There Is A List Of Online Cheap Book Stores

Have you been frustrated of purchasing high price books online? If you don't have proper budget or having a less pocket money, then from now onwards you don't have to worry at all regarding online purchase of books. I am going to tell you a list of online book stores, from which you can purchase your favorite books in a vary low price.

1. Amazon.com – This is one of the most popular online book store and the company has been serving from last 15 years. Moreover, Amazon is capable of sending books to any part of Globe, within specified time period. Their service is really very nice.

2. Half.com – If you are in search of second hand books then this store can be very helpful for your online purchase needs. This is a sister-concern of eBay, which is the most popular online store across USA and other Asian countries. Even if you have lots of old books, you will get good prices by selling here.

3. eBay Books – This is an Auction based selling system here. The customer who holds the greatest price can purchase that book. This gives the customer, sometimes getting good books in least prices. eBay sends its goods to almost every part of Globe, but if your area is not listed in their delivery list, you can directly contact the consumer of that particular book for delivering in your area.

4. Barnes And Noble – This is a sister-concern of Amazon but the prices are little bit higher. You can also get a great discount upto 10-40% per purchase.

5. Biblio.com – In Biblio, you can purchase second hand books, same as Half.com.
They also offer good discount and prices are also minimal.

6. AbeBooks.com – This online store is having lots of books and categories to purchase from. You will get nice prices also.

The Review Of When Money Dies

It says something about present anxieties that a 35-year-old account of Weimar hyperinflation has come into vogue. In early 2010, Adam Fergusson's long-out-of-print volume was trading online for four-figure sums. There were (false) reports of kind words about it from Warren Buffett. Now back in print, this once obscure book from 1975 has been selling briskly. Just another manifestation of the financial millenarianism now sweeping the land? Perhaps, but "When Money Dies" remains a fascinating and disturbing book.

The death of the German mark (it took 20 of them to buy a British pound in 1914 but 310 billion in late 1923) plays a key part in the dark iconography of the 20th century: Images of kindling currency and economic chaos are an essential element in our understanding of the rise of Hitler. Mr. Fergusson adds valuable nuance to a familiar story. His tale begins not, as would be popularly assumed, in the aftermath of Germany's political and military collapse in 1918 (by which point the mark had halved against the pound) but in the original decision to fund the war effort largely through debt—a decision with uncomfortable contemporary parallels (one of many in this book) tailor-made for today's end-timers.
Yet the parallels go only so far. The almost inevitably inflationary consequences of paying for a world war on credit were exacerbated by: Germany's relatively shallow capital markets, the creation of "loan banks" funded solely by a printing press that was also at the disposal of the central bank; and the muffling of warning signals in a way unimaginable in our information age. The rise in prices was obvious to all. That it was due to more than wartime shortages was not. The country's stock markets were closed for the duration of the fighting. Foreign- exchange rates were not published.
"When Money Dies" was written in the early 1970s for a British audience. Inflation was accelerating fast, and London's political class was at a loss about what to do. Mr. Fergusson's book (which began as a series of newspaper articles) reflected the growing national alarm over inflation and hinted that price stability would not be won back without more focus on the quantity of money in circulation. With monetarist ideas just beginning to enter mainstream British political discourse, the Havenstein of "When Money Dies"—a printing-press banker supposedly unaware of the connection between soaring inflation and roaring money supply—made a useful villain.

Very Early In My Life It Was Too Late

The Lover is fraught with a tension and an unburdened yearning that makes it fairly crackle with breaking energy. It is a most extraordinary journey along a winding river of passion. It ultimately flows out into the sea, that vast accumulation of experience where Duras resolves her story.

Duras treats the mother's madness ironically, with a melancholy understanding and generosity of spirit that dispels revulsion and arouses pity. The mother is not loathsome, but innocent, a victim. She has been done in by the harshness of the world, and her daughter is strangely sympathetic.

I finished The Lover over the weekend. It's a very short novel, more like a novella, really, at 115 pages, and a fascinating read. If you're interested in the novel, you should check out Litlove's post on Duras. There she discusses The Lover plus Duras' life and reputation.

It's a story about a girl of fifteen who lives in Indochina with a difficult, poor family -- her mother and two brothers -- and who has an affair with older Chinese man. But the novel doesn't stay focused solely on the affair; it skips around in time, telling stories of the narrator's later life in France and of what happens to her family members. We watch her as she realizes she wants to be a writer, and as she struggles with her love/hate relationship with her mother, and we see all this from different perspectives in time. At the beginning of the novel Duras describes the beginning of the affair, and at the novel's end she describes the lovers' fate, but in between, Duras takes us to many different years, often abruptly with rapid switches.

But while the girl merely abides her mother, she loves her younger brother poetically, without reserve, though with some sadness and condesension. He is beautiful but not bright, romantic but dull-witted, but terribly fragile. Sadly, she knows, her brother, in all his wild, mysterious appeal, is like a glorious blossom that blooms overnight, then dies the next day.

The girl also loves her older brother, no matter that he's brutal, corrupt -- a crude, dissolute man, stupidly dependent on his mother and sister -- a wastrel. And still she loves him, even as she fears him, because, in a different way, like his mother and his brother, he is helpless.

The girl loves the man who possesses her, her lover. Their love is erotic, immediate, carnal, unrestrained. It is physical, tumultuous, and devastating. Their love encompasses the sweating of bodies, tears flowing out at orgasm, and the rumpled, spent sheets of sex.

The girl loves other young women, especially the beautiful, remote, 17-year-old Helene Lagonelle. This love eclipses all her other loves, even that for her younger brother. It is the aching, gnawing, impossibly unfulfilling love of desire:

I sit on the bench . I'm worn out by the beauty of Helene Lagonelle's body lying against mine . . . . Even the body of my younger brother, like that of a little coolie, is as nothing beside this splendor.

The novel is generally considered highly autobiographical in nature. In c. 1983, the unnamed narrator, an aged woman living in Paris, considers her history as a fifteen-year-old girl living in French Indochina during c. 1929. Her father was a colonial officer and her family.

The Thirteenth Tale By Diane Setterfield Is One Such Gripping, Skillfully-told Story

The grip of a story is a powerful thing, a compulsion that at once pleases and binds the reader as she meets the characters whose lives she must follow until their destinies are revealed and their problems resolved. The grip of a story skillfully told is another thing altogether, when not just curiosity compels the reader, but also compassion. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is one such gripping, skillfully-told story.

It is a story set in a lonely English countryside of indeterminate time, populated by characters that would be very comfortable in a Bronte or Dickensian novel. Indeed, Ms. Setterfield, a first-time published author, has a style very reminiscent of those classic writers. It grips because the characters are mysterious yet powerfully motivated, the plot is masterfully constructed, and the seeming contrast between the desolateness of the setting and the complexity of the story so intriguing.

The book centers primarily around the lives of Vida Winters, a prolifically-published but enigmatic author, and Margaret Lea, an amateur and unknown biographer to whom Ms. Winters finally reveals her life story, the purported “Thirteenth Tale.” This tale is woven as various supporting characters, primarily family members, are introduced and developed, and while one is intrigued by their lives, one wonders what they have to do with Ms. Winters. They are characters with rudimentary, strange personalities and hints of deep, very dark pasts. They all contribute to the story equally, one thinks until the end, when it is revealed that the story in fact revolves entirely around a critical, unexpected few. Ms. Lea narrates the overarching story, the one that includes her meager, mysterious life, which is similar in a critical way that neither she nor Ms. Winters suspects, and it is through the discovery of that common element that Ms. Lea is revealed to the reader as both a foil and a friend of Ms. Winters.

The plot is masterfully constructed, presenting itself as a mystery right off when Ms. Winters invites Ms. Lea to her estate, and then proceeding through a series of interviews between the two, in which a horrific past that had been deftly withheld for many years is revealed. The intertwining elements, interactions between Ms. Lea and various, seemingly-unconnected people, become the subtle means by which the story is brought together. One thinks Ms. Setterfield might delight too much in the use of red herrings, until one witnesses the rapid braiding in of those people and details into one thick, powerful story. The atmosphere is very Bronte-esque, all lonely English moors, desolate estates, and conflicted people, but with enough distinct detail to make it original and convincing.

