Posts

The Confession - John Grisham

Image
An innocent man is days from execution. Only a guilty man can save him. Travis Boyette is a murderer. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high-school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched and waited as police and prosecutors arrested Donte Drumm, a local football star with no connection to the crime. Tried, convicted and sentenced, Drumm was sent to death row: his fate had been decided. Nine years later, Donte Drumm is four days from execution. Over 400 miles away in Kansas, Travis faces a fate of his own: an inoperable brain tumour will soon deliver the end. Reflecting on his miserable life, he decides to do what's right. After years of silence he is ready to confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges and politicians that they're about to execute an innocent man?

MADHUSHALA BY HARI VANSH RAI BACHCHAN

Harivansh Rai Bachchan's glorious book Madhushala is a collection of mystically woven 135 quatrains. Madhushala, meaning ‘The House of Wine', includes brilliant compilation of ballads that portray the various dimensions of life with the use of words like wine (madhu), house of wine (madhushala) and cup-bearer (saaki). The quatrain style of writing could be compared with the Urdu style ‘Ruba'i and has been inspired by Omar Khayyam's literary piece ‘Ruba'iyat'. The poems voice about the facets of human life like love, greed, anguish and resentment. As a reader proceeds with each page of the book, he/she gets to know the beautiful ways in which wine has been used as a metaphor to convey the prismatic reflection of life. Bachchan also openly spoke about the blind way of living in society and the sorrow it brings to the life of a common man. Through Madhushala, Bachchan touches one or the other sensitive aspects of every single person's life. Madhushala has be

AMAZON TAKES ON GOOGLE

Amazon isn't just the everything store, it's the everything company. It deals with more than just shipping out massive amounts of products — it sells tablets and phones, cloud computing services, books, and now it's diving in to advertising. ​While the company already offers up ads as part of an affiliate program called Amazon Associates, its new advertising platform is said to take on the likes of the ubiquitous, all-powerful Google AdWords. (Video via Google) ​Amazon's ad platform is called Amazon CPM Ads — at least for now. Multiple reports say the final service will be called Amazon Sponsored Links. CPM stands for "cost per thousand impressions,"which is ad-speak for how much you'll get paid for every thousand views of an advertisement. ​TechCrunch reports the service will include ads from Amazon itself "as well as other 'high-quality' advertisers." The outlet says Amazon appears to be testing the service right now, as only some o

SECURITY ANALYSIS

Image
https://amzn.to/3SufTPC Security Analysis: Sixth Edition, Foreword by Warren Buffett is one of the most significant books in the history of financial analysis. The theory on which this book is based, was subsequently called Value Investing. The book attempts to teach the investors a new approach to assess the business that lay behind security. This book contains many examples based on actual events to show the tendency of markets to undervalue some securities that don't seem to be favorable. It explains how this could help the savvy opportunists, if assessed rightly. It basically shows how an investor who is professionally trained can utilize the financial analysis of the corporation to determine the intrinsic value of a company. Security Analysis further explains how Graham's margin-of-safety principle can be used to make profit. It shows the investors how stocks can be bought when the market price is way below its original value and then earn good returns. The book also di

Home-grown fictions outsell international bestsellers

The quick, pacy and low-priced reads by contemporary Indian authors have become a rage among the Ranchi youths. The book shop owners in the city admit that youngsters prefer a Chetan Bhagat and Ravindra Singh to a Richard Dawkins. Teenagers can relate to the love stories set in metropolitans. Reshma Kumari, a second year student of Ranchi Women's College said, "I love reading Ravindra Singh. The climax of his novel, 'I Too had a Love Story' put me to tears". Nonetheless, there are some who still swear by the foreign authors. Aryan (21) said, "I am buying a Nicolas Sparks book for my sister. I hope she appreciates my choice." S K Jaiswal, owner of an old book store in Tharpakna, said: "The social networking sites have destroyed the habit of reading. The writers usually come up with hackneyed story plots that have clicked with the audience in the past". Hindi translations of famous English novels are also popular here. Amish Tripathy's

The Accidental Prime Minister:The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh By Sanjaya Baru

Image
Get it here   In 2004 Sanjaya Baru left a successful career as chief editor of the  Financial Express  to join Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as his media adviser in UPA 1. Singh offered him the job with the words, ‘Sitting here, I know I will be isolated from the outside world. I want you to be my eyes and ears. Tell me what you think I should know, without fear or favour.’ The Accidental Prime Minister  is Baru’s account of what it was like to ‘manage’ public opinion for Singh while giving us a riveting look at Indian politics as it happened behind the scenes. As Singh’s spin doctor and trusted aide for four years, Baru observed up close Singh’s often troubled relations with his ministers, his cautious equation with Sonia Gandhi and how he handled the big crises from managing the Left to pushing through the nuclear deal. In this book he tells all and draws for the first time a revelatory picture of what it was like for Singh to work in a government that had two centres of power. In

WAR OF THE WHALES:A TRUE STORY BY Joshua Horwitz

Two men face off against an all-powerful navy—and the fate of the ocean’s most majestic creatures hangs in the balance. "A gripping, brilliantly told tale of the secret and deadly struggle between American national security and the kings of the oceans."—Bob Woodward War of the Whales  is the gripping tale of a crusading attorney who stumbles on one of the US Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound—and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas. Investigating this calamity, Balcomb is forced to choose between his conscience and an oath of secrecy he swore to the Navy in his youth. When Balcomb and Reynolds team up to expose the truth behind an epidemic of mass strandings, the stage is set for an epic battle that pits admir