Hooked On Bookz

Title/Author: The Marriage Plot / Jeffrey Eugenides Publisher: FSG New York Pages: 406 ISBN 13: 978-0-374-53325-0 In a nutshell I'd say this novel is a combination of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and One Day by David Nicholls. It's a love story with lots of teenage angst. What helped it score a notch higher than the other two is of course the language and the literary theories that revolved around The Marriage Plot. The story concerns three college friends from Brown University who graduated from Brown University in 1982. The friends - Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell, are 'victims' of a love triangle. Mitchell loved Madeline, who loved Leonard who's mentally depressed. Madeline tries to accept Leonard's condition, while Leonard tries to keep what's left of his 'sanity' by trying to hold down a job and his relationship, and Mitchell, the hopeless romantic, tries to get over Madeline and find spiritual enlightenment. The story follows them in t...

Title/Author: Found in Malaysia Vol. 2/The Nut Graph Publisher: Zi Publications Pages: 256 ISBN 13: 978-9675-26622-5 In a nutshell Found In Malaysia Vol. 2 consists of 50 interviews. This volume is divided into 7 sections - 1930's right up to the 1980's and an 'Exclusive' (never-before published interviews) section which include personalities such as Lillian too, Asha Gill, Khairy Jamaluddin and Baru Bian. Throughout these pages, you'll find Malaysian celebrities like Patrick Teoh, Daphne Iking, Mano Maniam and Harith Iskander; and politicians such as Lim Kit Siang, Ibrahim Ali and Teresa Kok sharing their stories and experiences, while comparing the then and now, and their hopes for Malaysia's future. What I liked I definitely enjoyed reading the first volume more than the second because I didn't know what to expect in the first and was pleasantly surprised by what it offered. Volume 2 shares the same concept and idea, but it has more well-known public...

This is a book every parent and teacher should and must read. In a nutshell This book is about: why bullies bully, why bullied kids don't tell their pareents, and how bullied kids can make a stand. It is also about: how parents sometimes create bullies, what schools can do about bullying, bullying in the workplace, preventing suicide, and how bystanders can help. Stop the Bullying! is divided into 15 chapters: 1. Bullied to death, 2. Bullying at school, 3. Bullying at home, 4. Why bullies bully, 5. Girl bullying, 6. Tips for bullied kids, 7. How can I like myself? 8. Not my child! 9. No innocent bystanders, 10. Loneliness amongst our teens, 11. Raising young children, 12. Who's in charge? 13. Let your children know you love them, 14. What you can do, 15. Kindness What I liked I learnt alot from reading this book. As a teacher, these methods will come in handy. I have highlighted some of the lessons/methods suggested in this book. "Young people learn bes...

Finally. FINALLY! Another book from the author who wrote one of my favourite books of all times. He's back with, THE MARRIAGE PLOT, which comes out in October, somewhere mid I think. It's another love story, and it's a book about other books. As some of you may already know, I'm not into love stories, but...(there's always a BUT! :)) anything written by Eugenides is an exception (all because of Middlesex :P) So. I'm going to give The Marriage Plot, his 3rd novel a try :) What's The Marriage Plot about? I googled and this is what I found: Madeleine Hanna, the 22-year-old heroine of Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited follow-up to Middlesex, is an English major unfashionably absorbed in Regency and Victorian literature. This is at a time, the early 1980s, when her contemporaries at Brown University are in thrall to the radical opacities of poststructuralism: "How wonderful it was when one sentence followed logically from the sentence before! What exquisi...

Heard of 'Banned Book Weeks' before? Well, Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,000 books have been challenged since 1982. During the last week of September every year, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the US draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Since the inception of Banned Books Week in 1982, libraries and bookstores throughout the country have staged local read-outs as part of thei...

Title/Author: The Night Circus/Erin Morgenstern Publisher: Doubleday Pages: 400 ISBN 13: 978-0385534635 In a nutshell This introduction itself hooked me: "The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, “the Circus of Dreams”, and it is only open at night." This novel takes place between February 1873 and January 1903 and follows this travelling circus and its cast of acrobats, contortionists, magicians and fortune-tellers, and fabulous attractions such as the Carousel, the Cloud Maze, The Stargazer, the Wishing Tree, the Labyrinth, Bedtime Stories, the Ice Garden, and the Pool of Tears, just to name a few. But behind those mysterious black and white stripes tents and iron gates that surrounded the circus, lies a story which some aren't aware of, the story of ...

Title/Author: Night/Elie Wiesel Publisher: Bantam Books Pages: 109 ISBN 13: 978-055-327-253-6 In a nutshell Night is narrated by Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) a survivor of the Holocaust during WWII. Wiesel recounts his experiences as a Jewish boy of about 13 as his family is first restricted to a ghetto in his hometown, Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. They were then transported by train to Auschwitz where he is separated from all of his family except for his father, who becomes his only reason for life over the next couple of years. In this short book Wiesel tells us his deportation to the concentration camps at the age of 15 and his struggle to survive. My thoughts Unlike others, I couldn't finish this book in one sitting. It took me one week. Each time I read about the helpless Jews struggling to survive the brutality of the Nazis, I felt sick in the stomach. I just couldn't comprehend how could one be so inhumane? How can one find pleasure in torture and in bur...