en-US Fri, 29 Nov 2024 00:13:41 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 16333
When Miss Marple comes up from the country for a holiday in London, she finds what she's looking for at Bertram's: traditional décor and impeccable service. But she senses an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly polished veneer. Not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion when an eccentric hotel guest makes his way to the airport one day late!

Librarian's note: this entry is for the novel, "At Bertram's Hotel." Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."]]> 223 Agatha Christie Priti 3 3.72 1965
author: Agatha Christie
name: Priti
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1965
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naĂŻve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TłÜ°ů˛Ô±đ»ĺ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Priti 3 4.05 1892
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Priti
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 3
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Priti 4 wanderings-voyages 3.95 1872
author: Jules Verne
name: Priti
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: wanderings-voyages
review:

]]> 52513609 If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino. You like it. But there's a printer's error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the hero of them all is you, the reader.]]> 260 Italo Calvino Priti 3 must-read-again
It’s also a novel about being a reader, and how being one transforms you from being simply a man or woman. The writing is brilliant, and WW deserves much credit for that. In the book, where the author analyses the Reader are remarkably perceptive, especially the Other Reader, whom he has analysed with even greater perspicacity.

But, while one half of my mind was being fascinated by the deft prose, the other half kept thinking “Now what is this guy up to?!� I felt somewhat like “The productive writer� who “feels as if he is on the verge of grasping the decisive point, but then it eludes him and he is left with a sensation of uneasiness.� I wasn't uneasy but I was mystified and not a little annoyed at these mind games that seemed to be in progress.

I guess this book and I still have some unfinished business.
]]> 3.83 1979
author: Italo Calvino
name: Priti
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1979
rating: 3
read at: 2013/10/01
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: must-read-again
review:
I felt kind of deceived by the elaborate maze of a novel, strewn with half-stories, which in the end led nowhere. But then I thought, that it's not about the story, it’s about the telling of the story, and that telling is interesting even if somewhat bizarre, and in which not-knowing is the key, “I expect readers to read in my books something I didn’t know, but I can expect it only from those who expect to read something they didn’t know�

It’s also a novel about being a reader, and how being one transforms you from being simply a man or woman. The writing is brilliant, and WW deserves much credit for that. In the book, where the author analyses the Reader are remarkably perceptive, especially the Other Reader, whom he has analysed with even greater perspicacity.

But, while one half of my mind was being fascinated by the deft prose, the other half kept thinking “Now what is this guy up to?!� I felt somewhat like “The productive writer� who “feels as if he is on the verge of grasping the decisive point, but then it eludes him and he is left with a sensation of uneasiness.� I wasn't uneasy but I was mystified and not a little annoyed at these mind games that seemed to be in progress.

I guess this book and I still have some unfinished business.

]]> 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Priti 2 3.88 1993
author: Annie Proulx
name: Priti
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 2
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 254308 586 Ivan Goncharov 1933480092 Priti 4 4.09 1859
author: Ivan Goncharov
name: Priti
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1859
rating: 4
read at: 2014/05/01
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves:
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Leo Tolstoy praised this novel as “a truly great work, the likes of which one has not seen for a long, long time.� To this, I can only add, how can you not be impressed by a character who makes avoiding getting out of bed into a thing of art.
]]> 10709274 MAHABHOJ (PB) 168 Mannu Bhandari 8171198392 Priti 4 india-hindi-regional 4.26 1979
author: Mannu Bhandari
name: Priti
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 11398359 56 Oscar Wilde Priti 3 4.10 1892
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Priti
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1892
rating: 3
read at: 2013/09/10
date added: 2022/06/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 12533587 238 Ira Pande 0143064444 Priti 5 4.19 2005
author: Ira Pande
name: Priti
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/05/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 13618374 The Infatuations is a metaphysical murder mystery and a stunningly original literary achievement by Javier MarĂ­as, the internationally acclaimed author of A Heart So White and Your Face Tomorrow.

Every day, María Dolz stops for breakfast at the same café. And every day she enjoys watching a handsome couple who follow the same routine. Then one day they aren't there, and she feels obscurely bereft.

It is only later, when she comes across a newspaper photograph of the man, lying stabbed in the street, his shirt half off, that she discovers who the couple are. Some time afterwards, when the woman returns to the café with her children, who are then collected by a different man, and Maria approaches her to offer her condolences, an entanglement begins which sheds new light on this apparently random, pointless death.

With The Infatuations, Javier MarĂ­as brilliantly reimagines the murder novel as a metaphysical enquiry, addressing existential questions of life, death, love, and morality.

The Infatuations is an extraordinary, immersive book about the terrible force of events and their consequences.]]> 345 Javier MarĂ­as 0241145368 Priti 3 3.38 2011
author: Javier MarĂ­as
name: Priti
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2014/06/01
date added: 2020/11/13
shelves:
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]]> 517679 218 M.C. Beaton 0312981457 Priti 2 3.66 2001
author: M.C. Beaton
name: Priti
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2001
rating: 2
read at: 2013/05/13
date added: 2020/03/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 166356 338 Rabindranath Tagore 0195658299 Priti 5 india-hindi-regional 4.17 1917
author: Rabindranath Tagore
name: Priti
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1917
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/04/24
shelves: india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 25405 176 Jostein Gaarder 1858817692 Priti 0 to-read 3.87 1993
author: Jostein Gaarder
name: Priti
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8163387 105 Rajinder Singh Bedi 8126017996 Priti 3 india-hindi-regional 3.41 1965
author: Rajinder Singh Bedi
name: Priti
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1965
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/01/28
shelves: india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 21466011 76 Robert W. Chambers Priti 4 3.31 1895
author: Robert W. Chambers
name: Priti
average rating: 3.31
book published: 1895
rating: 4
read at: 2014/03/01
date added: 2017/08/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 6443100 62 ±á±đ°ů˛µĂ© 0316358479 Priti 4 4.18 1956
author: ±á±đ°ů˛µĂ©
name: Priti
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 25816688 New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.]]> 752 Joe Hill 0062200631 Priti 4 3.88 2016
author: Joe Hill
name: Priti
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2016/01/01
date added: 2016/12/27
shelves:
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]]> 11901
Demonstrating, once again, her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches—a family given to poetry and to incest, to murder and to philosophy; a family that, over the ages, is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being.

