Hima's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 26 Dec 2021 12:37:34 -0800 60 Hima's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Sadness Is a White Bird 35297191
The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where 鈥� four days after his nineteenth birthday 鈥� Jonathan stares up at the fluorescent lights of his cell, and recalls the series of events that led him there.

Two years earlier: Moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state, which his grandfather 鈥� a Salonican Jew whose community was wiped out by the Nazis 鈥� helped establish. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper and more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laith 鈥� the twin daughter and son of his mother鈥檚 friend.

From that winter morning on, the three become inseparable: wandering the streets on weekends, piling onto buses toward new discoveries, laughing uncontrollably. They share joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, intimate secrets, family histories, resentments, and dreams. But with his draft date rapidly approaching, Jonathan wrestles with the question of what it means to be proud of your heritage and loyal to your people, while also feeling love for those outside of your own tribal family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever.

Powerful, important, and timely, Sadness Is a White Bird explores one man鈥檚 attempts to find a place for himself, discovering in the process a beautiful, against-the-odds love that flickers like a candle in the darkness of a never-ending conflict.]]>
275 Moriel Rothman-Zecher 1501176269 Hima 0 to-read 4.08 2018 Sadness Is a White Bird
author: Moriel Rothman-Zecher
name: Hima
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Why Fish Don鈥檛 Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life]]> 50887097 A wondrous debut from an extraordinary new voice in nonfiction, Why Fish Don鈥檛 Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and鈥攑ossibly鈥攅ven murder.

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake鈥攚hich sent more than a thousand of his discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life鈥檚 work was shattered.

Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world.

When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool鈥�a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.

Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don鈥檛 Exist reads like a fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.]]>
225 Lulu Miller Hima 0 to-read 4.15 2020 Why Fish Don鈥檛 Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
author: Lulu Miller
name: Hima
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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Greenwood 39328584
It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.

It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.

It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades.

And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.

A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood鈥攁nd the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.]]>
528 Michael Christie 1984822004 Hima 0 to-read 4.34 2019 Greenwood
author: Michael Christie
name: Hima
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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The Ministry for the Future 50998056
From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined.

Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come.

Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us鈥攁nd in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.

It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written.]]>
563 Kim Stanley Robinson 0316300136 Hima 0 to-read 3.84 2020 The Ministry for the Future
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Hima
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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Migrations 42121525
Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds.]]>
256 Charlotte McConaghy 125020402X Hima 0 to-read 4.11 2020 Migrations
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Hima
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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The Song of Achilles 13623848 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]>
408 Madeline Miller Hima 0 to-read 4.30 2011 The Song of Achilles
author: Madeline Miller
name: Hima
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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Jonny Appleseed 37514017
"You're gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine" is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling novel.

Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the "rez," and his former life, to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The next seven days are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother). Jonny's world is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages--and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life.

Jonny Appleseed is a unique, shattering vision of Indigenous life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams.]]>
224 Joshua Whitehead Hima 0 to-read 3.94 2018 Jonny Appleseed
author: Joshua Whitehead
name: Hima
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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Butter Honey Pig Bread 51168133 Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision.

Kambirinachi and her two daughters become estranged from one another because of a trauma that Kehinde experiences in childhood, which leads her to move away and cut off all contact. She ultimately finds her path as an artist and seeks to raise a family of her own, despite her fear that she won't be a good mother. Meanwhile, Taiye is plagued by guilt for what her sister suffered and also runs away, attempting to fill the void of that lost relationship with casual flings with women. She eventually discovers a way out of her stifling loneliness through a passion for food and cooking.

But now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.

For readers of African diasporic authors such as Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.]]>
317 Francesca Ekwuyasi 1551528231 Hima 0 4.31 2020 Butter Honey Pig Bread
author: Francesca Ekwuyasi
name: Hima
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The City We Became (Great Cities, #1)]]> 42074525
Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.]]>
437 N.K. Jemisin Hima 0 to-read 3.83 2020 The City We Became (Great Cities, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Hima
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/10/07
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<![CDATA[Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion]]> 43126457 Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine鈥檚 journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.]]> 303 Jia Tolentino 0525510540 Hima 0 to-read 4.04 2019 Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
author: Jia Tolentino
name: Hima
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/01/28
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The Witches Are Coming 38362811 In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

THIS IS A WITCH HUNT.
WE鈥橰E WITCHES,
AND WE鈥橰E HUNTING YOU.

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You鈥檝e got one.

In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.

West writes, 鈥淲e were just a hair鈥檚 breadth from electing America鈥檚 first female president to succeed America鈥檚 first black president. We weren鈥檛 done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form鈥攍ike the Balrog鈥檚 whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, 鈥業f I can鈥檛 have you, no one can鈥欌攚hite American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.鈥�

