en-US Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:30:25 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 Paula 4 4.10 1998
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Paula
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/08/11
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]]> 2967752
We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.]]> 325 Muriel Barbery 1933372605 Paula 0 currently-reading 3.76 2006
author: Muriel Barbery
name: Paula
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2009/08/11
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]]> 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

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

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

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]> 304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Paula 3 4.02 2003
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Paula
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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]]> 1396806
"A pleasure. Vizinczey writes of women beautifully, with sympathy, tact and delight, and he writes about sex with more lucidity and grace than most writers ever acquire."—Larry McMurtry, Houston Post

"Like James Joyce, who was as far from being a writer of erotica as Dostoevsky, Vizinczey has a refreshing message to Life is not about sex, sex is about life."—John Podhoretz, Washington Times

"The gracefully written story of a young man growing up among older women . . . although some passages may well arouse the reader, this novel brims with what the courts have termed "redeeming literary merit."—Clarence Petersen, Chicago Tribune

"A funny novel about sex, or rather (which is rarer) a novel which is funny as well as touching about sex . . . elegant, exact and melodious—has style, presence and individuality."—Isabel Quigly, Sunday Telegraph

"The delicious adventures of a young Casanova who appreciates maturity while acquiring it himself. In turn naive, sophisticated, arrogant, disarming, the narrator woos his women and his tale wins the reader."—Polly Devlin, Vogue]]> 192 Stephen Vizinczey 0226858863 Paula 4 3.90 1965
author: Stephen Vizinczey
name: Paula
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2009/06/01
date added: 2009/08/11
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]]> 10235 Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity"—a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners in Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.]]> 333 Tracy Kidder 0812973011 Paula 5 4.19 2003
author: Tracy Kidder
name: Paula
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 10920 Cold Mountain is a novel about a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved near the Civil War's end. At once a love story & a harrowing account of one man’s long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a new talent in American literature.

Based on local history & family stories passed down by Frazier’s great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war & back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. His odyssey thru the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada’s struggle to revive her father’s farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman & Ada confront the vastly transformed world they’ve been delivered.

Frazier reveals insight into human relations with the land & the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great 19th century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks to our time.]]> 449 Charles Frazier 0802142842 Paula 4 3.89 1997
author: Charles Frazier
name: Paula
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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]]> 2278185
A nadie sorprende cuando el encantador pícaro Vadinho dos Guimares—empedernido jugador y mujeriego incorregible—muere durante el carnaval. Su desconsolada esposa se dedica a la cocina y a sus amigas, hasta que conoce al joven doctor Teodoro y decide asentarse.

Pero después de la boda, pasionalmente insatisfecha, Doña Flor empieza a soñar con las atenciones amorosas de su primer marido. Pronto el propio Vadinho reaparecerå, dispuesto a reclamar sus derechos conyugales.

Jorge Amado, uno de los escritores mås importantes en Latinoamérica, ha dado vida a tres personajes literarios de fama mundial. Doña Flor y sus maridos es un auténtico clåsico que ratifica que toda gran historia de amor y sensualidad posee un ingrediente sobrenatural.]]> 478 Jorge Amado 0307279553 Paula 4 4.00 1966
author: Jorge Amado
name: Paula
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at: 2004/01/01
date added: 2008/03/22
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Title in English: Mrs Flor and her two husbands. A juicy and funny story about Flor, who in her working life runs a cooking school and in her married life gets to have her cake and eat it.
]]> 58375
Lors de sa sortie, ce livre a fait couler beaucoup d'encre, suscité de vives passions et de violents débats, alimentés par la personnalité de son auteur, volontiers provocateur et irrévérencieux. Cela ne fait qu'ajouter à la fascination que provoque la lecture de ce roman, qui remet en cause toutes nos certitudes et nous oblige à réagir. Que l'on aime ou pas le style Houellebecq, il est urgent de lire Les Particules élémentaires.]]> 316 Michel Houellebecq 2290351717 Paula 0 currently-reading 3.54 1998
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Paula
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Paula 0 to-read 4.26 1866
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Paula
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 0
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date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 4214 460 Yann Martel 0770430074 Paula 0 to-read 3.94 2001
author: Yann Martel
name: Paula
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2008/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 152
«Nos capĂ­tulos iniciais de Anna KarĂ©nina, somos conduzidos, uma e outra vez, a um sentido de analogia musical. HĂĄ efeitos de contraponto e harmonia no desenvolvimento das principais tramas do “prelĂșdio Oblonskiâ€� (o acidente na estação ferroviĂĄria, a zombadora discussĂŁo sobre o divĂłrcio entre Vronski e a baronesa Chilton, o deslumbramento do fogo vermelho diante dos olhos de Anna). O mĂ©todo de Tolstoi Ă© polifĂłnico; mas as harmonias principais desen- volvem-se com uma tremenda força e amplitude. As tĂ©cnicas musicais e linguĂ­sticas nĂŁo podem comparar-se de um modo exato. Mas como poderĂ­amos elucidar de outro modo o sentimento de que as novelas de Tolstoi surgem de um princĂ­pio interior de ordem e vitalidade, enquanto as dos escritores menos importantes parecem alinhavadas?»