On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking... and The Witching Hour begins.

It begins in our time with a rescue at sea.ĚýĚýRowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life.ĚýĚýHe is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.

As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV.ĚýĚýAn intricate tale of evil unfolds—an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first "witch," Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher... a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.

From the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien—the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers—provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing.ĚýĚýAnd always—through peril and escape, tension and release—there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death.ĚýĚýWith a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax.]]> 1207 Anne Rice 0099471426 Priti 3 4.11 1990
author: Anne Rice
name: Priti
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at: 2016/01/01
date added: 2016/12/27
shelves:
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]]> 23602562
In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf's inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis's wife. His daughter lives hours away in Colorado Springs, her son even farther away in Grand Junction, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in houses now empty of family, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with.

Their brave adventures - their pleasures and their difficulties - are hugely involving and truly resonant, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer's enduring contribution to American literature.]]> 179 Kent Haruf 1101875895 Priti 5 3.91 2015
author: Kent Haruf
name: Priti
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/12/27
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]]> 9705875 Mistletoe at Midnight By LB Gregg

Owen McKenzie has traveled to Vermont to spend an old-fashioned Christmas with his family when he finds himself staying at the same inn as his first love. Owen is disconcerted to realize he's still attracted to Caleb Black but refuses to pursue him. Caleb left him once, and Owen's not going down that road again.

Caleb is ready for a second chance with Owen and gets it when fate and the matchmaking McKenzies conspire to strand the two men in a rustic cabin during a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. Can Caleb convince Owen to rekindle their romance so they can stop spending their holidays apart?

Nine Lights Over Edinburgh By Harper Fox

Detective Inspector James McBride is riding high on the belief that he's about to bust a human-trafficking ring. But just five days before Christmas, his unorthodox methods catch up with him and his world comes crashing down.

McBride tries to concentrate on his new day job as security for the visiting Israeli ambassador. He even starts to feel a renewed sense of self-worth when the leader of the Israeli team, the aristocratic Tobias Leitner, takes a bullet for him in the line of duty. But he can't forget the trafficking case, especially when his investigations result in the kidnapping of his own daughter! McBride has no one to turn to for help-no one, except Toby.

Can these two very different men work together to bring about a holiday miracle-and heal one another's heart in the process?

I Heard Him Exclaim By Z.A. Maxfield

Who Likes a Skinny Santa?

Steve Adams's heart hasn't been in the Christmas spirit ever since doctors put a stent in it and ordered him to clean up his act. No longer filling out his Santa suit or allowed to make merry, he's forgoing the holidays this year and heading to Vegas to indulge in the few vices left to him: gambling and anonymous sex.

His road trip takes a detour when he encounters Chandler Tracey, who's just inherited guardianship of his five-year-old niece. Overwhelmed, Chandler's on his way to deliver Poppy to his parents. But fate has other plans and, after car trouble, Chandler and Poppy accept a ride home with Steve. Though the heat between the two men is obvious, they put it on simmer while they band together to make Poppy's Christmas as perfect as possible.

Steve soon comes to believe that while Chandler is the right person to look after Poppy, someone needs to look after Chandler. Fortunately, Steve knows just the man for the job.

Icecapade By Josh Lanyon

On the eve of the new millennium, diamond thief Noel Snow seduced FBI special agent Robert Cuffe, then fled into the dawn. Now a successful novelist, Noel uses his capers as fodder for his books, and has modeled his hero's nemesis (and potential love interest) on Cuffe. Though he leaves Robert a drunken phone message every New Year's Eve, Noel hasn't seen or heard from him in a decade.

So he's thrilled when his former lover shows up at his upstate farm one Christmas Eve. Elation quickly turns to alarm when Robert accuses Noel of being responsible for a recent rash of diamond heists. Robert is all business and as cold as ice: it seems his only interest in Noel is to put him behind bars.

Innocent of the crimes, and still as attracted as ever to the oh-so-serious lawman, Noel plans a second seduction-providing he can stay out of jail long enough!]]> 493 L.B. Gregg 1426890834 Priti 4 3.94 2010
author: L.B. Gregg
name: Priti
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/12/27
shelves:
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]]> 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.ĚýYet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Priti 5 4.28 2015
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Priti
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/12/27
shelves:
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]]> 18125142 270 Florian Illies 1847659810 Priti 4 3.74 2012
author: Florian Illies
name: Priti
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/12/27
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]]> 11387515 I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.

August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. Wonder, begins from Auggie’s point of view, but soon switches to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others.]]> 315 R.J. Palacio 0375869026 Priti 4 4.34 2012
author: R.J. Palacio
name: Priti
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/12/27
shelves:
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]]> 54258 The Radetzky March charts the history of the Trotta family through three generations spanning the rise and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through the Battle of Solferino, to the entombment of the last Hapsburg emperor, Roth's intelligent compassionate narrative illuminates the crumbling of a way of life.]]> 363 Joseph Roth 1862076057 Priti 5 4.10 1932
author: Joseph Roth
name: Priti
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1932
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/12/27
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review:

]]> 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
Ěý
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Priti 5 4.19 1966
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Priti
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 1819249 42 hrs 59 min

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured." 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---this 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.]]> Gregory David Roberts 078616882X Priti 3 india
Roberts is a good story teller, but a philosopher he is not, and the clever aphorisms, which are casually strewn all over the narrative and seem clever in the beginning, become mildly annoying with their appearence at every pretext. Lin's discourses with Abdel Kader about good and evil also seem imbued with a kind of smugness, which comes from the pursuit of illicit gains and the thrill of its realisation. Lin takes to crime simply because it pays and has power attached to it, all emotional and metaphysical reasons he ascribes to it are just baloney, and this is the reason that his feelings are much more stronger for Kader than for the plain and unimportant Prabhaker, which I think is the saddest part of the story.