We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump鈥檚 America鈥攚ithout examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact鈥攃hecking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.]]>
260 Lindy West 0316449881 Hima 0 to-read 4.10 2019 The Witches Are Coming
author: Lindy West
name: Hima
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
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<![CDATA[Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story]]> 13167173 Twenty contemporary authors introduce twenty sterling examples of the short story from the pages of The Paris Review.聽What does it take to write a great short story? In Object Lessons, twenty contemporary masters of the genre answer that question, sharing favorite stories from the pages of The Paris Review. Over the course of the last half century, the Review has launched hundreds of careers while publishing some of the most inventive and best-loved stories of our time. This anthology---the first of its kind---is more than a treasury: it is an indispensable resource for writers, students, and anyone else who wants to understand fiction from a writer鈥檚 point of view.聽"Some chose classics. Some chose stories that were new even to us. Our hope is that this collection will be useful to young writers, and to others interested in literary technique. Most of all, it is intended for readers who are not (or are no longer) in the habit of reading short stories. We hope these object lessons will remind them how varied the form can be, how vital it remains, and how much pleasure it can give."---from the Editors鈥� Note聽WITH SELECTIONS BYDaniel Alarc贸n 路 Donald Barthelme 路 Ann Beattie 路 David Bezmozgis 路 Jorge Luis Borges 路 Jane Bowles 路 Ethan Canin 路 Raymond Carver 路 Evan S. Connell 路 Bernard Cooper 路 Guy Davenport 路 Lydia Davis 路 Dave Eggers 路 Jeffrey Eugenides 路 Mary Gaitskill 路 Thomas Glynn 路 Aleksandar Hemon 路 Amy Hempel 路 Mary-Beth Hughes 路 Denis Johnson 路 Jonathan Lethem 路 Sam Lipsyte 路 Ben Marcus 路 David Means 路 Leonard Michaels 路 Steven Millhauser 路 Lorrie Moore 路 Craig Nova 路 Daniel Orozco 路 Mary Robison 路 Norman Rush 路 James Salter 路 Mona Simpson 路 Ali Smith 路 Wells Tower 路 Dallas Wiebe 路 Joy Williams]]> 368 Lorin Stein 1250005981 Hima 0 to-read 3.74 2012 Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story
author: Lorin Stein
name: Hima
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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The Stationery Shop 42201995
Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer鈥攈andsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi鈥檚 poetry鈥攁nd she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts鈥攁 result of the coup d鈥檈tat that forever changes their country鈥檚 future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she moves on鈥攖o college in California, to another man, to a life in New England鈥攗ntil, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?

A poignant, heartfelt new novel by the award-nominated author of Together Tea鈥攅xtolled by the Wall Street Journal as a 鈥渕oving tale of lost love鈥� and by Shelf Awareness as 鈥渁 powerful, heartbreaking story鈥濃攅xplores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.]]>
312 Marjan Kamali 1982107480 Hima 0 4.22 2019 The Stationery Shop
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Hima
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Women's Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home]]> 40847163 From National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack, a stunning memoir of raising her children abroad with the help of Chinese and Indian women who are also working mothers

When Megan Stack was living in Beijing, she left her prestigious job as a foreign correspondent to have her first child and work from home writing a book. She quickly realized that caring for a baby and keeping up with the housework while her husband went to the office each day was consuming the time she needed to write. This dilemma was resolved in the manner of many upper-class families and large corporations: she availed herself of cheap Chinese labor. The housekeeper Stack hired was a migrant from the countryside, a mother who had left her daughter in a precarious situation to earn desperately needed cash in the capital. As Stack's family grew and her husband's job took them to Delhi, a series of Chinese and Indian women cooked, cleaned, and babysat in her home. Stack grew increasingly aware of the brutal realities of their lives: domestic abuse, alcoholism, unplanned pregnancies. Hiring poor women had given her the ability to work while raising her children, but what ethical compromise had she made?

Determined to confront the truth, Stack traveled to her employees' homes, met their parents and children, and turned a journalistic eye on the tradeoffs they'd been forced to make as working mothers seeking upward mobility--and on the cost to the children who were left behind.

Women's Work is an unforgettable story of four women as well as an electrifying meditation on the evasions of marriage, motherhood, feminism, and privilege.]]>
352 Megan K. Stack 0385542097 Hima 0 currently-reading 3.76 2019 Women's Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home
author: Megan K. Stack
name: Hima
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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Night 1617 Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.]]> 120 Elie Wiesel 0374500010 Hima 0 4.38 1956 Night
author: Elie Wiesel
name: Hima
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world鈥檚 truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Hima 0 to-read 4.12 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
name: Hima
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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Animal Farm 7613
The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.

One night, all the animals at Mr. Jones' Manor Farm assemble in a barn to hear old Major, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. Old Major dies soon after the meeting, but the animals 鈥� inspired by his philosophy of Animalism 鈥� plot a rebellion against Jones.

Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, prove themselves important figures and planners of this dangerous enterprise. When Jones forgets to feed the animals, the revolution occurs, and Jones and his men are chased off the farm. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall...]]>
129 George Orwell Hima 0 3.90 1945 Animal Farm
author: George Orwell
name: Hima
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1945
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Memoirs of a Geisha 929
In "Memoirs of a Geisha," we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.]]>
503 Arthur Golden 1400096898 Hima 0 4.31 1997 Memoirs of a Geisha
author: Arthur Golden
name: Hima
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection]]> 23164946 From the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller The Untethered Soul comes this thought-provoking, inspirational memoir on the magic that happens when you just let go

Spirituality is meant to bring about harmony and peace. But the diversity of our philosophies, beliefs, concepts, and views about the soul often leads to confusion. To reconcile the noise that clouds spirituality, Michael Singer combines accounts of his own life journey to enlightenment鈥攆rom his years as a hippie-loner to his success as a computer program engineer to his work in spiritual and humanitarian efforts鈥攚ith lessons on how to put aside conflicting beliefs, let go of worries, and transform misdirected desires. Singer provides a road map to a new way of living not in the moment, but to exist in a state of perpetual happiness.]]>
252 Michael A. Singer 080414110X Hima 0 4.00 2015 The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection
author: Michael A. Singer
name: Hima
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
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<![CDATA[The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself]]> 1963638 The Untethered Soul offers simple yet profound answers to these questions.

