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| paramendra | Posted
on 30-Aug-02 06:10 PM
This thread is for Book Reviews. Please provide the name of the book, the author. Publication year. A brief summary. And some commentary. For a detailed suggestion, please go to: How To Write Book Reviews http://www.epinions.com/user-review-1A08-70F8A02-39AD795F-prod2 |
| paramendra | Posted
on 03-Sep-02 10:27 AM
Bill Gates Might Be On Overdrive, But The Book Does Not Tell The Full Story Opinion on Overdrive: Bill Gates & the Race to Control Cyberspace The Apple Guy (book review) IBM (book review) Java, Jini And The Possible Post-PC Future Opinion on High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy & the Rise of Sun Microsystems The Absentee Landlords Opinion on Power & Powerlessness: Quiescence & Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley The MilkMen Of The World In Search Of Their Roots Opinion on Song of Solomon "To thee I deliver up my soul." Opinion on Barabbas "We've become medieval." Opinion on Anil's Ghost Dr. Trebla Erog ----------> President Al Gore Opinion on Inventing Al Gore If I Have A Bible, This Is It Opinion on Gitanjali: Collection of Prose Translations Made by the Author from the Original Bengali Amelio, Maybe Not A Rock Star But A Decent Manager Alright Opinion on On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple Computer Bill Gates And His Speeding Tickets Opinion on Hard Drive: Bill Gates & the Making of the Microsoft Empire A great statement on the institution of the family Opinion on A Death in the Family True to its reputation, the greatest novel ever perhaps Opinion on War & Peace |
| SIWALIK | Posted
on 03-Sep-02 02:58 PM
I am in interested in reviewing "Shadow Over Shangrila" by Durga pokhrel. What kind of reviews has it gotten so far? |
| anepalikt | Posted
on 03-Sep-02 04:19 PM
Siwalik, if you do write that review, please do share it here as well. I read the book some time ago and was riveted by some parts of it. I would be interested to hear what other Nepalis have to say. Have not seen any reviews of it though. |
| paramendra | Posted
on 06-Sep-02 01:27 PM
Some Authors And Their Works Paramendra Bhagat July 3, 2002 Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I was mesmerized when I read his One Hundred Years Of Solitude when I was at BNKS. Since I have read some of his other books. Of Love And Other Demonds. Parts of other books, like The Autumn Of The Patriarch. Having been fed an education replete with British writers, Marquez was a breath of fresh air. His magical realism tickles imagination like nothing in English I had read before him. He takes the form of novel to heights I had not seen before him. A great way to introduce oneself to that continent. His narratives are sensory attacks, these deluges of details that compose the whole, and keep the prose tight. In The Autumn Of The Patriarch, each chapter is a paragraph. Some experiment, that is. I highly recommend this author. V.S. Naipaul: The guy won the Nobel Prize. Recently. He is ethnic Indian, from Trinidad. Some have gone so far as to say his last name has something to do with the country Nepal. He delineates his ancestry from the Gangetic plains anyway. His A House For Mr Biswas is a classic. A lot of scenes familiar to us gets depicted there. He feels like one of us. Otherwise one tires of western caricatures of Global South poverty. He portrays the humanity amidst the material deprivation, the social vibrancy that engulfs the world of the have-nots. Katharine Graham: Her Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography is quite a treat. I have not read it to the end yet, but delved into it while I was house-sitting near American University for a Fellow from Lara's work (www.rff.org). The antique pre-World War II period is portrayed with relish. And it is something to read a human history of The Washington Post. |
| DIPSOMANIAC | Posted
on 07-Sep-02 03:18 AM
DEAR PARMENDRA YOUR BOOK REVIEWS TOPIC IS GOOD! HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVOURITE TITLES : DO OPINE ON THESE IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY COMMENTS! UTOPIA(THOMAS MOORE);ULYSSES(JAMES JOYCE); GROUND BENEATH HER FEET, MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, SATANIC VERSES(SALMAN RUSHDIE); VIDEO NIGHT IN KTM( PICO IYER);INTO THIN AIR(JON KRAKAUKER) ETC. OTHER GOOD WRITERS ARE JEFFREY ARCHER,STEPHEN KING,WILBUR SMITH, PG WOODHOUSE , E.R. BRAITHWRITE'S ( TO SIR WITH LOVE);JOHN GRISHAM , MICHAEL DOUGLAS.ETCETRA!AND LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST CHARLES DICKENS IS THE BEST! A DIPSOMANIAC! |
| paramendra | Posted
on 14-Sep-02 02:23 PM
Book Reviews Paramendra Bhagat September 14, 2002 http://www.geocities.com/paramendra/2002/books.html Gorbachev, Mikhail. On My Country And The World. Translated from Russian by George Shriver. Columbia University Press. New York: 2000. I started reading this book. This is the work of a convinced socialist turned apologist because of the changed circumstances. His side lost and he never really came to terms with that. Still nothing changes the fact that history will judge him one of the towering figures of the 20th century: if it were not for him, the Soviet Union's collapse would have been much uglier and further delayed. Naipaul, V. S. A Bend In The River. Random House. New York: 1979. Naipaul is a writer I feel close to in terms of cultural background. He is an ethnic Indian born in Trinidad whose father's side of the family might be from Nepal. He describes perspectives and sights and sounds that I can claim as my own. It helps that he went on to win the first Nobel of the new millenium. A Bend In The River is India, Arabia, Africa and the West brought together. The followers of the "naked fakir" - Churchill's racist words for Gandhi - talk of the "bush people." The novel is a page-turner, like those works of the commercially successful writers who will never bag a Nobel, but there is not one page where the author can not lay claim to the immediate and the universal. To me the most valuable