Altogether an interesting book.]]> 4.32 2003
author: Gregory David Roberts
name: Priti
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/01
date added: 2016/12/10
shelves: india
review:
I started by really liking the book and ended by being disappointed. The book starts promisingly enough with its lively and vivid description of life in Bombay slums where the jetsam and flotsam of humanity washes up, in pursuit of dreams and desires. It is an interesting account, made more so by the author's genuine affection and acceptance of the city and its people. The slum chronicles are the most enjoyable parts of the book, with interesting characters and events. After that somewhere from the third part, the book starts reading like a typical Bollywood potboiler with all kinds of formula added to it; crime, glamour, romance, weapons, money, fights and even a war. Stil, I would say that Roberts has managed to keep it all together, even if some events in the book, like the proposition of Vikram to Lettie, seem pure contrivance.

Roberts is a good story teller, but a philosopher he is not, and the clever aphorisms, which are casually strewn all over the narrative and seem clever in the beginning, become mildly annoying with their appearence at every pretext. Lin's discourses with Abdel Kader about good and evil also seem imbued with a kind of smugness, which comes from the pursuit of illicit gains and the thrill of its realisation. Lin takes to crime simply because it pays and has power attached to it, all emotional and metaphysical reasons he ascribes to it are just baloney, and this is the reason that his feelings are much more stronger for Kader than for the plain and unimportant Prabhaker, which I think is the saddest part of the story.

Altogether an interesting book.
]]> 18160341 Ashapurna Devi Priti 4 india-hindi-regional 4.57 1966
author: Ashapurna Devi
name: Priti
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/09/30
shelves: india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 2594333 Hindi 7 नरेंद्� कोहली, Narendra Kohli 8170551420 Priti 4 india-hindi-regional 4.71 2009
author: नरेंद्� कोहली, Narendra Kohli
name: Priti
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/02/25
shelves: india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 5552635
As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life—sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition—its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.]]> 286 Elizabeth Strout 0812971833 Priti 2
The stories are set in a small town, a place as far away from New York as can be, both geographically and corporeally (that comparison keeps coming up) and presents vignettes of the lives of people there, and reflections on, human relations and emotions in the context of aging.

One description of the book says �one larger-than-life, unforgettable character: Olive Kitteridge�. If that means "Olive is a big person� and “right now she probably looks like a fat, dozing seal wrapped in some kind of gauze bandage�, then it's right, or that, she keeps popping up everywhere in the book, sometimes for no reason at all, then it’s right. Otherwise I thought Henry Kitteridge to be a more interesting character than Olive. I liked �Pharmacy� the best of the whole lot, maybe that coloured my viewpoint.

Most of the stories are about the twilight years of life, and its motifs of inevitable grief and loss. As youth is the embracing and celebration of life, senescence is a kind of withdrawing from life. like the lights in a house being turned off, one by one. But, it is also true that all that is part of life, everyone who will remain alive for a reasonable period of time will age and die. But reading the stories, it seems as if old age was a torture specially devised for the bunch of people inhabiting these stories.

The book seems morbid, almost excessively so. I formed a mental picture of a town with lots of old people, going about their chores like so many sullen zombies (I have no idea if there are happy zombies). There are no moments of lightness, everyone is either anxious or angry, and nursing old grievances, on top of everything else. Even the few children and young people we encounter, are also morose and brooding. Not their fault I suppose. But the stories didn’t touch me at all. There wasn’t even a twinge of sympathetic distress. I found the sadness quite unconvincing as if it was put on for the benefit of the reader. It really depressed me, and not in empathy.

In lieu

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas
]]> 3.75 2008
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Priti
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2014/01/01
date added: 2016/02/20
shelves:
review:
Another selection, from the Pulitzer department, that left me cold. The only reason I stuck with the book was that the writing was good, and for that I gave it an extra star.

The stories are set in a small town, a place as far away from New York as can be, both geographically and corporeally (that comparison keeps coming up) and presents vignettes of the lives of people there, and reflections on, human relations and emotions in the context of aging.

One description of the book says �one larger-than-life, unforgettable character: Olive Kitteridge�. If that means "Olive is a big person� and “right now she probably looks like a fat, dozing seal wrapped in some kind of gauze bandage�, then it's right, or that, she keeps popping up everywhere in the book, sometimes for no reason at all, then it’s right. Otherwise I thought Henry Kitteridge to be a more interesting character than Olive. I liked �Pharmacy� the best of the whole lot, maybe that coloured my viewpoint.

Most of the stories are about the twilight years of life, and its motifs of inevitable grief and loss. As youth is the embracing and celebration of life, senescence is a kind of withdrawing from life. like the lights in a house being turned off, one by one. But, it is also true that all that is part of life, everyone who will remain alive for a reasonable period of time will age and die. But reading the stories, it seems as if old age was a torture specially devised for the bunch of people inhabiting these stories.

The book seems morbid, almost excessively so. I formed a mental picture of a town with lots of old people, going about their chores like so many sullen zombies (I have no idea if there are happy zombies). There are no moments of lightness, everyone is either anxious or angry, and nursing old grievances, on top of everything else. Even the few children and young people we encounter, are also morose and brooding. Not their fault I suppose. But the stories didn’t touch me at all. There wasn’t even a twinge of sympathetic distress. I found the sadness quite unconvincing as if it was put on for the benefit of the reader. It really depressed me, and not in empathy.