You can tell that Ms. Setterfield truly enjoys the art of storytelling; she is not just in love with words. She writes herself that “the 13th Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children.”

The book hinges on the story of Miss Winter's life. Miss Winter who is shamelessly an amalgam of Daphne Du Maurier and Agatha Christie, including all the creepy bits of Daphne Du Maurier's past that it's best not to dwell on. Miss Winter is an inveterate liar. She can never tell the truth, so when she does tell the truth there is a key fact omitted. A fact that is obvious to anyone familiar with this genre. The story about the girls, if you pay close attention shows a story of not just the mentioned twins, but a story of three girls. Yes, that is the big "secret." Three not two. The ghost is just another little girl, who happens to be a cousin or perhaps half sibling to the twins and could pass for either one of them and is probably born of rape.

I should probably mention I am now going on to spoil other books for you too, The Woman in White being the first up. The "Woman in White" being the illegitimate daughter of the heroine's father, and therefore her half sibling, mimics the girls relationship to each other in The Thirteenth Tale. The evilness of the twins is seen as similar to The Turn of the Screw, while the godsend governess is Jane Eyre, oh, and of course, the house is then destroyed by fire. Here's an idea Diane Setterfield, try to write something original. Don't jumble all these other books together, reference them and then make the reader wish they where reading them instead of your choppy writing style with made up words like "twinness." Don't care if it's in the Urban Dictionary, it's not in the real one and sounds stupid.

The twinness more than anything is what got on my nerves. The changes of "We" to "I." Which I could easily see without the writer going, hey, did you see that. In fact Setterfield seemed so insecure in her own powers of weaving red herrings and hints throughout the book the she went out of the way to say "Hey, you caught that right?" and if you didn't, "Women in White, cough cough." Well, yes, I did, I'm not an idiot, by the way, I just started your book and there's three girls not two, this better not be what the next 300 pages is building up to.

Of course it was. Also if I have to hear one more thing about the mystical bonds of twins I may vomit.
Margaret always felt alone because she had a twin that her parents never told her about. Boo hoo, confront your parents and move on with you life. The only character I think I could spend any time with was the cat Shadow... too bad he has to live with Margaret. Also, why do you always drink hot cocoa? Don't appear to own a computer and then have a weird angel/ghost hallucination at the end? Why Margaret? WHY!?!

Stranger In A Strange Land Is A Great Flawed American Novel

Two years after his novel Starship Troopers, which incurred charges that he was a militarist, Heinlein offered up Stranger in a Strange Land, which would establish him as a free love guru of the hippie generation. That must be like attending West Point in the morning, and leading a protest at Berkeley in the afternoon. Certainly somebody must be confused here—either Heinlein or his critics?
But those who try to force Heinlein into an ideological corner are missing half the fun. This is science fiction, after all, and it is supposed to be provocative. Does anyone really think Asimov wanted to live as a citizen on the Foundation planet of Trantor? Was Herbert advocating large sandworms as his preferred form of mass transit? Did Burgess go out tolchocking with his droogs? Hardly! But Heinlein’s narrative voice is so powerful and insinuating, readers are tempted to read his fictions as manifestos for a better way of life.

For those familiar with the work of Rudyard Kipling, the story begins in somewhat familiar fashion, and apparently was inspired by Heinlein's then wife Ginny, who suggested a science fiction twist on the Jungle Book stories. This was in 1949, but it was not actually until 1961 and after a number of false starts that Heinlein was to finish the mowgli-like tale of a human raised by Martians. As the sole unexpected progeny of a first disastrous Martian expedition, Valentine Michael (Mike) Smith is returned to earth 25 years later as a young man with no concept of what it is to be human. Mike is basically Martian, and not only has an entirely Martian philosophy to life, but some seriously superhuman abilities.

Heinlein sets up this portion of the story with considerable style, dropping his neophyte hero into an alien world of politics and business, for by a twist of the law, Mike may just technically own the entire planet Mars, lock stock and barrel. Confronted by those who would attempt to cheat him of this inheritance, he is badly in need of some friends and protectors, and finds these in the shape of several wildly differing characters. Gillian (Jill) Boardman is a nurse at the hospital where Mike is incarcerated, and after a chance meeting with the technically incommunicado man from Mars, becomes increasingly interested in his plight, especially when it becomes clear the authorities are peddling a fake man from mars on the television news.

But Smith is as innocent as a babe in the Martian woods, and only the intervention of a group of new-found friends prevents him from handing over these rights. With the help of journalist Ben Caxton, nurse Gillian Boardman and lawyer Jubal Harshaw, among others, Smith is sprung from his hospital internment and assisted in securing his fabulous wealth. We have seen this plot twist before—for example, in serious fiction such as Dostoevsky’s The Idiot or its popular film equivalent Forrest Gump: the naïve but good-hearted simpleton overcomes the scheming and obstacles of an indifferent or hostile society.

This part of the story might have made for a reasonably interesting novel in its own right. But Heinlein is merely warming up for his main act. Once Valentine Michael Smith is rich and free to reach for all the gusto he can, he sets up a free love organization—sort of a cross between Amway, a swingers party and a UFO cult. I’m not sure what wavelengths Heinlein was tapping into when he wrote this novel in the 1950s and early 1960s—after all Esalen would not be founded until the year after the novel was published, bra-burning wouldn’t kick in for another seven years, and the Summer of Love was not even the glimmer of a wisp of a dream. But our author was clearly wired into the impending social changes that would sweep the country in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.

To some degree, Heinlein helped pave the way. And he certainly contributed to the jargon and concepts of the time. He gave us the word “grok” (a Martian term meaning to understand in a deep and thorough way)—a veritable gift to all later Scrabble players and crossword puzzle constructors. He anticipated the water bed, an essential accoutrement for all those under the sway of flower power. He invented the water sharing ritual fifteen years before Perrier opened up its first US office. Yes, he may have been old enough to join AARP, but Heinlein knew more about the essence of the Sixties generation than any of their parents were able to grok.

When Ben Caxton is presented with an opportunity to engage in a tryst with Mike and Jill, he flees in horror and confusion, and again one can't help but think this is mirroring some inner demons at work in the mind of Heinlein. That by the end of the novel, Mike has founded a commune of free thinking and free loving disciples speaks volumes, though if Heinlein manages to throw off most of his shackles, he can't quite divorce himself from one particular prejudice of his times. To his credit, he tries very hard to present his female characters in an enlightened manner, giving them power and intelligence, but beneath the surface lurks an old fashioned male chauvinist and as such he can't seem to help building them up only to knock them down again. He never has his male characters be blatantly unpleasant to the women, but the patronising attitude is often demeaning in the extreme and what is written as jovial banter often reads as a fetish with physical (not violent) domination.

In conclusion, Stranger in a Strange Land is a great flawed American novel. The prose is certainly dated in a rather charming way, and the plot gets lost toward the middle in navel inspecting introspection, but there are moments throughout that will shock and antagonise the reader, which is certainly the mark of a powerful author at work. The ending is a touch bizarre, and the last page in particular should have been ripped out at the editorial stage leaving behind a far more satisfying ending, but this is part and parcel of the passion this novel engenders, and so in a way this flaw, like all the others, can be forgiven and perhaps even groked in the fullness of time.

Nineteen Minutes Is One Of Those Topical Novels

Nineteen Minutes is the story of a massacre that takes place in a high school. Author Jodi Picoult implements an “it takes a village” type of approach to analyze and dissect how this crime occurred in the high school of the small town of Sterling, New Hampshire.

The book’s first chapter tells the story of the day of the shooting that leaves ten people dead and nineteen wounded. Shooter, Peter Houghton is not the sort of teen one would normally associate with a violent crime. He’s quiet, intelligent, sensitive, shy and introverted, the only son of two very successful parents—Lewis, a college professor and Laci, a midwife.

The first chapter establishes the shooter’s identity beyond a doubt, and the rest of the novel goes back and forth in time to pivotal, influential incidents that lead to the shooting. I have to hand it to Picoult. She never loses control of the narrative—in spite of the fact that the details are revealed by increments through crucial events. The author presents a refreshing premise: a high school shooting is instigated by far more complicated forces than the lyrics of some rock band.

