penned by someone looking creative writing in a very different angle. I give kudos to her free spirit. Liked the un-orthodox endings of the stories very much. All together a new book and new experience for me.
by Rabindranath Tagore, Edited by Somnath Mitra, Visva Bharati [1959]
The translations of the stories in the present collection have not been published in any book before. they form the first of several volumes of translations into English of Rabindranath Tagore's works which the Visva-Bharati intends to bring out in connection with the Tagore Centenary celebrations to take place in 1961.
Of the stories translated here 'Mahamaya', 'Conclusion', 'trespass', 'cloud and Sun', 'The Judge' and 'The Runaway' were published between 1893 and 1895; 'False Hopes' in 1898; 'The Hidden Treasure' in 1907; and 'The tolen Treasure' in 1933. 'The Stolen Treasure', the cocluding story in the final volume of Galpaguchchha, is included here to serve as a specimen of Rabindranath's last writings in this form.
PS: I thought it best to explain all the short stories in one sentence. The Runaway [Tara, Moti babu, Annapurna and Charu], Who can bind the skywards flying soul of Tara? The Hidden Treasure [Mrityunjaya and Sannyasi], All life we run after material pleasures... ignoring the inner happieness. Cloud and Sun [Bhusan and Giribala], A child's imagination is pure like fountain water and a man's heart is like a plain paper. False Hopes [Kesharlal and the Nawab's daughter], Religion is a major blockage in our unity. The Judge [Mohitmohan and Kshiroda], Always before punishing someone put yourself in his/er shoes. Judging someone is very easy...do we ever judge ourselves? Mahamaya [Rajib and Mahamaya], Stange is always the paths of love. Trespass [Joykali and her nephews], The joyous slogan against animal slaughter in disguise. The Conclusion [Apurba and Mrinmayi], Child marriage ruins everything...please wait for the bud to bloom. The Stolen Treasure [The narrator, his wife Sunetra, daughter Aruna and Sailen], Astrology can't overpower your feelings of love. How can someone try to avoid the future by tampering with the present :)
Average book for reading. Portrays Tagore's thinking about old rural Bengal.
by Paulo Coelho (Rs 295/-) Harper Collins Publishers [2007]
How do we find the courage to be true to ourselves- even if we are unsure of who we are? This is the central question posed by Paulo Coelho's riveting new work, The Witch of Portbello. It is the story of Athena, a mysterious young womanborn in Romania, raised in Beirut and living in London. Her life is told by the many who knew her well- or hardly at all.
Like the Alchemist, The Witch of Portbello is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy and sacrifice.
PS: I can very well identify the young independent as well as restless soul of Athena. In fact we all are Athenas of varied situations at some point of our life. Long live the language of heart.
by Khuswant Singh (Rs. 70\-) Orient Longman [1956]
The novel has implications which reach far beyond the little village Mano Majra on the frontier between India and Pakistan, where its action takes place. It is the summer of 1947. The frontier has become a scene of rioting and bloodshed. But in the village, where Sikhs and Muslims have always lived peacefully together, partition does not yet mean much. Life is regulated by the trains which rattle across the nearby river bridge. tehn a local money-lender is murdered. Suspicion falls upon Juggut Singh the village gangster who, when not in jail, is carrying on a clandstine affair with a Muslim girl. A western educated Communist agent is also involved. A train comes over the bridge at an unusual time and the villagers discover thet it is full of dead Sikhs. Some days later the same thing happens again. The village becomes a battlefield of conflicting loyalties, and neither Magistrate nor police can stem the rising tide of violence. It is left to Juggut Singh to redeem himself by saving many Muslimlives in a stirring climax.
PS: We survive by food and love, not by hatred. It burns everything starting from minds to countries. A novel centralizing a train, village-life dependent on trains, morals and loyalties changing over a train with unlucky passengers and ends with the train going to Pakistan.
Sometimes people with high education and morals become dumb with fear. The character of Iqbal Singh portrays this phenomenon splendidly. Big talk, big ideals, still frozen in case of emergency. The illiterate Juggut Singh's bravery was heart touching. Blood bath always repulses me. Still I liked the book and its narration.
by Rabindranath Tagore (Translated by Krishna Kriplani) (Rupees Three and annas eight only) Visva Bharati [1945]
Two Sisters was first published in 1943 and is one of Tagore's last three novels. It is about the eternal conflict that arises when a man does not find a mother figure and a sweetheart in the same person. He needs the former and desires the latter. Man draws strength from the Mother in a woman and inspiration from the beloved in her. When the two do not meet in the same individual, his heart is torn asunder. The poignancy and the tender irony of its theme makes Two Sisters one of the finest Tagore novels.
PS: Got hold of the partially dilapitated book from our circulating library. Also first issuer of the book. Thought myself pure lucky.
Again the same age old saga of what men want from their women. Isn't it a bit sarcastic that they want all the qualities from one woman at a time...I mean to say when a woman gives birth to a child, then only she can behave as a mother properly...looking for qualities of a mother in one's young wife is ridiculous as well as if a woman is like that only... then asking for qualities of a sexy siren lover is also quite futile.
Anyway liked the narration. Infact I always like the natural spontaneous flow of homely affairs in Rabindrnath Tagore's writings. Worth reading.
by Jacqueline Susann (1.25 Pounds) Corgi Books [1979]
A woman almost happy with her life, counts days till her engagement and marriage. Mean while she goes to a place to recollect her life and childhood memories. Something happens to her there. She vanishes into thin air to again reappear after some months as a completely different woman with a heart full of love for another man belonging to another world. Will she succeed in reaching to her loved one of the other world? Will anybody on earth believe her? An extraordinary fight of an ordinary woman is YARGO.
PS: Read without any prior expectations. You will enjoy the book.