In lieu

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas

]]> 15837840 म�त्य�ंज� मे� पौराणि� कथ्य और सनात� सांस्क�तिक चेतन� के अन्त� सम्बन्धो� को पूरी गरिम� के सा� उजाग� किया गय� ह�� उपन्या� को महाकाव्य का धरात� देकर चरित्र की इतनी सूक्ष्� पकड़, श�ली का इतना स�न्दर निखा� और भावनाओ� की अभिव्यक्ति मे� इतना मार्मि� रसोद्रेक - सब क�� इस उपन्या� मे� अनूठ� ह�।]]> 700 Shivaji Sawant Priti 5 india-hindi-regional 4.42 1967
author: Shivaji Sawant
name: Priti
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/02/12
shelves: india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 799196 260 Pratibha Ray Priti 5 3.97 1984
author: Pratibha Ray
name: Priti
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/02/02
shelves: india-hindi-regional, favorites-re-reads
review:

]]> 8785617 Mansarovar 2 (मानसरोवर 2)

"कहते ह�� जिसन� प्रेमचंद नही� पढ़ा उसने हिन्द�स्ता� नही� पढ़ा�

प्रेमचंद ने 14 उपन्या� � 300 से अधिक कहानिया� लिखीं। उन्होंने अपनी सम्पूर्ण कहानियों को 'मानसरोवर' मे� संजोकर प्रस्त�त किया ह�� इनमे� से अनेक कहानिया� दे�-भर के पाठ्यक्रमो� मे� समाविष्ट ह�� ह��, क� पर नाटक � फ़िल्में बनी ह�� जब कि क� का भारती� � विश्� की अनेक भाषाओं मे� अन�वाद ह�� ह��

अपने सम� और समाज का �तिहासिक संदर्भ तो ज�से प्रेमचंद की कहानियों को समस्� भारती� साहित्� मे� अम� बन� देता ह�� उनकी कहानियों मे� अनेक मनोव�ज्ञानिक बारीक़िया� भी देखन� को मिलती ह�ं। विषय को विस्ता� देना � पात्रो� के बी� मे� संवा� उनकी पकड़ को दर्शात� ह�ं। ये कहानिया� � केवल पाठकों का मनोरंज� करती ह�� बल्क� उत्क�ष

]]> 280 Munshi Premchand 8126700505 Priti 5 india-hindi-regional 4.49 1998
author: Munshi Premchand
name: Priti
average rating: 4.49
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/01/16
shelves: india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 12372401 कहते ह�� जिसन� प्रेमचंद नही� पढ़ा उसने हिन्द�स्ता� नही� पढ़ा�

प्रेमचंद ने 14 उपन्या� � 300 से अधिक कहानिया� लिखीं। उन्होंने अपनी सम्पूर्ण कहानियों को 'मानसरोवर' मे� संजोकर प्रस्त�त किया ह�� इनमे� से अनेक कहानिया� दे�-भर के पाठ्यक्रमो� मे� समाविष्ट ह�� ह��, क� पर नाटक � फ़िल्में बनी ह�� जब कि क� का भारती� � विश्� की अनेक भाषाओं मे� अन�वाद ह�� ह��

अपने सम� और समाज का �तिहासिक संदर्भ तो ज�से प्रेमचंद की कहानियों को समस्� भारती� साहित्� मे� अम� बन� देता ह�� उनकी कहानियों मे� अनेक मनोव�ज्ञानिक बारीक़िया� भी देखन� को मिलती ह�ं। विषय को विस्ता� देना � पात्रो� के बी� मे� संवा� उनकी पकड़ को दर्शात� ह�ं। ये कहानिया� � केवल पाठकों का मनोरंज� करती ह�� बल्क� उत्क�ष्ट साहित्� समझन�

]]> Munshi Premchand Priti 5 india-hindi-regional 4.60 2014
author: Munshi Premchand
name: Priti
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/01/16
shelves: india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 8337887 214 Kamala Suraiyya Das 8172238975 Priti 3 india 4.03 1973
author: Kamala Suraiyya Das
name: Priti
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/10/27
shelves: india
review:

]]> 49964 320 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0192836269 Priti 5 4.14 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Priti
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1864
rating: 5
read at: 2014/05/01
date added: 2015/09/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 13058887 229 Peter Carey 0307592715 Priti 2
/review/show...]]> 2.95 2012
author: Peter Carey
name: Priti
average rating: 2.95
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2015/04/25
date added: 2015/04/24
shelves:
review:
If you remain flummoxed even after you have finished the book, please read Mr Ron Charles' excellent review/synopsis.

/review/show...
]]> 11848506
Destined to be a cult classic, this tale of corporate horror and demonic retribution will strike a chord with anyone who has ever been disgruntled at work.

Also contains the stories "I Have A Special Plan For This World" and "The Nightmare Network".]]> 192 Thomas Ligotti Priti 0 to-read 3.80 2002
author: Thomas Ligotti
name: Priti
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17571523 316 Gunnar Staalesen Priti 2 2.93 2006
author: Gunnar Staalesen
name: Priti
average rating: 2.93
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2015/02/01
date added: 2015/03/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 16176440
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, Lowell, Rosemary and her unusual sister Fern. Rosemary begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “Until Fern’s expulsion...,� Rosemary says, “she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her.� As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.

In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date—a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences.]]> 310 Karen Joy Fowler 0399162097 Priti 4
Fowler’s book is important because she gives an important message. The fact is we think of animals as different from human and maybe this human arrogance of thinking ourselves superior and indifference towards species we consider different from us, is what lies behind the disaster we have wrought on them. What if we start looking at the similarities that we share with the non-human species? Will that make us kinder and more protective towards them? It will certainly make us more empathetic and empathy is probably what we need in the first place.


"“The world runs,� Lowell said, “on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don’t mind what they don’t see. Make them look and they mind, but you’re the one they hate, because you’re the one that made them look.�
They, my brother said, whenever he talked about humans. Never us. Never we."]]> 3.70 2013
author: Karen Joy Fowler
name: Priti
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2015/02/01
date added: 2015/03/06
shelves:
review:
This book needs to be read and discussed not for its writing style (which is not the best I’d say) but for the subject matter it tackles. There is so much discussion these days especially in the online communities about protection of wildlife, prevention of cruelty against animals, ecological imbalances and other related topics. These are critical issues facing humanity today and we need to open our eyes to what is happening around us, what we are doing to our environment and to our fellow creatures, both human and non human, who inhabit the planet along with us.

Fowler’s book is important because she gives an important message. The fact is we think of animals as different from human and maybe this human arrogance of thinking ourselves superior and indifference towards species we consider different from us, is what lies behind the disaster we have wrought on them. What if we start looking at the similarities that we share with the non-human species? Will that make us kinder and more protective towards them? It will certainly make us more empathetic and empathy is probably what we need in the first place.