Nineteen Minutes is one of those topical novels, and unfortunately high school shootings certainly hit the headlines far more than we wish. All of the shootings raise some terrible questions: how did this happen? Were there warning signs? How did the shooter access weaponry? Where were the parents of the shooter or shooters during all of this? In dissecting the shooting and examining the events that lead up to the fateful day, Nineteen Minutes paints Houghton as a victimized youth, so bullied and tormented by high school jocks, that in a fractured mental state, he returns to school armed to the teeth.

Picoult examines every angle of the story—the defense attorney, the police detective, the parents of the shooter, the aftermath in the town, etc. Every possible angle is examined, and for the most part the shallow characters are entirely unbelievable. For example, there’s judge Alex Cormier who’s such a bimbo that she imagines she can try the case against Houghton in spite of the fact that her 17-year-old daughter was at the scene and injured during the shooting. Before we can say "Conflict of Interest" we are supposed to swallow Alex’s chest beating dilemma—should she try the case or step down? If the trial is good for her career, is it good for her daughter? These sorts of navel-gazing dilemmas are rife throughout the novel. In another example, the police detective (another unbelievable character) gets the hots for Judge Cormier. So there’s more agony … should he date her? What if people find out? Will a romantic relationship with the judge impact the detective, blah, blah, blah. In trying to answer all of the questions left in the aftermath of the shooting, Nineteen Minutes is an ambitious novel, but the novel’s weepie, overly sensitive style is grating.  Stuffed full of sappy, trite lines, the novel hits every cliché. Here’s Alex Cormier in the hospital at her daughter’s bedside:

    “We will go to the rain forest, or the pyramids, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles. We will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh, talk and confess. We will.”

It’s no doubt valuable and certainly fascinating to examine what makes someone snap into violence, and perhaps a different type of novel could examine the situation in a credible way, but Nineteen Minutes, emphasizing the emotional fallout of the shooting, is too superficial and shallow to even begin to delve deeply into such a complicated situation. If the reviews on Amazon are any indicator, then I certainly have the minority opinion here. As of today, Amazon boasts 395 reviews—230 of which are glowing 5-star homages; 98 are 4-star reviews, 43 are 3-star reviews, while at the bottom of the barrel are 15-2 star reviews and 9-1 star reviews. Oh well.

I realize the novel is fiction, full of fictional characters that don’t exist, and I actually have no problem whatsoever with the idea that everything here is fiction. To me, most of the fictional characters are very superficially drawn, very one-dimensional and unbelievable. But given the notoriety of real-life high school shootings, I found it impossible not to recall the horror of Columbine, and draw some similarities. I consider it most unfortunate that the novel seems determined to paint Peter as a victim—from his first day of kindergarten when someone grabs his Superman lunchbox. While it’s true that he is the recipient of horrible bullying, the author goes to great lengths to make her point by painting some of the victims as monstrous. Matt Royston, for example, one of the high school jocks in the book is obnoxious enough without adding the other dimensions that slip in as the chapters mount. Personally, I think it’s a cheap shot to paint the victims as somehow "asking for it." It’s certainly valid to analyze what pushes some people over the brink, but Nineteen Minutes goes overboard in its portrayals and its agenda to discuss peer bullying. In spite of the fact this was fiction, the novel left a bad taste in my mouth.

Finally, the novel’s resolution felt forced. This was the first time that, on reaching the end, it felt like Picoult had painted herself into a corner regarding resolution. Even though there are very few happy resolutions to her other novels, there always seemed to be a note of hope for the futures of her characters, but the attempt here was hollow, predictable. It’s perfectly okay for a novel to end on a pessimistic note, as long as it is sincere, as long as it rings true to the characters and the story. Though most of the novel was compelling, its tendency to tread water with the unnecessary and the overcomplicated caused it to drag more than it should.

The Fountainhead, By Ayn Rand Is A Complex Philosophical Novel

The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand is a complex philosophical novel about being honest with oneself. A concept expressed by Hamlet in six words took Ayn Rand 700 pages to explain. “To thine own self be true” is read, remembered, and quoted by millions, but few understand the conceptual implications of the phrase to the extent articulated by Ms Rand.

The idea that man becomes great through his or her own powers of accomplishment and capacity to create permeates the book as Howard Roark decidedly stands up to a society that constantly rewards inept ability. Peter Keating, a college acquaintance of Roark’s, is the poster child of social achievement by means of complete and utter inability. After reading one of Toohey’s books Keating “… was certain that it was profound, because he didn’t understand it.” Keating was the perfect victim.

After years of avoiding it I finally had to read this book, since Thoughts lent it to me saying its one of her favorites. I am talking of “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand, the much revered classic. I had attempted reading this when I was in school or college, found it immensely boring and thrown it away.

And now? Well, sadly my opinion has not changed drastically. I did enjoy the book to a great extent mostly in the first half. But after around 250 pages or so, it starts going through highly philosophical corridors where I lost my way. I am guessing I am the last person to read this book but still here goes. To put it briefly, The Fountainhead follows the life of architects Howard Roark and Peter Keating. Enmeshed with their stories are the lives of newspaper critic Ellsworth Toohey and their love interest Dominique Francon.

It is through Roark that Rand propounds her theory of objectivism, the following of individualistic pursuits as against collectivism. And I did find the beginning extremely interesting. I was fascinated by Roark, a seemingly cold, emotionless and terse figure who refuses to design buildings which conformed to popular designs. Roark worships creativity and individualism and he struggles to maintain his values in an age that blindly follows the past. Erecting buildings based on past classics such as the Parthenon or decorating a building with superfluous trimmings like angel figures imitating Renaissance structures, is something he abhors. Keating too, is passionate about his work, to the point of being callous. He meets Ellsworth Toohey and the critic is impressed enough to write a column on him. However, just after he informs Keating of this news, he is shot at. Keating’s immediate reaction, “If he’s dead, does that mean they won’t publish his column tomorrow?”

But while Peter Keating gives his clients what they want, Roark tells his clients that if he has to work on a design it cannot be altered in any way later. He lives life on his own terms and because of his almost inhuman demeanor he has few friends and fewer clients.

Into his life comes Dominique, his mirror personality and they fall passionately in love. But for reasons that I only vaguely understood Dominique marries Keating with the full mutual understanding of Roark. The confession of his love, one of the rare and fleeting glimpses of humaneness in Roark’s manner, is in fact touching to read. “We never need to say anything to each other when we’re together. This is – for the time when we won’t be together. I love you Dominique…. To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’.”

Frankly, after this Rand lost me. I never fully comprehended Dominique’s character. She goes on to marry Gail Wynand too after she divorces Keating and by then I was groping around for meanings. At the end of the book, Roark remained my favorite. He remains pretty much unchanged and I absolutely loved some of his ideals. One of his thoughts that instantly was burnt into me.

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder?”

The essence of the book is in Roark’s long speech in the court right at the end of the book, which says we shouldn’t blindly copy the past and fail to utilize the energy of the zeitgeist. I was reminded of T S Eliot’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, written around the time Rand’s book is set, in the 1920s. Eliot says the poet must take traditions and ideals from the past and express it in his own way thus making it unique. But here Rand overrides that completely, going one step further saying the past should not be followed at all, through Roark’s voice.

I know I haven’t done justice to the book in the review mostly because long parts of it simply zinged by. And thus, Rand has not changed my life in a radical manner as she has done for many people who have been recommending this book to me. I agree with most of the points that reader Navin Quadros says in his review and I have to leave it at that. And yes, like Roark, I stick to my opinion/ideas about the book, though contrary to the majority. At least, Rand taught me that much.

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn Is Certainly A Great Pick For Young Adults

Everyone likes coming of age novels. And while there are many titles to choose from, one can never commit a mistake if the choice lies with a classical title such as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The famous novel of the American writer is known all over the world. For many kids, the characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and their adventures become a source of inspiration — lighting up their imaginations and their desire to explore the world.

