Madjwala's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 13 May 2017 06:34:58 -0700 60 Madjwala's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Song of the Cuckoo Bird 101380
Barely a month after she is promised in marriage, eleven-year-old orphan Kokila comes to Tella Meda, an ashram by the Bay of Bengal. Once there, she makes a courageous yet foolish choice that alters the fabric of her life: Instead of becoming a wife and mother, youthful passion drives Kokila to remain at the ashram.

Through the years, Kokila revisits her decision as she struggles to make her mark in a country where untethered souls like hers merely slip through the cracks. But standing by her conviction, she makes a home in Tella Meda alongside other strong yet deeply flawed women. Sometimes they are her friends, sometimes they are her enemies, but always they are her family.

Like Isabel Allende, Amulya Malladi crafts complex characters in deeply atmospheric settings that transport readers through different eras, locales, and sensibilities. Careening from the 1940s to the present day, Song of the Cuckoo Bird chronicles India's tumultuous history as generations of a makeshift family seek comfort and joy in unlikely places--and from unlikely hearts.]]> 381 Amulya Malladi 0345483154 Madjwala 4 3.72 2005 Song of the Cuckoo Bird
author: Amulya Malladi
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance, #1)]]> 32542 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780385338608

Before The Firm and The Pelican Brief made him a superstar, John Grisham wrote this riveting story of retribution and justice. In this searing courtroom drama, best-selling author John Grisham probes the savage depths of racial violence, as he delivers a compelling tale of uncertain justice in a small southern town, Clanton, Mississippi.

The life of a ten-year-old girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime. That is, until her black father acquires an assault rifle and takes matters into his hands.

For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life, and then his own.]]> 738 John Grisham Madjwala 4 4.11 1989 A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance, #1)
author: John Grisham
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1989
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/10/04
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]]> Coma 85437
"Strikes a deafening chord of terror." ( The Washington Post )

The book that put Cook on the bestseller lists, Coma is the gripping story of patients who check into a hospital for "minor" surgery-and never wake up again...]]> 320 Robin Cook 0451159535 Madjwala 4 3.83 1977 Coma
author: Robin Cook
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1977
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Contagion (Jack Stapleton & Laurie Montgomery, #2)]]> 66469 Contagion is a terrifying cautionary tale for the millennium as a deadly epidemic is spread not merely by microbes—but by sabotage....]]> 496 Robin Cook 0425155943 Madjwala 3 3.96 1992 Contagion (Jack Stapleton & Laurie Montgomery, #2)
author: Robin Cook
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1992
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Convent of Little Flowers: Stories]]> 2935923 A young woman who was adopted by an American family in Seattle receives a letter from Sister Mary Theresa, nun at the Convent of Little Flowers in Chennai where she stayed as a child. Unbeknownst to her, the nun is her biological mother's sister. The grandmother of an Indian journalist begs him to intervene with her husband — his grandfather — to prevent a young widow from being burned alive. A child born out of wedlock to the sixteen-year-old daughter of a peon on an engineering college campus throws the entire family into turmoil.

With the lush prose, vividly rendered settings, complex and appealing characters, and compelling narratives, the stories that comprise In the Convent of Little Flowers illuminate the lives of Indians at home and abroad today, where modernity offers them opportunities that their grandmothers only dreamed of, while others experience just as much oppression as ever. Indu Sundaresan brings together stories that both embrace and reject modern values with an authenticity that only a writer of her caliber could do.

]]> 216 Indu Sundaresan 1416586091 Madjwala 3 3.74 2008 In the Convent of Little Flowers: Stories
author: Indu Sundaresan
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2008
rating: 3
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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 Madjwala 2 4.18 1999 Interpreter of Maladies
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 2
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date added: 2011/09/16
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]]> She’s Come Undone 5203
Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.]]> 465 Wally Lamb 0671021001 Madjwala 3 3.91 1992 She’s Come Undone
author: Wally Lamb
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1992
rating: 3
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]]> The Help 4667024
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.


Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here]]> 464 Kathryn Stockett 0399155341 Madjwala 0 to-read 4.46 2009 The Help
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> A Thousand Splendid Suns 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Madjwala 3 4.44 2007 A Thousand Splendid Suns
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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]]> I Know This Much Is True 227711
One of the most acclaimed novels of our time, Wally Lamb's I Know This Much Is True is a story of alienation and connection, devastation and renewal, at once joyous, heartbreaking, poignant, mystical, and powerfully, profoundly human.]]> 897 Wally Lamb 0060987561 Madjwala 3 4.21 1998 I Know This Much Is True
author: Wally Lamb
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)]]> 227443 a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise

"129 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)..."