Whether this is your first exploration of inner space, or you鈥檝e devoted your life to the inward journey, this book will transform your relationship with yourself and the world around you. You鈥檒l discover what you can do to put an end to the habitual thoughts and emotions that limit your consciousness. By tapping into traditions of meditation and mindfulness, author and spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and let go of painful thoughts and memories that keep us from achieving happiness and self-realization.

Copublished with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) The Untethered Soul begins by walking you through your relationship with your thoughts and emotions, helping you uncover the source and fluctuations of your inner energy. It then delves into what you can do to free yourself from the habitual thoughts, emotions, and energy patterns that limit your consciousness. Finally, with perfect clarity, this book opens the door to a life lived in the freedom of your innermost being.]]>
183 Michael A. Singer Hima 0 4.19 2007 The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
author: Michael A. Singer
name: Hima
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2007
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<![CDATA[Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets]]> 1491906 Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entr茅e into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment.

When Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. A first-year grad student, he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of the next decade inside the projects under JT's protection, documenting what he saw there.

Over the next seven years, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack selling business, conducted PR within their community, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure.

Gang Leader for a Day is an inside view into the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone. It is also the story of a complicated friendship between two young and ambitious men, a universe apart.]]>
302 Sudhir Venkatesh 1594201501 Hima 0 4.05 2008 Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
author: Sudhir Venkatesh
name: Hima
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body 26074156 New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

鈥淚 ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.鈥�

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as 鈥渨ildly undisciplined,鈥� Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her past鈥攊ncluding the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life鈥攁nd brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved鈥攊n a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.]]>
306 Roxane Gay 0062362593 Hima 0 4.17 2017 Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
author: Roxane Gay
name: Hima
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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Bossypants 9418327
She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon鈥攆rom the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.]]>
283 Tina Fey Hima 0 3.97 2011 Bossypants
author: Tina Fey
name: Hima
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]>
352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Hima 0 4.46 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Hima
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive]]> 39218350
Maid explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it鈥檚 like to be in service to them. 鈥淚鈥檇 become a nameless ghost,鈥� Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients鈥� lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own path.

Her writing as a journalist gives voice to the "servant" worker, and those pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line. Maid is Stephanie鈥檚 story, but it鈥檚 not her alone..

An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780316505116 can be found here.]]>
289 Stephanie Land Hima 0 to-read 3.81 2019 Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive
author: Stephanie Land
name: Hima
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow]]> 31138556 Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity鈥檚 future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.

Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style鈥攖horough, yet riveting鈥攆amine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.

What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus聽explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century鈥攆rom overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is聽Homo Deus.

With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.

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450 Yuval Noah Harari Hima 0 4.19 2015 Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Hima
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
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<![CDATA[The Ministry of Utmost Happiness]]> 32388712
Anjum, who used to be Aftab, unrolls a threadbare carpet in a city graveyard that she calls home. A baby appears quite suddenly on a pavement, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. The enigmatic S. Tilottama is as much of a presence as she is an absence in the lives of the three men who love her.]]>
445 Arundhati Roy 067008963X Hima 0 currently-reading 3.54 2017 The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Hima
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a na茂ve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]>
208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Hima 0 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Hima
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
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<![CDATA[Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives]]> 34452 224 Brian L. Weiss 0446520594 Hima 0 to-read 4.15 1988 Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
author: Brian L. Weiss
name: Hima
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/12/06
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The 48 Laws of Power 1303 Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control 鈥� from the author of The Laws of Human Nature.

In the book that People magazine proclaimed 鈥渂eguiling鈥� and 鈥渇ascinating,鈥� Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.

Some laws teach the need for prudence (鈥淟aw 1: Never Outshine the Master鈥�), others teach the value of confidence (鈥淟aw 28: Enter Action with Boldness鈥�), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (鈥淟aw 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally鈥�). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.]]>
452 Robert Greene 0140280197 Hima 0 to-read 4.11 1998 The 48 Laws of Power
author: Robert Greene
name: Hima
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir]]> 34964998
Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patrisse Khan-Cullors experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For Patrisse, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin鈥檚 killer went free, Patrisse鈥檚 outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.

Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin.

Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering in equality and a movement fueled by her strength and love to tell the country鈥攁nd the world鈥攖hat Black Lives Matter.