Like most of you, I must have read both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn more than once. I have seen films based on the books, but it was not until recently when I found out that Audible.com released a new audio-book: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, read by Elijah Wood, that I was filled with a desire to revisit both my childhood and the wonderful world created by Twain. Furthermore, I realized that through the creation of the character of Huckleberry Finn, with his penchant for mischief, sense of right and wrong (which like for every other teen does not necessarily coincide with the standards set by society) and the desire to take on the world — Mark Twain has accurately portrayed the coming of age process in which youthful innocence is challenged by the “increasingly technological and complex word of adulthood”.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn An audio book review Coming of age book coming of age book review For the unlikely theskykid reader among you who doesn’t know the story, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a coming of age narrative told in the first person from the perspective of Huck Finn – a young boy in his adolescence who is both a protagonist and an observer. Elijah Wood did a wonderful job narrating the story, capturing Huck’s spirit and presenting it to the listener in an original and believable manner thanks to his youthful voice and use of the Southern accent of the story protagonists. While one would think that it is not so important, after you spend some time listening, you will feel just as if you have traveled back in time and are sailing down the Mississippi River on that raft alongside Huck and Jim. Some of you may remember Elijah Wood’s portrayal of the character whose story he is now narrating, from the 1993 Disney film The Adventures of Huck Finn. Without a doubt, his experience in portraying Huck Finn in the film played its role, allowing him (and the listeners of the story) to identify with the compassionate thirteen-year-old boy.

To complete this audio book review, I would like to quote Mary B. O’Shea, who summarized the Huckleberry Finn character in her essay Crazy From the Heart – Southern Boys and Coming of Age.

Indeed, the real depth of this novel seems to be in the development of the relationship between Jim and Huck–with Jim eventually taking a largely paternal role for Huck, who, of course, doesn’t recognize this in any way. Huck also develops a greater sense of self, fighting for Jim’s freedom, and, not questioning racism or slavery, but choosing to go against it for Jim because of their personal relationship; however ironically, Huck considers his own behavior in helping Jim escape to be ‘wicked.’ The novel, typical of Twain, is rife with irony, sarcasm, and satire, all of which, to my thinking is obvious, if often entertaining and sometimes, even, thought-provoking.

Of course, maybe my skepticism/dislike has everything to do with Twain’s disparaging comments about Jane Austen. I can’t honestly say… In any case, I can’t say that I wholly disliked this novel; I’m just not sure why everyone makes such a fuss over it. I think it’s blatant ignorance to ban the book (you’ve absolutely missed the point, if you believe that), but I’m also unconvinced that it’s crucial reading for every 16 year old in the country despite it’s practically unquestioned place in the canon and, moreover, in the High School American Lit classroom.

Wonderful Book-Who Moved My Cheese?

It is very well said that “In the present scenario it’s not the fittest that survives’ instead the glory is reserved for the adaptable”. ‘Change is inevitable’ but we resist change. This book helps us to cope up with change. The change can be at workplace, in family life or anywhere. People resist change because they are comfortable with their routine habits. This book tells us not to resist change but to handle change in a very lucid manner. If you adapt, you can fit in any environment and survive.

"Who moved my cheese" is an amazing way to deal with change in your work and your life was written by Dr. Spencer Johnson in 1998. This book has stayed in the New York best seller list and has remained on the Publishers Weekly hardcover notification list. Dr. Johnson has also written the book ‘”Yes” or “No”: The guide to better decisions. Dr. Spencer Johnson M.D. is also co-author of One Minute Manager with Ken Blanchard.

The book tells the story of two mice (Sniff and Scurry) and two little people (Hem and Haw) captive in a labyrinth. In the book ‘’Who moved my cheese” is cheese a metaphor for everything you want in life. In real life everything what mice want is really cheese but for the two little people cheese is a metaphor for security, success, happiness and financial safety. If we find ‘’our cheese’’ we prefer to cling to the cheese. The cheese-stock is exhaustible, a company reorganises, a partner can leave us, in short uncertainties robbery us. The labyrinth in the story represents where we spend time to look for what we want in life. It can be in your relationship, the organization you work and more.

What's very important in the story that the mice and the little people find at one day cheese in the Cheese Station C. They are all very happy with the finding and day after day they come back to the Cheese Station C to get the cheese. There are differ between the mice and the little people: the mice always explore their surrounding when they are in the neighbourhood of Cheese Station C. The little people where very comfortable with the whole situation and this feels like security, success, happiness and financial safety.

Then the story turns: the cheese disappeared from Cheese Station C. The mice and the people react very differently.

Mice: Sniff and Scurry
The mice are surprised but they choose a new direction to find new cheese. They didn’t analyse the situation because change happens. When change happens they know how to deal with it and they immediately start a search for a new Cheese Station. And after a few days they find the new Cheese Station with cheese that was even better than the old cheese.

The little people: Hem and Haw
The little people react very emotional, because Cheese Station C felt like their home. They were shocked, outraged, scared and don’t know what to do. In their comfort they didn’t notice that the cheese was reducing. They felt that the situation was unfair, they stayed in Cheese Station C and hoped that the cheese come back. But the cheese was gone.. After a period Haw felt weak and decides to look for other cheese. He was very afraid of what might happen to him, he was afraid of the unknown. During his seek he was writing life lessons on the walls of the labyrinth like ‘’ Çhange happens, Anticipate Change, Enjoy Change’’. Him stayed in Cheese Station C, it is not clear if he ever reach the new Cheese Station.

The first part of the book former classmates talk about a class reunion about change and how to deal with them in their lives. The second part is the story about the mice and the little people and how they react on the changes in their lives. The third part of the book brings you back to reality in a playful way. It gives you insights in how change processes work at people

Reflection
I like the book because of it’s simple language, it’s metaphors. The book is easy to read and makes you think about yourself and the way you behave and react in change situations. The book deals with fear and show you how to deal with it to overcome yourself. The changes can give you also new opportunities, both businesslike as private. For me sometimes change is scary but the book shows you that change can also be fun. The book gives seems very simple but there are a lot of things in life we do not see anymore. We take it for granted. A few things were very important insights for me after reading this book:
1. If you don’t change you ‘’die’’.
2. If you keep an eye on the little changes you are able to accept the bigger changes more easy.
3. Old beliefs doesn’t lead you to the new ‘stuff’’.
4. If you let go of the fear you will be free
5. In a change situation you have to find new paths for everything you want in life.

For me reading the story was perfectly timed because I just lost my job and I was in a change process myself. The book helped me to view the situation with a helicopter view and I could see the change process in perspective. The book made me smile because of the metaphors and the simple way the author wrote about these difficult and complex change processes.

Value of the book for Imagineering
Imagineering is ‘’a design approach to value co-creation making use of imagination. It’s a way to create a new appealing ‘’lens’’ to find ‘’a blue ocean of uncontested market space’’ that inspires all stakeholders to co-create’’ (Nijs, 2009). Imagineering is a way to approach organisation transformation. As Imagineers we use the Roadmap (Inspiration phase, Creation phase, Exploration phase and Organisation phase) to realise transformation in organisations. Changes are in every part of the Roadmap during the transformation. Alexander de Vries mentioned in one of his lectures: ‘’You have to be in a nothing to loose modus, then you are free’’.This is exactly the lesson I learned from this book. You don’t need control, you need trust for transformations. When you are still in control, you are not driving fast enough. Trust make people grow, but trust is scary for a lot of people. So you need guts to create trust. Trust starts with purpose. Why are we here? Imagineering is a construct which also is able to construct trust.

As an Imagineer / change leader you first have to know yourself to reach something. The book helps you to understand how you react on changes, you are able to compare yourself with the mice and the little people. From a Imagineering point of view it is important to start from a positive thing in change. If we look to the story ‘’Who moved my cheese” the mice are positive to the change and the little people are scared. So in this story we can learn a lot from the mice.

"The Stranger" By Albert Camus Has Been A Famous Reading Staple

Albert Camus' The Stranger has been a famous reading staple for over 50 years for good reason. First, it is succinct in both story and message, though that message may be arguable, giving it that much more fire, life, and so, literary value.

The Stranger is a tale of an absolutely senseless murder that ends a nearly senseless life, that of the killer, Meursault (we the readers know very little about the life of the Arab man murdered in this tale). We are somewhat made to feel pity for Meursault, though this sympathy is at times very difficult to summon, given the man's anomic nature.