"“The world runs,� Lowell said, “on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don’t mind what they don’t see. Make them look and they mind, but you’re the one they hate, because you’re the one that made them look.�
They, my brother said, whenever he talked about humans. Never us. Never we."
]]> 6391885
The Chalk Circle Man is the first book featuring Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, one of the most engaging characters in contemporary detective fiction.

When strange, blue chalk circles start appearing overnight on the pavements of Paris, the press take up the story with amusement and psychiatrists trot out their theories. Adamsberg is alone in thinking this is not a game and far from amusing. He insists on being kept informed of new circles and the increasingly bizarre objects which they empty beer cans, four trombones, a pigeon’s foot, four cigarette lighters, a badge proclaiming “I Love Elvis,� a hat, a doll’s head. Adamsberg senses the cruelty that lies behind these seemingly random occurrences. Soon a circle with decidedly less banal contents is the body of a woman with her throat savagely cut. Adamsberg knows that other murders will follow.]]> 256 Fred Vargas 0307396878 Priti 2 3.43 1991
author: Fred Vargas
name: Priti
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1991
rating: 2
read at: 2015/02/01
date added: 2015/03/06
shelves:
review:
My favourite sleuths are Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and recently Cormoran Strike. Does that explain why I didn't take to Adamsberg much?
]]> 375802
But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.]]> 324 Orson Scott Card 0812550706 Priti 3 4.31 1985
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Priti
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2015/02/01
date added: 2015/03/06
shelves:
review:
I like fantasy books and I like Young Adult books, whatever that term means. So I picked this one with great expectations, but was a tad disappointed. It reads like it's a video game turned into a story, or maybe that's the intention, because well it is about a Game. Anyway, I didn't find what all the hype was about, so probably I wasn't the right audience for the book.
]]> 647264 184 Ibn e Insha 8172232799 Priti 5 4.56 1971
author: Ibn e Insha
name: Priti
average rating: 4.56
book published: 1971
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/02/08
shelves: humour, favorites-re-reads, india-hindi-regional
review:

]]> 13532287 369 Jo Nesbø 0307361012 Priti 2
Anyway, I'll try to read the next books in the series, I may be surprised yet.]]> 3.45 1997
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Priti
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1997
rating: 2
read at: 2013/03/29
date added: 2015/01/30
shelves:
review:
I had heard a lot about the Harry Hole books, especially on GR. I must say I was disappointed in the first book. The pace is slow and rambling, the plotting is haphazard and confused. Harry Hole himself is himself, one confused character, and his spasmodic tumbles in alcoholism seem very put-on, somehow. His episodes of binge drinking seemed more highlighted that the murders happening around (to garner the reader's sympathy perhaps), and the emphasis seems to be on establishing why HH would or should remain an alcoholic. I mean when you are dealing with the seamy you are supposed to be prepared for the unpleasant.

Anyway, I'll try to read the next books in the series, I may be surprised yet.
]]> 67696 400 Mary Renault 0375726810 Priti 4 4.05 1956
author: Mary Renault
name: Priti
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 7237456 The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity.

Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour?

To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it’s possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.]]> 334 Mary Roach 0393068471 Priti 5
The book strikes a perfect balance between earnest and funny. It gives a new perspective on what it means to be human and how much can a human body take or give up when it comes to survival. Tongue firmly in cheek.]]> 3.93 2010
author: Mary Roach
name: Priti
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/01/26
shelves:
review:
It’s a delightful and smart exploration of what it takes to be space traveller. In this meticulously researched book Mary Roach is less concerned with technology of space travel but rather, how technology is used to make the human form, which has evolved to live in gravity, atmosphere, food and water, survive in absence of any of this. The narrative of this struggle ranges from the sublime to the absurd. Or, in the words of Roach, “Space doesn't just encompass the sublime and the ridiculous. It erases the line between.�

The book strikes a perfect balance between earnest and funny. It gives a new perspective on what it means to be human and how much can a human body take or give up when it comes to survival. Tongue firmly in cheek.
]]> 18386
How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]> 86 Leo Tolstoy Priti 5
This is what happened with me while I was reading 'The Death of Ivan Ilych'. This work of Tolstoy is a stark and completely unsentimental observation on death. It takes such a long deep look into death and dying that the terror of incipient death becomes your own. There is no averting the gaze from the blackness. Death is meaningless and it conquers life, always. Through his masterly narrative, Tolstoy takes us on a final journey, where every one of us becomes Ivan Ilych. Terrifying, Yes. Brilliant, yes.]]> 4.12 1886
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Priti
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1886
rating: 5
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/01/26
shelves:
review:
"And when you look long into an abyss the abyss also looks into you."

This is what happened with me while I was reading 'The Death of Ivan Ilych'. This work of Tolstoy is a stark and completely unsentimental observation on death. It takes such a long deep look into death and dying that the terror of incipient death becomes your own. There is no averting the gaze from the blackness. Death is meaningless and it conquers life, always. Through his masterly narrative, Tolstoy takes us on a final journey, where every one of us becomes Ivan Ilych. Terrifying, Yes. Brilliant, yes.
]]> 16143347 A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.

Read it.

And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.]]> 242 E. Lockhart 0385741278 Priti 1 3.66 2014
author: E. Lockhart
name: Priti
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2014
rating: 1
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/01/26
shelves:
review:
'We are annoying' might have been a better title.
]]> 93134 The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe raised the Gothic romance to a new level and inspired a long line of imitators. Portraying her heroine's inner life, creating a thick atmosphere of fear, and providing a gripping plot that continues to thrill readers today, The Mysteries of Udolpho is the story of orphan Emily St. Aubert, who finds herself separated from the man she loves and confined within the medieval castle of her aunt's new husband, Montoni. Inside the castle, she must cope with an unwanted suitor, Montoni's threats, and the wild imaginings and terrors that threaten to overwhelm her.

This new edition includes an introduction that discusses the publication and early reception of the novel, the genre of Gothic romance, and Radcliffe's use of history, exotic settings, the supernatural, and poetry.]]> 654 Ann Radcliffe 0140437592 Priti 3 3.42 1794
author: Ann Radcliffe
name: Priti
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1794
rating: 3
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/01/26
shelves:
review:
The 3 stars are for Montoni, the most interesting character of the lot.
]]> 21418013
A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what's now known as "Haden's syndrome," rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an "integrator" - someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.