"Bridget Jones' Diary" is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement � a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult - and learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and � like millions of readers the world round � you'll find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"]]> 288 Helen Fielding 014028009X Madjwala 3 3.81 1996 Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)
author: Helen Fielding
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1996
rating: 3
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]]> Memoirs of a Geisha 930
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.]]> 434 Arthur Golden 0739326228 Madjwala 4 4.07 1997 Memoirs of a Geisha
author: Arthur Golden
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question]]> 163365
In  What Should I Do with My Life ? Po Bronson tells the inspirational true stories of people who have found the most meaningful answers to that great question. With humor, empathy, and insight, Bronson writes of remarkable individuals—from young to old, from those just starting out to those in a second career—who have overcome fear and confusion to find a larger truth about their lives and, in doing so, have been transformed by the experience. 

What Should I Do with My Life?  struck a powerful, resonant chord on publication, causing a multitude of people to rethink their vocations and priorities and start on the path to finding their true place in the world. For this edition, Bronson has added nine new profiles, to further reflect the range and diversity of those who broke away from the chorus to learn the sound of their own voice.]]> 436 Po Bronson 0345485920 Madjwala 3 3.68 2002 What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question
author: Po Bronson
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2002
rating: 3
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]]> The Secret (The Secret, #1) 52529 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781582701707.

The worldwide bestselling phenomenon that has helped millions tap the power of the law that governs all our lives to create—intentionally and effortlessly—a joyful life.

In 2006, a groundbreaking feature-length film revealed the great mystery of the universe�The Secret—and, later that year, Rhonda Byrne followed with a book that became a worldwide bestseller.

Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions, and philosophies throughout the centuries. For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it.

In this book, you’ll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life—money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You’ll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that’s within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life.

The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers—men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.]]> 199 Rhonda Byrne Madjwala 4 3.74 2006 The Secret (The Secret, #1)
author: Rhonda Byrne
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[You'll see it when you believe it]]> 1141544
With his proven techniques and using examples from his own highly successful experiences, Dyer will convince you that you can make your most impossible dreams come true. You’ll See It When You Believe It demonstrates that through belief you can make your life anything you with it to be. Learn practical steps such as how to set real goals and achieve them; turn obstacles into opportunities; rid yourself of guilt and inner turmoil; develop a strong inner-confidence; dramatically improve relationships; spend every day doing the things you love to do, and so much more.

Go beyond self-help to self-realization with this accessible and uplifting manual.]]> 320 Wayne W. Dyer 0060937335 Madjwala 4 4.26 You'll see it when you believe it
author: Wayne W. Dyer
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 4
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]]> The Last Song of Dusk 51077 –E±ô±ô±đ

When the astonishingly lovely Anuradha moves to Bombay to marry Vardhmaan, a charming young doctor, their life together has all the makings of a fairy tale. But when their firstborn son dies in a terrible accident, tragedy transforms their marriage into a bleak landscape. As the pair starts fresh in a heartbroken old villa by the sea, they are joined by Nandini, a dazzling and devious artist with a trace of leopard blood in her veins. While Nandini flamboyantly takes on Bombay’s art scene, the couple attempts to mend their marriage, eventually discovering that real love, mercurial and many-hued, is given and received in silence. Sensuous and electric, achingly moving and wickedly funny, The Last Song of Dusk is a tale of fate that will haunt your heart like an old and beloved song.

“A cornucopia of life at full tilt and high color . . . Shanghvi–who’s been compared to Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, and Vikram Seth–combines ribald humor with prose poetry.�
–Sunday Oregonian

“Few first novelists achieve such perfection, such control, in their performance.�
–India Today

“A gorgeous novel . . . written with a youthful twinkling eye.�
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Lush, witty . . . sassy prose . . . moves like a carnival ride.�
–San Francisco Chronicle]]> 336 Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi 0345485009 Madjwala 4 3.73 2004 The Last Song of Dusk
author: Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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]]> The God of Small Things 9777
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy 0679457313 Madjwala 3 3.97 1997 The God of Small Things
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Madjwala
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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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 Madjwala 5 4.38 1995 A Fine Balance
author: Rohinton Mistry
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> The Namesake 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail � the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase � that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]> 304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Madjwala 3 4.01 2003 The Namesake
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Madjwala 4 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> To Kill a Mockingbird 2657 "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Madjwala 4 4.25 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird
author: Harper Lee
name: Madjwala
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 4
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]]>