aspect of Naipaul is his perspective, even when sometimes coming out of fictitious characters, and the legitimacy he provides them by dropping them into the mainstream. For that he is a sheer delight, a symbol of ethnic pride if the Global South is an ethnicity, who has never come across as provincial. The novel is primarily the story of a post-independence African town as seen through the eyes of an ethnic Indian merchant. Cultures clash inevitably. The "bush" acts out its revenge. Modernity arrives and departs. The President of the country has mood swings. The narrator of the story chances into a sexual encounter that awakens him from his experiences with "anonymous flesh." With an eye on detail, a lavish story is told, cover to cover. Gripping. Perret, Geoffrey. Jack: A Life Like No Other. Random House. New York: 2001. Numerous books have been written about John Kennedy. This latest biography makes an attempt to be definitive, a cradle to grave story that reads like a folk story, aptly so for the man turned into a legend when he was fell. I doubt this will be the last JFK biography but where this one stands out is it goes out of its way to provide context for facts from JFK's life that have long been widely known. A sickly figure of a voracious reader, a frustrated athlete, someone who had recreational sex the way some people play tennis or golf, a President who got only a thousand days, the "young man in a hurry" who was habitually late. His style as well his achievements are above ordinary. With him politics made a fundamental departure. Some credit him with having created the modern campaign. Smith, Roff Martin. The National Geographic Traveler: Australia. I read the introduction and the part on Brisbane. The writing is informative and the pictures are in color. Riech, Robert B. The Future Of Success. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 2001. Lingeman, Richard. Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street. Random House. New York: 2002. I started reading this book but had to return it. I did not know he was the first American to have won the Nobel in Literature. I read to the part where he is about to go to college. He was already a legend in town for having supposedly read every book at the local library. But one wonders if the legend did not get created after he attained his successes. . |
| paramendra | Posted
on 14-Sep-02 02:23 PM
Book Reviews Paramendra Bhagat September 14, 2002 http://www.geocities.com/paramendra/2002/books.html Cassidy, John. dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. HarperCollins. New York: 2002. Mudrooroo. Us Mob History, Culture, Struggle: An Introduction To Indigenous Australia. HarperCollins. Sydney: 1995. I read a few select chapters. The whites have been in Australia 200 years, the locals 50,000. The fair adjustments have not been made yet. Broome, Richard. Aboriginal Australians: Black Response To White Dominance 1788-1980. George Allen & Unwin. Sydney: 1982. Worsley, Peter. Knowledges: Culture, Counterculture, Subculture. The New Press. New York: 1997. Jacobs, Jane M. Edge Of Empire: Postcolonialism And The City. Routledge. New York: 1996. Bank, David. Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled The Future Of Microsoft. The Free Press. New York: 2001. Welch, Jack with John A. Byrne. Jack: Straight From The Gut. Warner Books. New York: 2001. Naipaul, V. S. Half A Life. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 2001. Naipaul continues here with his fascination with India, England and Africa, though this is an inferior book to A Bend In The River: the author sometimes comes across as formulaic, and taking short cuts. In some ways he is always writing about Mr. Biswas. The comic effect jumps out of astute observations of cross-cultural confusions. And there are all the sex scenes, of people f_cking outside of the social formalities of boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, and the absurdities of restraint. The main character seems to get reminded after each "dip" of the lack of the sex lives of his parents, chances they never took, pleasures they did not know in the land that gave the world the Kamasutra. The whirlpools of inter-caste and "international" marriages are on display. The details are frank, almost brutal, vulgar. But then he is an established artist. And Africa is not a country. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Chronicle Of A Death Foretold. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 1983. All hell breaks loose when the groom finds out the bride is not a virgin, and the murdered lover in only a figment of the drama. There is much before, during and after, and the final scene is memorable, like the dripping blood in One Hundred Years Of Solitude that climbs staircases. And it is the unique Garcia Marquez narrative that is the real attraction. Gushing, oozing, gripping, knocking things over: equal doses of imagination and insight, and floods of details, sensory onslaughts. In a curious way the novel reminded me of hte royal massacre in Nepal last year starring Dipendra Shah, only the novel is about one town, and no drugs and automatic weapons are involved. We all participate intimately in a murder, the character's mother and us readers included. This is the work of an outstanding author, a storyteller in a league entirely his own. He is the best. |
| ashu | Posted
on 14-Sep-02 08:16 PM
Paramendra and other book-lovers, In 1996, frustrated by the khattam state of book-reviews in Nepal, some friends and I approached the editors of The Kathmandu Post and asked that we be given space to write, solicit and produce book reviews on any topic on a regular basis. The editors of the Post agreed, and thus came The Kathmandu Post Review of Books into existence, and is still going on. Please share your reviews with a wider audience in Nepal. And please email your reviews to Bhaskar Gautam at chautari@mos.com.np For details, please see: http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/AS/sinhas/kprb.html#kprbinfo oohi "also a book lover" ashu ktm,nepal |