When They Call You a Terrorist is Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele鈥檚 reflection on humanity. It is an empowering account of survival, strength and resilience and a call to action to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.]]>
257 Patrisse Khan-Cullors 1250171083 Hima 0 4.49 2018 When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
author: Patrisse Khan-Cullors
name: Hima
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2018
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Small Days and Nights 43720329 Shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize 2020'An astonishing novel that is beautifully written but underpinned by a quiet simmering anger about injustice and unrealistic expectations of a family 鈥� and of life in contemporary India' Peter Frankopan'A shattering study of disaffection and belonging 鈥� This is a concise novel of staggering depth 鈥isturbing, deep and utterly extraordinary' Bidisha, ObserverAn Irish Times Book of the Year 2019Escaping her failing marriage, Grace has returned to Pondicherry to cremate her mother. Once there, she finds herself heir to an unexpected inheritance. First, there is the strange pink house, blue-shuttered, out on a spit of the wild beach, haunted by the rattle of fishermen in their catamarans. And then there is the sister she never knew she Lucia, who has spent her life in a residential facility.Soon Grace sets up a new and precarious life in this lush, melancholy wilderness, with Lucia, the village housekeeper Mallika, the drily witty Auntie Kavitha and an ever-multiplying litter of puppies. Here in Paramankeni, with its vacant bus stops colonised by flying foxes, its temples and step-wells shielded by canopies of teak and tamarind, where every dusk the fishermen line the beach smoking and mending their nets, Grace feels that she has come to the very end of the world. But Grace's attempts to play house prove first a struggle, then a strain, as she discovers the chaos, tenderness, fury and bewilderment of life with Lucia. Luminous, funny, surprising and heartbreaking, Small Days and Nights is the story of a woman caught in a moment of transformation, and the sacrifices we make to forge lives that have meaning.]]> 258 Tishani Doshi 1526603772 Hima 0 to-read 3.67 2019 Small Days and Nights
author: Tishani Doshi
name: Hima
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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1984 40961427 Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life鈥攖he ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language鈥攁nd his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.]]> 298 George Orwell Hima 0 4.24 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Hima
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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Selected Short Stories 166356 338 Rabindranath Tagore 0195658299 Hima 0 to-read, india-fiction 4.17 1917 Selected Short Stories
author: Rabindranath Tagore
name: Hima
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1917
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/04/24
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<![CDATA[Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility]]> 189989 Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life, the games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefied -- games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are more mysterious -- and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom.
In this elegant and compelling work, James Carse explores what these games mean, and what they can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power, of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery, opening the door to a world of infinite delight and possibility.
"An extraordinary little book . . . a wise and intimate companion, an elegant reminder of the real."
-- Brain/Mind Bulletin]]>
180 James P. Carse 0345341848 Hima 0 to-read 3.72 1986 Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
author: James P. Carse
name: Hima
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/09/08
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Half of a Yellow Sun 7014614 --penguinrandomhouse.com]]> 459 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Hima 0 4.17 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Hima
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/12/14
shelves: to-read, nigeria-historical-fiction
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How We Decide 3860977
Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we 鈥渂link鈥� and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind鈥檚 black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they鈥檙e discovering that this is not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason鈥攁nd the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, it鈥檚 best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when we鈥檙e picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think.

Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences of a wide range of 鈥渄eciders鈥濃攆rom airplane pilots and hedge fund investors to serial killers and poker players.

Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions that are of interest to just about anyone, from CEOs to firefighters: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?]]>
259 Jonah Lehrer 0618620117 Hima 0 to-read, psychology 3.84 2009 How We Decide
author: Jonah Lehrer
name: Hima
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom]]> 4959061
Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers. this book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn鈥攔evealing the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences.

In this breakthrough book, Willingham has distilled his knowledge of cognitive science into a set of nine principles that are easy to understand and have clear applications for the classroom. Some of examples of his surprising findings are:

鈥淟earning styles鈥� don't exist The processes by which different children think and learn are more similar than different.

Intelligence is malleable Intelligence contributes to school performance and children do differ, but intelligence can be increased through sustained hard work.

You cannot develop 鈥渢hinking skills鈥� in the absence of facts We encourage students to think critically, not just memorize facts. However thinking skills depend on factual knowledge for their operation.

Why Don't Students Like School is a basic primer for every teacher who wants to know how their brains and their students鈥� brains work and how that knowledge can help them hone their teaching skills.]]>
180 Daniel T. Willingham 0470279303 Hima 0 to-read, education 4.02 2009 Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom
author: Daniel T. Willingham
name: Hima
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education]]> 6954133 The Death and Life of the Great American School System is a radical change of heart from one of America鈥檚 best-known education experts.

Diane Ravitch鈥攆ormer assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum鈥攅xamines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today鈥檚 most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. Using examples from major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and San Diego, Ravitch makes the case that public education today is in peril.

Ravitch includes clear prescriptions for improving America鈥檚 schools:
*Leave decisions about schools to educators, not politicians or businessmen
*Devise a truly national curriculum that sets out what children in every grade should be learning
*Expect charter schools to educate the kids who need help the most, not to compete with public schools
*Pay teachers a fair wage for their work, not 鈥渕erit pay鈥� based on deeply flawed and unreliable test scores
*Encourage family involvement in education from an early age
The Death and Life of the Great American School System is more than just an analysis of the state of play of the American education system. It is a must-read for any stakeholder in the future of American schooling.]]>
283 Diane Ravitch 0465014917 Hima 0 to-read, education 4.05 2010 The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
author: Diane Ravitch
name: Hima
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
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<![CDATA[The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness]]> 125777 Descartes' Error, Damasio revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason. Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life. A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic.]]> 386 Ant贸nio Dam谩sio 0156010755 Hima 0 to-read, psychology 4.01 1999 The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness
author: Ant贸nio Dam谩sio
name: Hima
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1999
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<![CDATA[Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human]]> 254499
The interviewees, ranging from major philosophers to renowned scientists, talk candidly with Blackmore about some of the key philosophical issues confronting us in a series of conversations that are revealing, insightful, and stimulating.

They ruminate on the nature of consciousness (is it something apart from the brain?) and discuss if it is even possible to understand the human mind. Some of these thinkers say no, but most believe that we will pierce the mystery surrounding consciousness, and that neuroscience will provide the key. Blackmore goes beyond the issue of consciousness to ask other intriguing questions: Is there free will? (A question which yields many conflicted replies, with most saying yes and no.) If not, how does this effect the way you live your life; and more broadly, how has your work changed the way you live?