But "complicated" doesn't begin to describe it. As Shane and Vann began to unravel the threads of the murder, it becomes clear that the real mystery - and the real crime - is bigger than anyone could have imagined. The world of the locked in is changing, and with the change comes opportunities that the ambitious will seize at any cost. The investigation that began as a murder case takes Shane and Vann from the halls of corporate power to the virtual spaces of the locked in, and to the very heart of an emerging, surprising new human culture. It's nothing you could have expected.]]> 336 John Scalzi 0765375869 Priti 3 3.89 2014
author: John Scalzi
name: Priti
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/01/26
shelves:
review:
The science fiction part is very interesting but the thriller/police procedural part is just ok .
]]> 124509
It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own. Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice....]]> 480 Peter Høeg 0385315147 Priti 3 3.77 1992
author: Peter Høeg
name: Priti
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/01/26
shelves:
review:
Deserves a 2.5 really. I liked how the book started and the characters, but by the time I reached the last part'The Sea' I was completely at sea myself. This part of the novel is so different and unconnected with the rest of the book that it seems to have been part of another novel altogether. Made no sense to me.
]]> 18651980
After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.

But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Benjamin's activities spark the full-blown interest of the F.B.I., putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.]]> 466 Smith Henderson 0062286447 Priti 5 3.81 2014
author: Smith Henderson
name: Priti
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 17934521
Now all four are home, in hopes of finding what could be real purchase in the world. The result is a shared memory only half-recreated, riddled with culture clashes between people who desperately wish to see themselves as the unified tribe they remember, but are confronted with how things have, in fact, changed.

There is conflict here between longtime buddies, between husbands and wives � told with writing that is, frankly, gut-wrenching, and even heartbreaking. But there is also hope, healing, and at times, even heroism. It is strong, American stuff, not at all afraid of showing that we can be good, too � not just fallible and compromising. Shotgun Lovesongs is a remarkable and uncompromising saga that explores the age-old question of whether or not you can ever truly come home again � and the kind of steely faith and love returning requires.]]> 307 Nickolas Butler 1250039819 Priti 4 3.77 2014
author: Nickolas Butler
name: Priti
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2014/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 18774020
The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.]]> 393 Edan Lepucki 0316250813 Priti 2 3.23 2014
author: Edan Lepucki
name: Priti
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2014/12/30
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]]> 18656036
Deenie Nash is a diligent student with a close-knit family; her brother Eli is a hockey star, and her father is a popular teacher. But when Deenie's best friend is struck by a terrifying, unexplained seizure in class, the Nashes' seeming stability dissolves into chaos. As rumors of a hazardous outbreak spread through school, and hysteria and contagion swell, a series of tightly held secrets emerges, threatening to unravel friendships, families, and the town's fragile sense of security.

The Fever is a chilling story about guilt, lies, and the lethal power of desire.]]> 307 Megan Abbott 0316231053 Priti 2 3.09 2014
author: Megan Abbott
name: Priti
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2014/12/30
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]]> 10746542 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.

This intense novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about - until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.]]> 150 Julian Barnes 0224094157 Priti 3 3.73 2011
author: Julian Barnes
name: Priti
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2014/12/25
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]]> 18498558 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062259653

Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.

Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?

Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.]]> 262 Josh Malerman Priti 2 4.02 2014
author: Josh Malerman
name: Priti
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2014/12/25
date added: 2014/12/25
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]]> 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Priti 3 4.31 2014
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Priti
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 365
Apparently not much; until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator, sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery, and eating a lot of pizza � not to mention saving the entire human race from extinction along the way (at no extra charge).

To find out more, read this book (better still, buy it, then read it) � or contact Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. �A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-whodunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy epic.� The author]]> 306 Douglas Adams Priti 4 3.98 1987
author: Douglas Adams
name: Priti
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 126583 251 John O'Hara 0375719202 Priti 3 3.82 1934
author: John O'Hara
name: Priti
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 15815333
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.

The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules's now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.

Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.]]> 468 Meg Wolitzer 1594488398 Priti 2 3.58 2013
author: Meg Wolitzer
name: Priti
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2014/03/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 268559
In a lonely corner of Montana, Eduardo Fernandez, the father of McGarvey's murdered partner, witnesses a strange nocturnal sight. The stand of pines outside his house suddenly glows with eerie amber light, and Fernandez senses a watcher in the winter woods. As the seasons change, the very creatures of the forest seem in league with a mysterious presence. Fernandez is caught up in a series of chilling incidents that escalate toward a confrontation that could rob him of his sanity or his life - or both.

As events careen out of control, the McGarvey family is drawn to Fernandez's Montana ranch. In that isolated place they discover their destiny in a terrifying and fiercely suspenseful encounter with a hostile, utterly ruthless, and enigmatic enemy, from which neither the living nor the dead are safe.]]> 472 Dean Koontz 0553582933 Priti 3 3.86 1994
author: Dean Koontz
name: Priti
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 1613280 314 Yrsa Sigurdardottir 0061143367 Priti 2 3.59 2005
author: Yrsa Sigurdardottir
name: Priti
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 19302 160 Astrid Lindgren 0142402494 Priti 3 4.15 1945
author: Astrid Lindgren
name: Priti
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1945
rating: 3
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 Priti 2 4.05 2014
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Priti
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 144073 176 Jean Rhys Priti 4 3.92 1939
author: Jean Rhys
name: Priti
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 943402
But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night....]]> 513 John Ajvide Lindqvist 1847241697 Priti 4 4.08 2004
author: John Ajvide Lindqvist
name: Priti
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 11100788
In prose that veers between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a portrait of the artist as a young man in an age of Google searches, pharmaceuticals, and spectacle.]]> 181 Ben Lerner Priti 2 3.81 2011
author: Ben Lerner
name: Priti
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 18122
But how can he go looking for Lord Asriel when Lyra is gone? Only with her help can he fathom the myriad plots and intrigues that beset him.