Yet, despite the main death in the tale, there is another death which begins it all. Before page 1 has expired, the main character Meursault discusses his mother's death, funeral, and plans to be back home within a day. His boss may not be pleased at his sudden departure, he explains, but accepts Meursaults sudden departure from the city. Almost immediately, Meursault reveals his near-antipathy for family and the burden of employment. This reminds one of both post-modernist attitudes brought on by monies attained by work and the modern "first world" tendency of "hiding away" or neglecting our elderly. Moreover, it harkens to Marxist ideas of alienation from work and possibly, whether Marx was right or not, the very real, resultant apathy that so many have exhibited for work in the 20th and 21st centuries.

However, despite his callous attitude, Meursault does hold a vigil over the body of his mother. Yet, the reader may suspect that he is simply going through the motions expected of him by society -namely, feighning concern for his recently deceased mother. This is attested by the line that reads "I hadn't been in the country for ages, and I caught myself thinking what an agreeable walk I could have had, if it hadn't been for [the death of] Mother." And on page 80 there is a shocking statement: "All normal people, I added as on after-thought, had more or less desired the death of those they love, at some time or another." This is shocking, but is it true, and if so, for what percentage of people? A greater number than are in prison, perhaps? Or a greater number yet, in this world of dwindling resources and (possibly) increasing selfishness and narcissism.

Of course, one might refute any idea of the narrator's insensitivity by the very same line, as it was his mother's death that would not allow for a more tranquil walk in the countryside. Without the added words "the death of" bracketed into the quote, the interpretations may be found on a spirited spectrum of differences in opinion. It is left to the reader to decide which is more the truth.

Another interpretation, albeit at a stretch of the imagination is this: by the death of his mother, the main character is freed of manifold constraints placed upon him by his employment, his city, his grudging commitment to his girlfriend, and, as symbolized by the beach, the waves, the ocean, the sun and the Arab in the throes of lassitude, by life and even, ultimately, by Meursault himself. If this speaks to the individual, it is probably the desire of Camus.

I'd expected to read a modernized version of "Crime and Punishment," except that The Stranger, besides being more succinct, doesn't delve into the premeditation of Dostoyevsky's dreary masterpiece. In reality, the murder committed is quite spontaneous.

The tale is existential, a bit nihilistic, and heavily absurdist; if imagination be permitted to work as one reads the final pages of this novella one senses the futility of existence that we all know from time to time, the maddening quiet just before dusk no matter the time of day, and the core-rotting sadness we all must feel eventually.

Some points of interest to notice are the similarities in maltreatment that the neighbor has for his dog, and the same similar unconcerned neglect that the narrator shows to his girlfriend.

Also, the almost surreal, mentally blurred expression of the main character walking on a beach. This possesses an almost cinemagraphic visual that offers the mind perfect images of excessive sun, excessive alcohol, and a great disenchantment with life that the narrator possesses and expresses candidly, even perfectly.

A very quick read, not only for its short nature but as it reads well, and smoothly, this is a fine book that can be read in transit on a train or bus for just 15 minutes a day, coming to conclusion in less than a week. It may just make you think about your own life.

Anna Karenina By Leo Tolstoy Tells Of The Doomed Love

Summary:
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisises of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.

Review:
Along with Gone With the Wind, my grandmother also suggested that I read Anna Karenina, which was a book she loved when she was younger. Since I really enjoyed Gone With the Wind, I thought I would give Anna Karenina a try. Though this book was just as long as Gone With the Wind, Anna Karenina was not quite as good.

I always feel bad if I don't completely love classic literature. I mean, there's a reason that this book is famous, right? But I have to remember that, like with books today, I'm not going to love every book that is considered a classic. I did like Anna Karenina. But it was just so slow and long that it made it a chore to read.

The book follows a lot of different characters and gives stories all from their points of view. Luckily for the reader, all the characters are inter-related and so their stories coincide. This made it easier to follow everything that was going on. Despite the fact that the book follows about seven or eight different people, only two are considered to be protagonists: Anna Karenina and Levin. Anna Karenina is, obviously, the adulturous wife who cannot seem to find happiness no matter what she does and Levin is a wealthy farmer who searches for the meaning of life and really wants a family. These two characters only come into contact once or twice but Levin's wife is Anna's brother's sister-in-law, so they are kind of related.

It's hard to explain the plot with so many different things happening, but at the core Anna Karenina is about Anna's illicit relationship with Count Vronsky. It was interesting to read about adultery in 19th century Russia, where somewhat of a double standard occurs (it's okay for a husband to cheat but not a wife). With this being a classic and all, there's a lot of symbolism and imagery, which I had to look on SparkNotes to really understand.

If you decide to read Anna Karenina, be warned that it is a huge undertaking. It's long and slow but still an interesting novel if you like books about history, relationships and Russia.

Top Ten Books-You Must Own Them

If people are buying a book, it must be good, right? Or when it comes to modern ones, they could just have a good marketing campaign, in which case we should reward those who came up with it anyway. Let's have a look on top ten books that made a killing and sort them based on the number of sold copies:
1. The Lord of the Rings

• Author: J. R. R. Tolkien
• # of sold copies: 150 million
• First edition: 1954

Although this series has become even more famous after being filmed, it's fair to say that the tale of Middle Earth is an ingenious work of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. It reaches deep inside of us and plays on our imagination, wishes and inspiration.

The story of one little hobbit named Frodo Baggins succeeding where immortal elves or noble kings have failed gives us a very truthful message that literally nothing is impossible. Tolkien did a wonderful job in creating a living world and it will take a long time before his legacy is forgotten - if it will ever come to that.

2. Dream of the Red Chamber

• Author: Cao Xueqin
• # of sold copies: 100 million
• First edition: 1759

Let's not forget that China is indeed a big country and consequently, so being successful on the Chinese market has its charms. Although I personally never heard about this book in particular before, the numbers do not lie and over one hundred million sold copies seized the second place in our list.

Dream of the Red Chamber is one of the Four Great Classical Novels, as they call them in China. It depicts traditional Chinese cuisine, mythology, proverbs etc. It is based on the author's own experience with the Chinese aristocracy in the 18th century.

3. And Then There Were None

• Author: Agatha Christie
• # of sold copies: 100 million
• First edition: 1939

It's hardly a surprise that Agatha Christie as one of the best authors of detective novels out there made it to our top ten books list. She is well known for her excellent plots and surprising endings. She created a bit of a fuss by originally calling this book "Ten Little Niggers" - the name was changed to the current And Then There Were None so that it is not offensive towards Afro-Americans.

And what's going on in this book? Simply put, ten people of different social classes are invited to an island where they are accused of murders and they start dying, one by one - but you'll have to read it yourself, we all know it's a bad idea to talk about plots too much when it comes to detective stories.

4. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

• Author: C. S. Lewis
• # of sold copies: 85 million
• First edition: 1950

C. S. Lewis has provided us with another grand tale of unusual heroes. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is but one part of a gigantic masterpiece describing a strange world full of magic and strange creatures somehow co-existing with our own.

4 siblings named Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy enter the world of Narnia through a wardrobe, only to find out that they are both persona non grata and expected saviors. In case you were thinking that Chronicles of Narnia and LOTR are a bit similar at times, keep in mind that Lewis and Tolkien were very close friends, in fact Lewis helped Tolkien with a few passages in LOTR.

5. The Da Vinci Code

• Author: Dan Brown
• # of sold copies: 80 million
• First edition: 2003

Having a successful book release in the 21st century no longer depends simply on writing a good book, but also on the marketing and distributing channels. Dan Brown and his team obviously managed that, because selling 80 million copies over 7 years is simply remarkable.

The Da Vinci Code is a mysterious story depicting a cohesion between Catholic religious beliefs and the modern world. You should fasten your seat belts before you start reading it, because the pace is quick and you could easily get off track!

6. The Alchemist

• Author: Paulo Coelho
• # of sold copies: 65 million
• First edition: 1988

"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it". I don't know how does the original in Portuguese sound, so the translation will have to suffice. The point is that Paulo Coelho tells us that if you want something real badly, you shall have it.

The Alchemist tells a story of a young shepherd boy who overcomes love and danger on his quest for a treasure. Apparently, the story is so good that it had to be translated into 67 languages and breaking a Guinness record in translations for a living author.