Paired with an introduction and extensive glossary that provide helpful background information, these provocative conversations illuminate how some of the greatest minds tackle some of the most difficult questions about human nature.]]>
274 Susan Blackmore 0195179595 Hima 0 to-read, psychology 4.03 2005 Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human
author: Susan Blackmore
name: Hima
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change]]> 10258753 James J. Duderstadt, President Emeritus, University of Michigan 鈥淭homas and Brown are the John Dewey of the digital age.鈥� Cathy Davidson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke University 鈥� A New Culture of Learning may provide for the digital media and learning movement what Thomas Paine鈥檚 Common Sense did for the colonists during the American Revolution鈥� a straightforward, direct explanation of what we are fighting for and what we are fighting against.鈥� Henry Jenkins, Provost鈥檚 Professor, USC 鈥� A New Culture of Learning is at once persuasive and optimistic 鈥� a combination that is all too rare, but that flows directly from its authors鈥� insights about learning in the digital age. Pearls of wisdom leap from almost every page.鈥� Paul Courant, Dean of Libraries, University of Michigan 鈥淏rilliant. Insightful. Revolutionary.鈥� Marcia Conner, author of The New Social Learning 鈥淒ouglas Thomas and John Seely Brown portray the new world of learning gracefully, vividly, and convincingly.鈥� Howard Gardner, Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education 鈥淭homas and Brown make it clear that education is too often a mechanistic, solo activity delivered to the young. It doesn鈥檛 have to be that way鈥攍earning can be a messy, social, playful, embedded, constant activity. We would do well to listen to their message.鈥� Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus 鈥淎nyone who fears, as I do, that today鈥檚 public schools are dangerously close to being irrelevant must read this book. The authors provide a road map鈥攁nd a lifeline鈥攕howing how schools can prosper under the most difficult conditions. It is a welcome departure from all the school bashing.鈥� John Merrow, Education Correspondent, PBS NewsHour 鈥淎merican education is at a crossroads. By illuminating how play helps to transform both information networks and experimentation, and how collective inquiry unleashes the power of imagination, A New Culture of Learning provides an irresistible path to the future.鈥� Joel Myerson, Director, Forum for the Future of Higher Education]]> 137 Douglas Thomas 1456458884 Hima 0 to-read, education 3.75 2011 A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change
author: Douglas Thomas
name: Hima
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[How Will You Measure Your Life?]]> 13425570
The speech was memorable not only because it was deeply revealing but also because it came at a time of intense personal reflection: Christensen had just overcome the same type of cancer that had taken his father's life. As Christensen struggled with the disease, the question "How do you measure your life?" became more urgent and poignant, and he began to share his insights more widely with family, friends, and students.

In this groundbreaking book, Christensen puts forth a series of questions: How can I be sure that I'll find satisfaction in my career? How can I be sure that my personal relationships become enduring sources of happiness? How can I avoid compromising my integrity鈥攁nd stay out of jail? Using lessons from some of the world's greatest businesses, he provides incredible insights into these challenging questions.

How Will You Measure Your Life? is full of inspiration and wisdom, and will help students, midcareer professionals, and parents alike forge their own paths to fulfillment.]]>
240 Clayton M. Christensen 0062102427 Hima 0 to-read, psychology 4.03 2012 How Will You Measure Your Life?
author: Clayton M. Christensen
name: Hima
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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The War of Art 1319 168 Steven Pressfield 0446691437 Hima 0 to-read, psychology 3.95 2002 The War of Art
author: Steven Pressfield
name: Hima
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone]]> 6547576 234 Mark Goulston 0814414036 Hima 0 to-read, psychology 4.02 2009 Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone
author: Mark Goulston
name: Hima
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/21
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East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]>
601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Hima 0 4.41 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: Hima
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: to-read, us-historical-fiction
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The Art of Choosing 6648865

Whether mundane or life-altering, these choices define us and shape our lives. Sheena Iyengar asks the difficult questions about how and why we choose: Is the desire for choice innate or bound by culture? Why do we sometimes choose against our best interests? How much control do we really have over what we choose? Sheena Iyengar's award-winning research reveals that the answers are surprising and profound. In our world of shifting political and cultural forces, technological revolution, and interconnected commerce, our decisions have far-reaching consequences. Use THE ART OF CHOOSING as your companion and guide for the many challenges ahead.]]>
352 Sheena Iyengar 0446504106 Hima 4 psychology 3.84 1989 The Art of Choosing
author: Sheena Iyengar
name: Hima
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1989
rating: 4
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shelves: psychology
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<![CDATA[Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die]]> 69242 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to improve your idea's chances--essential reading in the "fake news" era.

Mark Twain once observed, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas--entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists--struggle to make them "stick."

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds--from the infamous "kidney theft ring" hoax to a coach's lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony--draw their power from the same six traits.

Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It's a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.

Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas--and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.]]>
291 Chip Heath 1400064287 Hima 0 to-read, business 3.98 2006 Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
author: Chip Heath
name: Hima
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, business
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<![CDATA[Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion]]> 28815
You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader鈥攁nd how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.]]>
320 Robert B. Cialdini 006124189X Hima 0 to-read, psychology 4.21 1984 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
author: Robert B. Cialdini
name: Hima
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: to-read, psychology
review:

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<![CDATA[The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business]]> 13133452
Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern鈥攁nd with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees鈥攈ow they approach worker safety鈥攁nd soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren鈥檚 Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation鈥檚 largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren鈥檛 destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.]]>
11 Charles Duhigg 0307966658 Hima 3 psychology 3.87 2012 The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
author: Charles Duhigg
name: Hima
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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shelves: psychology
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<![CDATA[The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference]]> 2612 The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.]]> 301 Malcolm Gladwell 0316346624 Hima 3 psychology 4.01 2002 The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Hima
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2002
rating: 3
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shelves: psychology
review:

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<![CDATA[Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience]]> 66354 303 Mih谩ly Cs铆kszentmih谩lyi 0060920432 Hima 0 to-read, psychology 4.11 1990 Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
author: Mih谩ly Cs铆kszentmih谩lyi
name: Hima
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, psychology
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Family Matters 19661
Nariman must now turn to his younger daughter, Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two sons, who share a small, crowded home. Their decision will test not only their material resources but, in surprising ways, all their tolerance, compassion, integrity, and faith. Sweeping and intimate, tragic and mirthful, Family Matters is a work of enormous emotional power.]]>
434 Rohinton Mistry 037570342X Hima 0 to-read, india-fiction 4.03 2002 Family Matters
author: Rohinton Mistry
name: Hima
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, india-fiction
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<![CDATA[The Jewel in the Crown (The Raj Quartet, #1)]]> 146746 The Jewel in the Crown opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and Indian demands for independence.]]> 472 Paul Scott 0226743403 Hima 0 4.15 1966 The Jewel in the Crown (The Raj Quartet, #1)
author: Paul Scott
name: Hima
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, india-historical-fiction
review:

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Americanah 15796700 477 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Hima 0 to-read, nigeria-diaspora 4.32 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Hima
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, nigeria-diaspora
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The Prophet 2547 The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.

The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran鈥檚 musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.]]>
127 Kahlil Gibran 000100039X Hima 0 to-read, poetry 4.27 1923 The Prophet
author: Kahlil Gibran
name: Hima
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1923
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

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<![CDATA[Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation]]> 7518800
In this momentous book, Nandan Nilekani traces the central ideas that shaped India's past and present and asks the key question of the How will India as a global power avoid the mistakes of earlier development models? As a co-founder of Infosys, a global leader in information technology, Nilekani has actively participated in the company's rise during the past twenty-seven years. In Imagining India , he uses his global experience and understanding to discuss the future of India and its role as a global citizen and emerging economic giant. Nilekani engages with India's particular obstacles and opportunities, charting a new way forward for the young nation.]]>
528 Nandan Nilekani 0143116673 Hima 0 3.61 2008 Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation
author: Nandan Nilekani
name: Hima
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Twentieth Wife (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #1)]]> 27298
She came into the world in the year 1577, to the howling accompaniment of a ferocious winter storm. As the daughter of starving refugees fleeing violent persecution in Persia, her fateful birth in a roadside tent sparked a miraculous reversal of family fortune, culminating in her father's introduction to the court of Emperor Akbar. She is called Mehrunnisa, the Sun of Women. This is her story.

Growing up on the fringes of Emperor Akbar's opulent palace grounds, Mehrunnisa blossoms into a sapphire-eyed child blessed with a precocious intelligence, luminous beauty, and a powerful ambition far surpassing the bounds of her family's station. Mehrunnisa first encounters young Prince Salim on his wedding day. In that instant, even as a royal gala swirls around her in celebration of the future emperor's first marriage, Mehrunnisa foresees the path of her own destiny. One day, she decides with uncompromising surety, she too will become Salim's wife. She is all of eight years old -- and wholly unaware of the great price she and her family will pay for this dream.

Skillfully blending the textures of historical reality with the rich and sensuous imaginings of a timeless fairy tale, The Twentieth Wife sweeps readers up in the emotional pageant of Salim and Mehrunnisa's embattled love. First-time novelist Indu Sundaresan charts her heroine's enthralling journey across the years, from an ill-fated first marriage through motherhood and into a dangerous maze of power struggles and political machinations. Through it all, Mehrunnisa and Salim long with fiery intensity for the true, redemptive love they've never known -- and their mutual quest ultimately takes them, and the vast empire that hangs in the balance, to places they never dreamed possible.

Shot through with wonder and suspense, The Twentieth Wife is at once a fascinating portrait of one woman's convention-defying life behind the veil and a transporting saga of the astonishing potency of love.]]>
380 Indu Sundaresan Hima 0 4.07 2002 The Twentieth Wife (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #1)
author: Indu Sundaresan
name: Hima
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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Freedom At Midnight 204123
Seventy years ago, at midnight on August 14, 1947, the Union Jack began its final journey down the flagstaff of Viceroy鈥檚 House, New Delhi. A fifth of humanity claimed their independence from the greatest empire history has ever seen鈥攂ut the price of freedom was high, as a nation erupted into riots and bloodshed, partition and war.

Freedom at Midnight is the true story of the events surrounding Indian independence, beginning with the appointment of Lord Mountbatten of Burma as the last Viceroy of British India, and ending with the assassination and funeral of Mahatma Gandhi. The book was an international bestseller and achieved enormous acclaim in the United States, Italy, Spain, and France.