The two great powers of the many worlds are lining up for war, and Will must find Lyra, for together they are on their way to battle, an inevitable journey that will even take them to the world of the dead...]]> 465 Philip Pullman 0440238153 Priti 2 4.11 2000
author: Philip Pullman
name: Priti
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 119324
Each is searching—Lyra for the meaning of Dark Matter, Will for his missing father—but what they find instead is a deadly secret, a knife of untold power. And neither Lyra nor Will suspects how tightly their lives, their loves, and their destinies are bound together... until they are split apart.]]> 326 Philip Pullman 0679879250 Priti 2 4.12 1997
author: Philip Pullman
name: Priti
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1997
rating: 2
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 119322
Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want--but what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other.]]> 399 Philip Pullman 0679879242 Priti 3 4.02 1995
author: Philip Pullman
name: Priti
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2014/12/21
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]]> 248596 Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.

For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.

Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.]]> 293 Ray Bradbury 0380729407 Priti 3 3.92 1962
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Priti
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1962
rating: 3
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]]> 11741 Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.]]> 219 Marilynne Robinson 0312424094 Priti 3 3.82 1980
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Priti
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 398323
Trond’s friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning would turn out to be different. What began as a joy ride on “borrowed� horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day—an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys.

Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.]]> 258 Per Petterson Priti 4 3.79 2003
author: Per Petterson
name: Priti
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 31122 408 Dodie Smith 0312181108 Priti 2 3.99 1948
author: Dodie Smith
name: Priti
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 2
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 127455 Ocean's Eleven, and entirely enthralling...

An orphan's life is harsh � and often short � in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains � a man who is neither blind nor a priest.

A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected "family" of orphans � a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Under his tutelage, Locke grows to lead the Bastards, delightedly pulling off one outrageous confidence game after another. Soon he is infamous as the Thorn of Camorr, and no wealthy noble is safe from his sting.

Passing themselves off as petty thieves, the brilliant Locke and his tightly knit band of light-fingered brothers have fooled even the criminal underworld's most feared ruler, Capa Barsavi. But there is someone in the shadows more powerful � and more ambitious � than Locke has yet imagined.

Known as the Gray King, he is slowly killing Capa Barsavi's most trusted men � and using Locke as a pawn in his plot to take control of Camorr's underworld. With a bloody coup under way threatening to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the Gray King at his own brutal game � or die trying...

]]> 499 Scott Lynch 0553804677 Priti 4 4.28 2006
author: Scott Lynch
name: Priti
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 2308838
Sacrifice is a bone-chilling, spell-binding debut that will grip readers from its beginning to its startling end.Ěý]]> 380 Sharon J. Bolton 0312381131 Priti 2 3.88 2008
author: Sharon J. Bolton
name: Priti
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 91494 The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.

In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London. There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and he fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal—and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.]]> 418 Elizabeth Bowen 0385720173 Priti 5 3.66 1938
author: Elizabeth Bowen
name: Priti
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1938
rating: 5
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 7743117 Sacré Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter who joins the dapper Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed suicide of Vincent van Gogh.]]> 403 Christopher Moore 0061779741 Priti 4 3.77 2012
author: Christopher Moore
name: Priti
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 11590 Librarian's Note: Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0450031063

Thousands of miles away from the small township of 'Salem's Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to 'Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.]]> 483 Stephen King 0450031063 Priti 3 4.06 1975
author: Stephen King
name: Priti
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 130440
Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel.]]> 592 Boris Pasternak 0679774386 Priti 2 4.03 1957
author: Boris Pasternak
name: Priti
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1957
rating: 2
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 83409
The Babes in the Wood is Ruth Rendell at her very best, a scintillating, precise and troubling story of seduction and religious fanaticism–and murder.]]> 336 Ruth Rendell 1400034191 Priti 3 3.75 2002
author: Ruth Rendell
name: Priti
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 77773 From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel.

Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He’s been shuttling between the twenty-first century and the 1940s in search of a hideous Victorian vase called “the bishop’s bird stump� as part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid.

But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right—not only to save the project but also to prevent altering history itself.]]> 493 Connie Willis 0553575384 Priti 5 4.11 1997
author: Connie Willis
name: Priti
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 762390 The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator--edge of despair to edge of despair--and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction. In her last novel she takes readers close to the true mystery of life, and leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed.]]> 96 Clarice Lispector 0811211908 Priti 5 favorites-re-reads 4.11 1977
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Priti
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2014/12/20
shelves: favorites-re-reads
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]]> 178565 Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those “excellent women,� the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.]]> 256 Barbara Pym 014310487X Priti 4 3.92 1952
author: Barbara Pym
name: Priti
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 16131077 The girl who wouldn't die hunts the killer who shouldn't exist.

"The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own."

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens onto other times.

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He's the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable—until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth. . . .

The Shining Girls is a masterful twist on the serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing heroine in pursuit of a deadly criminal.]]> 368 Lauren Beukes 0316216852 Priti 2 3.53 2013
author: Lauren Beukes
name: Priti
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2014/08/01
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]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Priti 4 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Priti
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 76479 Wanderlust), or using the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge as a lens to discuss the transformations of space and time in late nineteenth-century America (River of Shadows), Rebecca Solnit has emerged as an inventive and original writer whose mind is daring in the connections it makes. A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.]]> 209 Rebecca Solnit 0143037242 Priti 4 3.97 2005
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Priti
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/01
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]]> 15797938
Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act - an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. When the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner is an internationally bestselling phenomenon that will leave you breathless.]]> 292 Herman Koch 0770437850 Priti 4 3.18 2009
author: Herman Koch
name: Priti
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2014/12/20
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]]> 7430121
The sexton does not doubt her existence. For him, Miss Hargreaves is as real as you or I. And she gradually assumes a fully-rounded character in the imaginings of the two young men as they while away their holiday in expanding the details of her life: her book of poetry, her parrot Dr Pepusch, her harp, and her hip-bath. It is merely a continuation of their little joke when they write to invite her to visit them back in their cathedral home-town of Cornford.