What might especially young people find very appealing is that Paulo Coelho encourages people to use peer to peer networks, because he perfectly understands that people are honest and they will pay for good work - eventually.

7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

• Author: J. K. Rowling
• # of sold copies: 44 million
• First edition: 2007

Yet another fairy tale made it to our list, I'm beginning to think that people might like fairy tales after all... anyway, a lot of children around the world grew up on the stories about Harry, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and Hogwarts. As expected, the final piece of the Harry Potter puzzle with its quite original name Deathly Hallows was quite successful.

Only time will tell whether the Harry Potter series has the qualities of say Lord of the Rings or it will fade with the upcoming seasons. On the other hand, no one can deny Miss Rowling a great impact on both children and their parents - that has to count for something...

8. War and Peace

• Author: Leo Tolstoy
• # of sold copies: 36 million (in the USSR)
• First edition: 1869

Leo Tolstoy, a Russian writer, decided to demonstrate his beliefs that there is some greater power forming our history. Along with the fact he didn't like popular history and being a war veteran, he then wrote one of the largest and most popular novels in the world literature, War and Peace.

This jewel among books is divided in four volumes, each being a follow up of the previous one. War and Peace has indeed a lot of characters, both fictional and real historic figures. The plot is set in the beginning of the 19th century when Napoleon invades Russia.

Interesting fact is that although War and Peace is clearly a Russian literature from a Russian author, parts of the book are written in French - probably because most of the story is focused on 5 noble families and nobility in Russia used to speak French in that particular era.
9. Think and Grow Rich

• Author: Napoleon Hill
• # of sold copies: 30 million
• First edition: 1937

There are tons of motivational books these days. Some are better, some are worse and it's up to you to choose the one that can really help you. Think and Grow Rich is probably a safe bet, because it takes a bit of ingenuity to write something everybody knows these days - only 70 years ahead.

The best way how to become successful is to find out what others did before success came to them - and that's exactly what Napoleon Hill did. According to his mentor's (A. Carnegie) advice, he studied the life paths of 16 wealthy individuals and pointed out their steps to victory.

If you're looking for personal development tools, Think and Grow Rich should be on the top of your priorities.

10. Nineteen Eighty-Four

• Author: George Orwell
• # of sold copies: 25 million
• First edition:1949

History has shown us that mankind is capable of both terrible and good things and it's a matter of conscience which side prevails. George Orwell took the liberty to tell us how what the world look like if despotic and oppressive regimes took the upper hand.

In the imaginary year 1984 the Earth is divided among three major nations which constantly wage war against each other. The main character named Winston Smith lives in Oceania ruled by one party - called The Party. Everything is scarce, basic human right and emotions are constantly being twisted and above all, The Big Brother is always watching.

Although 1984 is quite gloomy and despairing, we have to acknowledge that it's still in our "grasp" to create such a scenario. It needed to be said out loud in order to realize how absurd and sick such totalitarian practices are.

Conclusion
Reading good books makes our lives better, because it brings us new perspectives and knowledge. Wise man knows that he never knows enough and reading several of the most popular books out there is almost a cultural necessity.

 

The Most Famous Art Books

We can get a lot of knowledge from the books, books have always been a source of inspiration for all kinds of artists. Though there are endless collections of books that can be recognized for today's modern art painting, this article intends to enlist the top 5 art books that have inspired the multiple generations of art and portrait artists till date.

Renaissance Art Pop-Up Book: As the name of the book suggests, this book renders an insightful information on the art and architecture of the Renaissance era. The book also discusses the way in which the portrait artist was inspired from the Gothic art in the early Renaissance period and started creating ingenious works of art. The book also features the minutest details of the great works of art of those times like the frescoes of Giotto, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, and the works of Caravaggio.

The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy: written by Hakuin Ekaku, one of the most renowned Zen artists and this book features some of his substantial teachings and paintings and calligraphy designs. This book makes use of Buddhist images and sayings and ancient folklores to help the reader understand the concepts in an easier manner. This book is a must-buy for any artist who wants to master the painting and calligraphy skills of the Zen era that are nearly 500 years old.

The Hermitage Collections: Volume I: Treasures of World Art: This book exhibits all the collections of the Hermitage Museum that has been in existence for nearly 250 years. The eminent works of art that have been showcased through the medium of this book succeed at inspiring any newcomer to the field of art. Some of the prominent works of art that can be found in this book are Michelangelo's Crouching Boy, The Gonzaga Cameo and The Raphael Loggias.

Caravaggio: This book is based on the life of Caravaggio who was a famous Italian portrait artist in the 17th century. The paintings of Caravaggio are so inspirational that even after four decades after his death, there are many modern painters who receive inspiration from his art from photos published in this book.

The sheer beauty of art from photos printed in these books can inspire anyone to take a brush in their hand & begin painting his first strokes. The aim of listing the top 5 art books out of thousands of art books that exist in the world is of rendering the quality and value to the new artists who look up to this list as an unbiased review of the books that they have been looking for.

The Importance of Reading Books

"Knowledge is Power" - Francis Bacon

As children, we have all been persuaded to read, to "increase knowledge." At home and school, reading as a means to pursue and enhance knowledge is emphasized time and again. From when we were little, books have been a part of most of our lives, be it a Noddy or the Famous Five, Harry Porter or Oliver Twist, childhood has been a sense of wonder, of joy, of imagination. Reading is not just a means of increasing knowledge or to score marks in school, it is vital part of our lives. In later years it becomes a hobby for some of us, to be pursued in our free time, but the wonder does not cease, rather it increases manifold and broadens our horizons. Books transport us to into another world altogether, far beyond day to day life.

The joy of reading

"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read." - Abraham Lincoln.

One of our earliest joyful memories is of being read to by our parents, many of them stories that stay with us for life and shape our thinking. Fortunate is the child who continues to read, whose parents continue to encourage reading and get him books to read.

Some books just bring out a laugh and are perhaps not remembered for too long, others stay with us, widen our horizons, introduce us to ages and places unseen, encourage us to travel, to see the world, and to experience the inner-world of the author. How often we encounter a lucidly and interestingly written account of a practice, a tradition of which we thought we know, only to discover how little we actually knew of it.

Many are the books that make such an impression that we wish to read them again and again. It could be something as intricate as a mystery thriller, or a true account of an almost impossible conquering of the highest mountain, each book bring with it an insight into the working of the human mind, the challenges and how one overcomes them.


Buying a Book

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them - Horace Mann quotes (US educator, the first great American advocate of public education, 1796-1859)

With the passage of time, the many options for acquiring a book have increased. One could just walk into a bookshop and buy the book choice or visit a library and arrange to borrow it. However, for a lover of books, being able to own a book and read it at leisure is definitely the best option. The advent of technology has facilitated the internet opening up a larger vista of selections and options. One has the option of ordering a book online, downloading it or just reading it online for a fee. This is true of not just new books, but also of second hand books. There are many online websites that sell popular and valuable used books for a fraction of its original price.
If you were worried about the cost of books, choose a used book store online. You may also be able to pick up some rare gems at used book stores.

Keep reading. Books can be your best companions.