鈥淭here is no single passage in this profoundly researched book that one could actually fault. Having been there most of the time in question and having assisted at most of the encounters, I can vouch for the accuracy of its general mood. It is a work of scholarship, of investigation, research and of significance.鈥�
鈥擩ames Cameron, The New York Sunday Times

鈥淔reedom at Midnight is a panoramic spectacular of a book that reads more like sensational fiction than like history, even though it is all true鈥�.. The narrative is as lively, as informative and as richly detailed as a maharaja鈥檚 palace.鈥�
鈥擩udson Hand, The New York Daily News

鈥淥utrageously and endlessly fascinating is my awestruck reaction to Freedom at Midnight. The new sure-to-be bestseller by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. It is all here: maharajas and tigers, filth and squalor, extravagance and macabre sex, massacres, smells, starvation, cruelty and heroism. Collins and Lapierre have made human history breathtaking and heartbreaking.鈥�
鈥擬argaret Manning, The Boston Globe

鈥淣o subject, I thought, as I picked up Freedom at Midnight, could be of less interest to me than a story of how Independence came to India after three centuries of British rule. I opened the book and began to flip through the photographs: here was a picture of Gandhi dressed in his loincloth going to have tea with the King of England; there was a picture of a maharaja being measured against his weight in gold; and another of thousands of vultures devouring corpses in the street. I began to read, fascinated. Here was the whole chronicle illustrated with anecdotes and masterful character sketches of how the British had come to India, how they had ruled it and how, finally, compelled by the force of economics and history, they had been forced to leave it divided鈥︹� Collins and Lapierre are such good writers that their books are so interesting that they are impossible to put down.鈥�
鈥擩.M. Sanchez, The Houston Chronicle]]>
629 Dominique Lapierre 8125904808 Hima 0 to-read, india-history 4.32 1975 Freedom At Midnight
author: Dominique Lapierre
name: Hima
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, india-history
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<![CDATA[Everybody Loves a Good Drought]]> 547573
The poor in India are, too often, reduced to statistics. In the dry language of development reports and economic projections, the true misery of the 312 million who live below the poverty line, or the 26 million displaced by various projects, or the 13 million who suffer from tuberculosis gets overlooked. In this thoroughly researched study of the poorest of the poor, we get to see how they manage, what sustains them, and the efforts, often ludicrous, to do something for them. The people who figure in this book typify the lives and aspirations of a large section of Indian society, and their stories present us with the true face of development.]]>
470 Palagummi Sainath Hima 0 to-read, india-history 4.34 1996 Everybody Loves a Good Drought
author: Palagummi Sainath
name: Hima
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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No Full Stops in India 791184
'The ten essays, written with clarity, warmth of feeling and critical balance and understanding, provide as lively a view as one can hope for of the panorama of India.鈥� K. Natwar-Singh in the Financial Times]]>
336 Mark Tully 0140104801 Hima 0 to-read, india-history 3.81 1991 No Full Stops in India
author: Mark Tully
name: Hima
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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Long Walk to Freedom 318431
Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in a Jewish firm in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s.

He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Herecounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account.]]>
656 Nelson Mandela 0316548189 Hima 0 to-read, biography 4.34 1994 Long Walk to Freedom
author: Nelson Mandela
name: Hima
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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Gandhi: An Autobiography 112803
In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi's "attitude of experimenting, of testing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can and cannot be adapted to new circumstances," in order to bring about change in our own lives and communities.

All royalties earned on this book are paid to the Navajivan Trust, founded by Gandhi, for use in carrying on his work.]]>
528 Mahatma Gandhi Hima 0 to-read, biography 4.13 1927 Gandhi: An Autobiography
author: Mahatma Gandhi
name: Hima
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, biography
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<![CDATA[Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire]]> 825690
INDIAN SUMMER depicts the epic sweep of events that ripped apart the greatest empire the world has ever seen, and reveals the secrets of the most powerful players on the world stage: the Cold War conspiracies, the private deals, and the intense and clandestine love affair between the wife of the last viceroy and the first prime minister of free India. With wit, insight and a sharp eye for detail, Alex von Tunzelmann relates how a handful of people changed the world for ever.]]>
480 Alex von Tunzelmann 0743285883 Hima 0 to-read, india-history 4.08 2007 Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire
author: Alex von Tunzelmann
name: Hima
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking]]> 9706504
Anand Giridharadas sensed something was afoot as his plane from America prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, "We're all trying to go that way," pointing to the rear. "You, you're going this way?"

Giridharadas was returning to the land of his ancestors, amid an unlikely economic boom. But he was interested less in its gold rush than in its cultural upheaval, as a new generation has sought to reconcile old traditions and customs with new ambitions and dreams.

In "India Calling," Giridharadas brings to life the people and the dilemmas of India today, through the prism of his emigre family history and his childhood memories of India. He introduces us to entrepreneurs, radicals, industrialists, and religious seekers, but, most of all, to Indian families. He shows how parents and children, husbands and wives, cousins and siblings are reinventing relationships, bending the meaning of Indianness, and enduring the pangs of the old birthing the new.

Through their stories, and his own, he paints an intimate portrait of a country becoming modern while striving to remain itself."]]>
273 Anand Giridharadas 0805091777 Hima 3 3.73 2010 India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking
author: Anand Giridharadas
name: Hima
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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Gitanjali 66414 Gitanjali is regarded as one of his greatest achievements, and has been a perennial bestseller since it was first published in 1910.]]> 80 Rabindranath Tagore 1420926306 Hima 5 india-poetry 4.34 1910 Gitanjali
author: Rabindranath Tagore
name: Hima
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1910
rating: 5
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shelves: india-poetry
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Siddhartha 52036 152 Hermann Hesse Hima 4 india-fiction 4.07 1922 Siddhartha
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Hima
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1922
rating: 4
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shelves: india-fiction
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<![CDATA[Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity]]> 11869272
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter - Annawadi's "most-everything girl" - will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy."