It is something of a surprise when Miss Hargreaves accepts their invitation. And their disbelief turns to confusion and horror as, one evening soon afterwards, her train pulls into Cornford Station . . .

As Dr Glen Cavaliero stresses in his introduction, Miss Hargreaves is a brilliantly funny and moving fantasy with an admirable lightness of touch and wonderful characterisation, but for all that it has a dark and frightening undercurrent. A burlesque parable of 'the ways of God with man', the book explores how the creator must live with the consequences of their creation, no matter how uncomfortable. And if they renounce their responsibilities, then there is always the possibility that their power may be turned against them.

Miss Hargreaves, first published in 1940 to great acclaim, is a classic novel of the supernatural. Glen Cavaliero is a Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and author of The Supernatural and English Fiction (O.U.P., 1995).]]> 317 Frank Baker 160819051X Priti 3 3.37 1940
author: Frank Baker
name: Priti
average rating: 3.37
book published: 1940
rating: 3
read at:
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]]> 27693 400 Mary Stewart 0060502959 Priti 3 4.02 1962
author: Mary Stewart
name: Priti
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
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]]> 890 “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.�

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. But George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own.

While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful.

A unique perspective on life's hardships, this story has achieved the status of timeless classic due to its remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.]]> 107 John Steinbeck 0142000671 Priti 4 3.88 1937
author: John Steinbeck
name: Priti
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
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]]> 59780
During the course of these stories Calvino toys with continuous creation, the transformation of matter, and the expanding and contracting reaches of space and time. He succeeds in relating complex scientific concepts to the ordinary reactions of common humanity.

William Weaver's excellent translation won a National Book Award in 1969

“Naturally, we were all there," old Qfwfq said, "where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?�

The distance of the moon --
At daybreak --
A sign in space --
All at one point --
Without colors --
Games without end --
The aquatic uncle --
How much shall we bet? --
The dinosaurs --
The form of space --
The light-years --
The spiral.]]> 153 Italo Calvino 0156226006 Priti 2 4.23 1965
author: Italo Calvino
name: Priti
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1965
rating: 2
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
shelves:
review:
The stories range from interesting to weird. Some made sense and some not at all.
]]> 38379
Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society's fears to a rural Japan--a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic--haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape's mystery before it's too late--for everyone--assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip.]]> 282 KĹŤji Suzuki 1932234411 Priti 4 3.79 1991
author: KĹŤji Suzuki
name: Priti
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
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]]> 17402288
Jenny Offill's heroine, referred to in these pages as simply "the wife," once exchanged love letters with her husband postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes - a colicky baby, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions - the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art.

With cool precision, in language that shimmers with rage and wit and fierce longing, Jenny Offill has crafted an exquisitely suspenseful love story that has the velocity of a train hurtling through the night at top speed. Exceptionally lean and compact, Dept. of Speculation is a novel to be devoured in a single sitting, though its bracing emotional insights and piercing meditations on despair and love will linger long after the last page.]]> 179 Jenny Offill 0385350813 Priti 5
One of the best books I read this year, and Jenny Offill has become one of my favourite authors. ]]> 3.76 2014
author: Jenny Offill
name: Priti
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
shelves:
review:
I read this book in one sitting and after I finished I started it all over again. Then I read bits of it realising that I didn't want to let go of the book. A woman is ruminating about her marriage, having kids, the other woman, friends, in other words, just a normal life. The perfect ordinariness of a life is narrated in such extraordinary language that it makes the whole thing lyrical, even magical.

One of the best books I read this year, and Jenny Offill has become one of my favourite authors.
]]> 8686068
When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that day, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated. Nothing quite makes sense, and it will take a genius to understand the genius behind this particular crime...]]> 298 Keigo Higashino 0312375069 Priti 4 4.16 2005
author: Keigo Higashino
name: Priti
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 40395 186 Edgar Rice Burroughs 0143104888 Priti 2 3.81 1912
author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
name: Priti
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1912
rating: 2
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
shelves:
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]]> 531509
When three American men discover a community of women, living in perfect isolation in the Amazon, they decide there simply must be men somewhere. How could these women survive without man's knowledge, experience and strength, not to mention reproductive power? In fact, what they have found is a civilisation free from disease, poverty and the weight of tradition. All alone, the women have created a society of calm and prosperity, a feminist utopia that dares to threaten the very concept of male superiority.]]> 147 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0394736656 Priti 4 3.46 1915
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Priti
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
shelves:
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]]> 202897
Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children’s folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.

Also in London is Vinnie’s colleague Fred Turner, a handsome, flat broke, newly separated, and thoroughly miserable young man trying to focus on his own research. Instead, he is distracted by a beautiful and unpredictable English actress and the world she belongs to.

Both American, both abroad, and both achingly lonely, Vinnie and Fred play out their confused alienation and dizzying romantic liaisons in Alison Lurie’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Smartly written, poignant, and witty, Foreign Affairs remains an enduring comic masterpiece.]]> 292 Alison Lurie 0812976312 Priti 4 3.71 1984
author: Alison Lurie
name: Priti
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
shelves:
review:
Actually this is five-star book; intelligent, funny and beautifully written. The only reason I docked one star is the jolt I got near the end of the book, which almost had me throw it at the farthest wall. Thankfully I realised just in time that I was holding a kindle.
]]> 14064
By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

How long can one man survive like this?

]]> 160 Richard Matheson 1857988094 Priti 5 4.06 1954
author: Richard Matheson
name: Priti
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1954
rating: 5
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
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]]> 14288 A pulsating psycho-thriller from Ryu Murakami, author of In the Miso Soup

A renaissance man for the postmodern age, Ryu Murakami—a musician, filmmaker (Tokyo Decadence), TV personality, and award-winning author—has gained a cult following in the West. His first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, won Japan’s most coveted literary prize and sold over a million copies, and his most recent psychosexual thriller, In the Miso Soup, gave readers a further taste of his incredibly agile imagination. In Piercing, Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse and what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other and then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children.]]> 192 Ryū Murakami 014303863X Priti 5 3.69 1994
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Priti
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/11/01
shelves:
review:
A very unusual book, disturbing and riveting in equal measures.
]]>