You Need To Read The Dating Book Everyday

Today, people want to know the world what to read? So, tomorrow we read the book it look like? Beijing International Book Fair this year, the development trend of the future book gives some answers.
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There are millions of dating advice books for males out there. These are the 3 that made our cut. We've selected these three relationship advice books for men based on a couple of in their merits:

If online dating is your courting way of selection, "The Online Game" may well be the bag of tricks you've been craving for. Packed stuffed with on-line relationship tips and strategies, combine these things with the inherent numbers game that may be on-line dating, and you're bound to have the women clamoring to get extra of your excellent stuff. If you happen to assume on-line courting is beautiful immediately ahead, think again.
A couple strolling hand-in-hand down a meadow full of dandelions. No longer a single particular person in sight. Simply the warbling of the songbirds and the delicate lapping of water from the local stream.
As if by prearranged signal, they stop. Slowly they turn to stand one some other and he speaks, "I like you" he softly whispers. "Me too" she blushes with intense feelings. "Will you marry me?" He asks. "Sure!" she responds breathlessly.
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Reduce The Stress Level By Reading Romance Novels

Last night I have seen a remarkable programme called Reader I Married him. It was everything aboutromance novels and their appeal to mass people. It made me to think accurately as to what comprises a romance novel.
For instance, Summerset would be described as a romantic novel as the narrative is completely focused on the love affair among Lou and Andrew but crazy about the Boy for exemplar has the romance in it, but it doesn’t comprises the entire anecdote and yet I presume it would still be bumped in the romance genus but I speculate if there is more to do with me be a feminine author more than the contents of my romance book.
The broadcaster undertook the trials with the University of Westminster to observe if reading romance novels can reduce the levels of anxiety. They took a saliva test proceeding to her doing an hour of usual work and then another test earlier to reading a romance book for an hour.
Her cortisol level were far lesser after reading the romance novel but I am little unconvinced as to whether this is due to her interpreting the romance book or just that she was executing something that was more soothing than work.
Marian Keyes made a crucial point that she did not appreciate romance novels which had the cheerful ending. It has to end where the female lead has discovered something about herself or accomplished something rather than just achieving the affectionate love of the gentleman. What do you think? Please write your opinion

Reading "Kayak Morning"

When Roger Rosenblatt's thirty-eight-year-old daughter, Amy, a pediatrician, died unexpectedly of an undetected heart condition in 2007, he and his wife of nearly fifty years moved from their home in Quogue, on the southern shore of Long Island, down to their daughter's house in Bethesda, Maryland, to help their son-in-law, a hand surgeon, take care of their three small grandchildren, then ages six, five, and one. In his beautiful memoirMaking Toast, Rosenblatt chronicled how pulling together to create a hectic, multigenerational household saved them all. Despite its heartrending subject matter, Making Toast was ultimately a hopeful, heartwarming book.

Kayak Morning, which deals with the tenaciousness of grief, is a more melancholy read, less cathartic and reassuring. It is a bereaved father's meditation on unacceptable loss. What it has going for it is searing honesty, exquisitely expressed. Discussing his earlier volume, Rosenblatt writes, "In it, I tried to suggest that the best one can do in a situation such as ours is to get on with it. I believe that still. What I failed to calculate is the pain that increases even as one gets on with it." A therapist friend tells him, "Grief comes to you all at once, so you think it will be over all at once. But it is your guest for a lifetime." The challenge, Rosenblatt comes to understand, is to transform grief into a positive force.
Always a loner, Rosenblatt takes up kayaking two and a half years after Amy's death as an escape from his hectic household -- which gathers in Quogue during the summer. Affording rare moments of solitude, his time on the water is brooding time away from the brood. Kayak Morning opens just past dawn on June 27, 2010, a few months after the publication of Making Toast. While the rest of his family -- including his wife, two grown sons, and six grandchildren -- sleep, Rosenblatt slides his olive-green kayak into the water and paddles out to Penniman's Creek. Over the next seven hours (and 145 pages), he explores both his own life and that of the half-mile-long creek, letting his thoughts and boat meander, "bob[bing] along in solitary confinement" as the "tides rummage with the pebbles."
Rosenblatt's observations about his palindromic vessel, literature, and his own painful feelings are sometimes somber but always rich. He comments, "You can't always make your way in the world by moving up. Or down, for that matter. Boats move laterally on water, which levels everything. It is one of the two great levelers." Rosenblatt is practiced enough to know that his statement is far more powerful without spelling out the second leveler.
As Rosenblatt's reflections make clear, it wasn't as if he lived a life sheltered from painful realities before Amy's death. The author of fifteen books, including Children of War, Rosenblatt recollects grim assignments reporting on Cambodian girls in Thai refugee camps, patients in a Beirut mental hospital, and children of Hutus and surviving Tutsis staring out windows in a UN camp in Tanzania. He recalls the many U.S. presidents he has met, including an affable Ronald Reagan, about whom he wrote the "Man of the Year" story for Time magazine.
Amid his anger at God and disgust with his own weakness and self-absorption, his thoughts frequently turn to literature, including works about fathers and daughters (King Lear, Emma, Washington Square) and "crazy old men in boats: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Hemingway's Old Man, Captains Ahab, Nemo, McWhirr, Wolf Larsen, Queeg, Bligh." Commenting that "Only literary jerks like me think of Moby-Dick in Starbucks," he adds, "Seeing the world through a book darkly. I'm not sure it's good for you."
In other words, all that intellectualizing and introspection may not be as effective a path to happiness as just doing what you have to do: "Too much is made of the value of plumbing the depths. The nice thing about kayaking is that you ride the surface, which is akin to dealing with the task at hand." Still, for certain people -- Rosenblatt among them -- plumbing the depths is inescapable. And writing, which, like kayaking, requires "precision and restraint," is what keeps him afloat, even if it is not as effective at making "sorrow endurable, evil intelligible, justice desirable, and love possible" as he would wish.
Drifting on the water, he realizes that "Art does not make up a life. Experience does not make up a life. And death does not make up a life either." What does, then? Love. Kayak Morning, with this hopeful epiphany, leaves us looking forward to Rosenblatt's next update on how he and his extended family are getting on with the business of making "somewhere out of nowhere," triumphing over the devastations of abiding grief through enduring love.

The Man Within My Head Book Review

It's difficult for an American to read Graham Greene without feeling insufficiently skeptical of the world. Compared to his world-weary Brits, we're such Pollyannas! We keep believing, more or less, in our families and our friends and even, fitfully, our country. Almost as though we're constitutionally resistant to disenchantment, we're cheerfully undefended against the countless layers of darkness that were Greene's chosen realm to dwell in and write about.
That's why it's particularly enlightening, and only somewhat vexing, to read about Greene from a lifelong devotee whose background is both British and American. Pico Iyer, who has accumulated an increasingly complex and questioning body of writing himself, and who spent a good portion of his youth commuting between frigid boarding schools in England and the incessantly sunny climes of his Los Angeles-based parents, writes of the man in his head with the charged perception of a long-lost son. Could he have chosen a more self-contradictory, shadowy father figure?
As Iyer puts it, Greene is "the patron saint of the foreigner alone, drifting between certainties [whose] territory is the small apartment in the very foreign town, the passion that is temporary, the border crossing that seems the perfect home for the man who prays to a God he's not sure he believes in." Noir-ish descendant of Somerset Maugham and antecedent of John le Carré, Greene habitually sets his scenes in treacherous, morally murky circumstances. Men and women are usually at odds -- "they don't share the same anxieties" -- with "identities they change at every moment and no real friend or family to hold them to their word." Everyone is on the run, not least of all from themselves.
Quite a bloke Iyer has chosen to be obsessed with: tortured Catholic, fugitive husband and father, rumored spy, over-punctilious man of probing conscience who was capable of disloyalties of every stripe. Greene cannot write a page without conveying the ever-mutable doubleness of things, and Iyer's dual vantage, having grown up on both sides of the pond, positions him well to generate brilliant insights like the following three:
All Greene's work is about the conundrum of feeling someone else's position too acutely, to the point of not being able to hear, or act on, one's own. And that natural sympathy for the other's point of view is made more agonized…because one can have so little faith in oneself. Greene could write with harrowing compassion for every character except the one who might be taken as Graham Greene.
Greene could not bring himself to believe in God and so, by his own lights, he was cursed. But he could not entirely believe in himself or his own positions, including his arguments against God, and so there was always a small chink of hope.
Greene's great theme was always innocence, if only because he could never disguise how much he missed it…. None of the characters was entirely cynical, able to write off all belief, and yet none of them can be a simple believer, either. They're all trembling in the balance.
All of these observations, and a lot more besides, go a long way toward nailing down an elusive subject as precisely as anyone has -- a deep deconstruction of one of modern lit's most puzzling specimens. Where Iyer gets in trouble is when he over-identifies with his subject, veering a bit too far out of his way to underscore a (quasi-mystical?) connection between them. Even when some of the parallels do seem eerie -- both watched their homes burn down, both had chance encounters with bishops in southern Bolivia, and so forth -- ultimately these coincidences prove less nourishing for the reader than they seem to be for the author. Why force parallels when each life is more than riveting in its own right?
Certainly Iyer's is turning out to be. He has stockpiled enough color from forays in Bangkok, Bhutan, and Belgravia -- to choose just the second letter of the alphabet -- to never again need to mix it up with Greene. Of particular fascination is the material he draws upon from his early English boarding school years: "Every morning, at 6:45, a white-coated retainer of sorts, Mr. Gower, knocked on each door, and opened it a crack -- "Morn, sir!" -- and then we trudged down the icy stone spiral staircase to where a vat of tea and our copies of The Times awaited us." Reconciling this to life in a California that had "exiled history" and "didn't know what to do with the dark" gives the writer a privileged perspective on two worlds -- shuttling back and forth between "unquiet Englishmen who were often more compassionate than they let on and quiet Americans who were not quite so innocent as they liked to seem."
As long as the author keeps producing sentences of this caliber, it is entirely possible to imagine a younger writer thirty years hence writing a book about the man in his head -- one with the unlikely name of Pico Iyer. Let's hope it's half as smart and sharp as this one, and just a touch less over-identifying.