But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.]]>
278 Katherine Boo 1400067553 Hima 0 3.97 2012 Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
author: Katherine Boo
name: Hima
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy, #1)]]> 1330324 513 Amitav Ghosh 071956896X Hima 0 3.97 2008 Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy, #1)
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: Hima
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: to-read, india-historical-fiction
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The Glass Palace 77103 The Glass Palace tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls聽鈥渁 master storyteller.鈥漖]> 486 Amitav Ghosh 0375758771 Hima 0 3.99 2000 The Glass Palace
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: Hima
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1)]]> 50365 A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.]]> 1474 Vikram Seth 0060786523 Hima 0 4.11 1993 A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1)
author: Vikram Seth
name: Hima
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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Cutting for Stone 3591262
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother鈥檚 death in childbirth and their father鈥檚 disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics鈥攖heir passion for the same woman鈥攖hat will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him鈥攏early destroying him鈥擬arion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man鈥檚 remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
(front flap)]]>
560 Abraham Verghese 0375414495 Hima 4 africa-fiction 4.32 2009 Cutting for Stone
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Hima
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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shelves: africa-fiction
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Unaccustomed Earth 85301
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he鈥檚 harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he鈥檚 keeping all to himself. In 鈥淎 Choice of Accommodations,鈥� a husband鈥檚 attempt to turn an old friend鈥檚 wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In 鈥淥nly Goodness,鈥� a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in 鈥淗ema and Kaushik,鈥� a trio of linked stories鈥攁 luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate鈥攚e follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiri鈥檚 signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.]]>
352 Jhumpa Lahiri 0676979343 Hima 4 india-diaspora-fiction 4.14 2008 Unaccustomed Earth
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Hima
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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Shantaram 33600
So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay's hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.

As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.

Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas鈥攖his huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart. Based on the life of the author, it is by any measure the debut of an extraordinary voice in literature.]]>
936 Gregory David Roberts 192076920X Hima 4 india-fiction 4.27 2003 Shantaram
author: Gregory David Roberts
name: Hima
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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Midnight鈥檚 Children 14836 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India鈥檚 independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India鈥檚 1,000 other 鈥渕idnight鈥檚 children,鈥� all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people鈥揳 brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight鈥� s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.]]>
647 Salman Rushdie 0099578514 Hima 0 3.98 1981 Midnight鈥檚 Children
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Hima
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/21
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Interpreter of Maladies 5439 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.]]>
198 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618101365 Hima 4 india-diaspora-fiction 4.18 1999 Interpreter of Maladies
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Hima
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: india-diaspora-fiction
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A Fine Balance 5211
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.]]>
603 Rohinton Mistry 140003065X Hima 4 india-historical-fiction 4.38 1995 A Fine Balance
author: Rohinton Mistry
name: Hima
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1995
rating: 4
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Gandhi Before India 18310148 聽聽聽聽聽Here is a revelatory work of biography that takes us from Gandhi's birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his 2 years as a student in London, and his 2 decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Ramachandra Guha has uncovered a myriad of previously untapped documents, including: private papers of Gandhi's contemporaries and co-workers; contemporary newspapers and court documents; the writings of Gandhi's children; secret files kept by British Empire functionaries. Using this wealth of material in a brilliantly nuanced narrative, Guha describes the social, political and personal worlds in which Gandhi began his journey to become the modern era's most important and influential political actor. And Guha makes clear that Gandhi's work in South Africa--far from being a mere prelude to his accomplishments in India--was profoundly influential on his evolution as a political thinker, social reformer and beloved leader.]]> 688 Ramachandra Guha 0307357929 Hima 0 to-read, india-history 4.21 2013 Gandhi Before India
author: Ramachandra Guha
name: Hima
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy]]> 356824 India After Gandhi is a breathtaking chronicle of the brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation and the extraordinary factors that have held it together. An intricately researched and elegantly written epic history peopled with larger-than-life characters, it is the work of a major scholar at the peak of his abilities...]]> 912 Ramachandra Guha 0060198818 Hima 0 to-read, india-history 4.38 2007 India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy
author: Ramachandra Guha
name: Hima
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose]]> 6828896 246 Tony Hsieh 0446563048 Hima 3 business 4.02 2000 Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
author: Tony Hsieh
name: Hima
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2014/01/21
date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: business
review:

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The Discovery of India 154126 In conjunction with the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund in New Delhi, Oxford proudly announces the reissue of Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India, two famous works by Jawaharlal Nehru. One of modern day's most articulate statesmen, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a on a wide variety of subjects. Describing himself as "a dabbler in many things," he committed his life not only to politics but also to nature and wild life, drama, poetry, history, and science, as well as many other fields. These two volumes help to illuminate the depth of his interests and knowledge and the skill and elegance with which he treated the written word!!

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656 Jawaharlal Nehru 0143031031 Hima 0 to-read, india-history 4.09 1946 The Discovery of India
author: Jawaharlal Nehru
name: Hima
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1946
rating: 0
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