«Anna KarĂ©nina morre no mundo do romance; mas cada vez que lemos o livro ela ressuscita, e mesmo depois de o termos acabado adquire outra vida na nossa recordação. Em cada personagem literĂĄria existe algo da FĂ©nix imortal. AtravĂ©s das vidas perdurĂĄveis das suas personagens, a prĂłpria existĂȘncia de Tolstoi teve a sua eternidade.» [George Steiner, Tolstoi ou Dostoievski]]]> 960 Leo Tolstoy Paula 0 to-read 3.96 1878
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Paula
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1878
rating: 0
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]]> 615570 The Artist’s Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life. Still as vital today—or perhaps even more so—than it was when it was first published one decade ago, it is a powerfully provocative and inspiring work. In a new introduction to the book, Julia Cameron reflects upon the impact of The Artist’s Way and describes the work she has done during the last decade and the new insights into the creative process that she has gained. Updated and expanded, this anniversary edition reframes The Artist’s Way for a new century.]]> 237 Julia Cameron 1585421464 Paula 0 currently-reading 3.93 2002
author: Julia Cameron
name: Paula
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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]]> 11275
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]> 607 Haruki Murakami 0965341984 Paula 0 to-read 4.16 1994
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Paula
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 9799 Motherless Brooklyn, a daring, riotous, sweeping novel that spins the tale of two friends and their adventures in late 20th-century America.

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They live in Brooklyn and are friends and neighbours; but since Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple.

This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the simplest decisions—what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money—are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is also the story of 1990s America, when nobody cared anymore.

This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: they would screw up their lives.]]> 528 Jonathan Lethem 0571219357 Paula 0 to-read 3.85 2003
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Paula
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 4952 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What Is the What is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man.
-back cover]]> 475 Dave Eggers 1932416641 Paula 0 to-read 4.14 2006
author: Dave Eggers
name: Paula
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Paula 0 currently-reading 3.87 1955
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Paula
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 29937
Throughout the collection Levine rejoices in song–Dinah Washington wailing from a jukebox in midtown Manhattan; Della Daubien hymning on the crosstown streetcar; Max Roach and Clifford Brown at a forgotten Detroit jazz palace; the prayers offered to God by an immigrant uncle dreaming of the Judean hills; the hoarse notes of a factory worker who, completing another late shift, serenades the sleeping streets.

Like all of Levine’s poems, these are a testament to the durability of love, the strength of the human spirit, the persistence of life in the presence of the coming dark.]]> 96 Philip Levine 0375710787 Paula 4 3.98 2004
author: Philip Levine
name: Paula
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 101299
When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.]]> 216 Bernhard Schlink 0375408266 Paula 4 3.78 1995
author: Bernhard Schlink
name: Paula
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2006/08/01
date added: 2008/03/22
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]]> 279769
With piercing clarity and craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned an unforgettable poem of questioning and discovery, about what is observable and what is not, about what passes and what persists.Ìę

"It's hard to imagine anyone putting down Oliver's book-length poem and not sighing with satisfaction, so sensible is every word and thought." -- Virginia Quarterly Review]]> 60 Mary Oliver 0306810735 Paula 4 4.38 2000
author: Mary Oliver
name: Paula
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2008/01/02
date added: 2008/03/22
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Poetry that you can reread like walking in the same forest path on different days in different seasons. Nice to pick up off the shelf and drink in some natural wonder. Reminds me of Walt Whitman.
]]> 458080
In the over-legislated world of this outrageous black comedy, a death-row inmate becomes a darling of the media-- and the tobacco conglomerates--after he demands his right to a final cigarette . . . in a smoke-free prison. Meanwhile, a little girl accuses a petty municipal bureaucrat of sexual perversion when she catches him sneaking a cigarette. Incredulously, he realizes that in this world where children are not just kings, but tyrants, a cigarette could lead him to the electric chair.

At the cutting edge of European fiction, controversial author BenoĂźt Duteurtre creates a world wildly askew, yet disconcertingly close to our own, in this daring, antic satire.]]> 187 BenoĂźt Duteurtre 1933633123 Paula 3 3.60 2005
author: BenoĂźt Duteurtre
name: Paula
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2008/03/22
date added: 2007/10/09
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comments to come - still reading but wanted people to know about this little book
]]> 6334 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Paula 4 beware! I found it disturbing and beautiful.]]> 3.85 2005
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Paula
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2007/10/09
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this book gets right under your skin
beware! I found it disturbing and beautiful.
]]> 446 The Scarlet Letter, and begins to undertake his own literary venture, The Book of Human Folly, an account of "every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I have committed during my long and checkered career as a man."
Ìę
The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving, unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life.]]> 306 Paul Auster 0312426232 Paula 3 regularreading
it paints parts of brooklyn intimately, so if you have lived there that is quite vivid

is very autobiographical so it feels quite natural
wont tell you about the plot but it might be the weaker part of the book
]]> 3.87 2005
author: Paul Auster
name: Paula
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2007/10/09
shelves: regularreading
review:
it is a pleasant enjoyable book to take with you on a trip...with characters that grow quickly on you, and a weary gentleness about it

it paints parts of brooklyn intimately, so if you have lived there that is quite vivid

is very autobiographical so it feels quite natural
wont tell you about the plot but it might be the weaker part of the book

]]> 4137 272 David Sedaris 0349113912 Paula 3 regularreading dry and ridiculous
if you read it on a crowded train to work you will notice all the times you will burst out laughing]]> 4.01 2000
author: David Sedaris
name: Paula
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2007/10/09
shelves: regularreading
review:
funny ha ha
dry and ridiculous
if you read it on a crowded train to work you will notice all the times you will burst out laughing
]]>