Did You Read The Book The Map and the Territory?

"You know," remarks a character in Michel Houellebecq's The Map and the Territory, "it's the journalists who've given me the reputation for being a drunk; what's curious is that none of them ever realized that if I was drinking a lot in their presence, it was simply in order to put up with them."

A passing familiarity with Houellebecq the media figure, a man described variously as an enfant terrible, an agent provocateur, an Islamophobe, a misogynist, a pornographer, an egomaniac, and a sad sack, will give away the surprise: The speaker is Houellebecq himself, in conversation with an enormously successful French photographer and painter named Jed Martin. Martin, the novel's true subject, has enlisted Houellebecq to write a catalogue essay. During their first meeting, Martin interrupts Houellebecq's desultory tangent about Thai brothels by saying, "I have the slight impression you're playing your own role." Houellebecq brightens. He couldn't, it turns out, agree more.
It is both a pleasure and a relief to find Houellebecq having such fun with himself and his public persona. The critics, and this one is no exception, have perhaps been too quick to see a pessimist or nihilist, whose inflammatory outburts and despairing outlook are as much an apparatus of self-promotion as they are symptoms of philosophical laziness. He is a wealthy tax exile and winner of the 2010 Prix Goncourt (for this novel), but in Public Enemies, a book of his correspondence with the gadfly Bernard Henri-Lévy, he gives voice to almost comical delusions of persecution. He is indeed well-disliked by many, but he brings it upon himself. Behind this puzzling self-caricature and calculated contempt is a mind hard at work.
The Map and the Territory is the first of Houellebecq's books to give serious treatment to characters not modeled on the author. Jed Martin's progress as an artist is traced from childhood, when his drawings of flowers meet the bemused approval of his babysitter: "Little boys draw bloodthirsty monsters, Nazi insignia, and fighter planes…rarely flowers." Just before his seventh birthday, his mother kills herself, a barbed parallel with Houellebecq's own abandonment by his mother, Lucie Ceccaldi. At the Beaux-Arts de Paris, Martin takes up photography, applying himself to the "systematic photography of the world's manufactured objects…. Suspension files, handguns, diaries, printer cartridges, forks…an exhaustive catalogue of the objects of human manufacturing in the Industrial Age."
Martin is a reader, and an avid student of Catholicism's influence on Western culture, while "his contemporaries generally knew more about the life of Spider-Man than of Jesus." Yet, as he tells a journalist late in life -- the narrative perspective here is something like an art-critical biography -- he wants "simply to give an account of the world." He has a monkish disregard for friendship or any other human connection. His only romantic relationship, with a beautiful Russian woman named Olga, begins by accident ("The image of the virile brute who is good in bed had been coming back in force lately…. Such a situation did not really put Jed at an advantage"). He has been making photographic enlargements of old Michelin maps, and she is a Michelin PR executive who has been tasked by the company with, for lack of a better phrase, co-opting his work.
The market's corrupting effect on human and, in particular, sexual relationships has long been Houellebecq's major theme. The story of Martin's rise to fame and fortune is, similarly, a satire of the art world and of the market's corrupting effect on the creative impulse and its fruits. In his late career, Martin returns to figurative painting, producing a celebrated series about professions, e.g., The Journalist Jean-Pierre Pernaut Chairing an Editorial Meeting; Claude Vorilhon, Bar-Tabac Manager (Vorilhon is the leader of the much-mocked Raëlian cult, which inspired Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island); Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology, and the unfinished Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Dividing Up the Art Market.
Yet, buried in this deft dissection of the artistic life is an unexpected, oblique meditation on death. One of Houellebecq's most affectingly drawn characters is Martin's dying father, a former architect with whom he takes Christmas dinner each year. Martin insists on cuisine à l'ancienne, a phrase and theme which recurs in unexpected places. We find him at a funeral à l'ancienne, one "which didn't attempt to dodge the reality of death." At other funerals, the artist had been "shocked that some of those present hadn't bothered to switch off their cell phones before the moment of the cremation."
Martin recalls a Malagasy burial practice he learned about from a former lover. "One week after the death, the corpse was dug up, the shroud was undone, and a meal was eaten in its presence…then it was buried again. This was repeated after a month, then after three…." Much later, when the character Houellebecq is gruesomely murdered (decapitated, in fact, as is his dog) and Martin is consulted by the police, an investigator recalls a time when, "feeling that he was beginning to have difficulty bearing crime scenes, he had gone to the Buddhist Center of Vincennes to ask them if it would be possible for him to practice asubha, the meditation on the corpse. The lama had at first tried to dissuade him: this meditation, he had opined, was difficult, and not adapted to the Western mentality…."
The investigator's bewilderment in the face of evil -- all crimes, he believes, come down to sex or money, and he is vindicated vis-à-vis the Houellebecq case -- has much in common with the author's disillusionment with and disappointment in human existence. But it is Martin's relationship with his father, whom cancer has forced to suffer the indignity of an artificial anus, that makes The Map and the Territory a great achievement. In a moment of moribund free-association, Martin's father, the subject of The Architect Jean-Pierre Martin Leaving the Management of His Business, breaks down recalling a nest he once built for some swallows: "They never wanted to use my nest. Never."
Martin interrupts: "Swallows never use a nest built by human hand…. If a man so much as touches their nest, they leave it to build a new one." It's a lie: He's made up this factoid off the top of his head to reassure the old man. "His father had just relived, for the last time, the hopes and failures that formed the story of his life. It doesn't amount to much, generally speaking, a human life." This is no sentimental or cynical power play on the author's part. Like Jed Martin, Houellebecq, for all his bad-boy trappings, has only ever wanted to depict life as he believes it is. This is not to say he never wanted it to be otherwise, and that has never been clearer than in The Map and the Territory. Indeed, he has arrived here at something like a pacific acceptance of mankind's -- to put it mildly -- imperfect lot. "There was in the voice of the author of The Elementary Particles something that Jed had never noticed before, that he'd never expected to find, and that he took some time to identify, because basically he hadn't found it in anyone, for many years: he seemed happy." Put another way: Houellbecq is dead -- long live Houellebecq.

The Winds Of Winter Book Love

Fantasy author George R. R. Martin partially appeased fans who are ravenous for Book No. 6 in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" series by posting an excerpt from his new novel on his website on Dec. 28.

The writer, who was recently selected by USA Today as their author of the year, allowed six years to go bybetween the release of Book No. 4 and Book No. 5 in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series. Book No. 5, “A Dance With Dragons,” came out this past July and is still number 23 on the New York Times fiction bestseller list, with four of Martin's other books appearing on the paperback mass-market fiction list. Fans, who have been eager for more of the fictional land of Westeros, also depicted in an HBO series based on Martin’s books, have been frustrated by the fact that Martin has not yet committed to a release date for Book No. 6, which is titled “The Winds of Winter.” Martin has said the series will consist of seven books.

The excerpt of “The Winds of Winter” is more than 6,000 words long and consists of a section of the story from the viewpoint of Theon Greyjoy, the former ward of protagonist Eddard Stark. According to Martin’swebsite on Livejournal, another new sample chapter from Book No. 6 will be included with the paperback version of “A Dance with Dragons,” scheduled to be released in July.

Martin said on his website that the sample chapter told from Theon’s point of view will be at the beginning of “The Winds of Winter” although the events it narrates take place before some of the events in “A Dance with Dragons.”

As of yet, there is no scheduled release date for “Winds.”