Belcutied's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 15 Mar 2014 20:07:42 -0700 60 Belcutied's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Painted Veil 99664 The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane.

When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.

The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.]]> 246 W. Somerset Maugham 0307277771 Belcutied 0 currently-reading 3.95 1925 The Painted Veil
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/03/15
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]]> The Zahir 1427 The Zahir  is a bestselling novelist who lives in Paris and enjoys all the privileges money and celebrity bring. His wife of ten years, Esther, is a war correspondent who has disappeared along with a friend, Mikhail, who may or may not be her lover.

Was Esther kidnapped, murdered, or did she simply escape a marriage that left her unfulfilled? The narrator doesn’t have any answers, but he has plenty of questions of his own. Then one day Mikhail finds the narrator and promises to reunite him with his wife. In his attempt to recapture a lost love, the narrator discovers something unexpected about himself.]]> 336 Paulo Coelho 0060832819 Belcutied 0 to-read 3.61 2005 The Zahir
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Vine Of Desire (Anju and Sudha, #2)]]> 165089 Sister of My Heart are reunited in this powerful narrative that challenges the emotional bond between two lifelong friends, as the husband of one becomes dangerously attracted to the other.
Anju and Sudha formed an astounding, almost psychic connection during their childhood in India. When Anju invites Sudha, a single mother in Calcutta, to come live with her and her husband, Sunil, in California, Sudha foolishly accepts, knowing full well that Sunil has long desired her. As Sunil's attraction rises to the surface, the trio must struggle to make sense of the freedoms of America-and of the ties that bind them to India and to one another.]]> 416 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 0349115842 Belcutied 4 3.52 2002 The Vine Of Desire (Anju and Sudha, #2)
author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Sister of My Heart (Anju and Sudha #1)]]> 16235
The cousins' bond is shattered, however, when Sudha learns a dark family secret. Urged into arranged marriages, their lives take sudden, opposite turns: Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household, while Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. Then tragedy strikes them both, and the women discover that, despite the distance that has grown between them, they have only each other to turn to. Set in the two worlds of India and America, this is an exceptionally moving novel of love, friendship, and compelling courage.]]> 322 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 038548951X Belcutied 5 4.01 2000 Sister of My Heart (Anju and Sudha #1)
author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> The New Year 214068 188 Pearl S. Buck 0381980448 Belcutied 4 3.64 1968 The New Year
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1968
rating: 4
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]]> East Wind: West Wind 14648 277 Pearl S. Buck 1559210869 Belcutied 5 4.04 1930 East Wind: West Wind
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1930
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> Pavilion of Women 209279 316 Pearl S. Buck 155921287X Belcutied 0 4.11 1946 Pavilion of Women
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[A House Divided (House of Earth, #3)]]> 14644 348 Pearl S. Buck 1559210346 Belcutied 0 3.88 1935 A House Divided (House of Earth, #3)
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> Imperial Woman 93521 384 Pearl S. Buck 1559210354 Belcutied 5 4.03 1956 Imperial Woman
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1956
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[The Good Earth (House of Earth, #1)]]> 1078
Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought force them to seek work in the city. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.]]> 418 Pearl S. Buck 1416500189 Belcutied 5 4.00 1931 The Good Earth (House of Earth, #1)
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1931
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> The Kitchen God's Wife 12557 416 Amy Tan 0143038109 Belcutied 0 to-read 4.04 1991 The Kitchen God's Wife
author: Amy Tan
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> The Hundred Secret Senses 690866 The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."

Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.]]> 406 Amy Tan 080411109X Belcutied 4 4.01 1995 The Hundred Secret Senses
author: Amy Tan
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/01
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> The Joy Luck Club 7763 Alternate cover editions of ISBN 9780143038092 can be found here.

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they've unknowingly inherited of their mothers' pasts.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.]]> 288 Amy Tan Belcutied 4 3.96 1989 The Joy Luck Club
author: Amy Tan
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2011/06/15
date added: 2014/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China]]> 17857634
Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age.
At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China—behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.

In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern industries, railways, electricity, the telegraph and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like “death by a thousand cuts” and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women’s liberation and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China. Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot.

Cixi reigned during extraordinary times and had to deal with a host of major national the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, wars with France and Japan—and an invasion by eight allied powers including Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. Jung Chang not only records the Empress Dowager’s conduct of domestic and foreign affairs, but also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing’s Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs—one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. The world Chang describes here, in fascinating detail, seems almost unbelievable in its extraordinary mixture of the very old and the very new.

Based on newly available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, official and private correspondence, diaries and eyewitness accounts, this biography will revolutionize historical thinking about a crucial period in China’s—and the world’s—history. Packed with drama, fast paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman.]]> 436 Jung Chang 0307271609 Belcutied 5 3.86 2013 Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China
author: Jung Chang
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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]]> A General Theory of Love 35711
A General Theory of Love demonstrates that our nervous systems are not self-contained: from earliest childhood, our brains actually link with those of the people close to us, in a silent rhythm that alters the very structure of our brains, establishes life-long emotional patterns, and makes us, in large part, who we are. Explaining how relationships function, how parents shape their child’s developing self, how psychotherapy really works, and how our society dangerously flouts essential emotional laws, this is a work of rare passion and eloquence that will forever change the way you think about human intimacy.]]> 274 Thomas Lewis 0375709223 Belcutied 0 currently-reading 4.11 2000 A General Theory of Love
author: Thomas Lewis
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/14
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]]> Meditations 30659 Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Marcus Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and readers throughout the centuries.]]> 254 Marcus Aurelius 0140449337 Belcutied 0 to-read 4.29 180 Meditations
author: Marcus Aurelius
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.29
book published: 180
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/10/17
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]]> The Color Purple 11486
Then her husband's lover, a flamboyant blues singer, barreled into her world and gave Celie the courage to ask for more - to laugh, to play, and finally - to love.]]> 295 Alice Walker Belcutied 0 to-read 4.22 1982 The Color Purple
author: Alice Walker
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/10/23
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]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Belcutied 0 to-read 4.41 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/10/23
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]]> پای‌بندی‌های انسانی 1975025 861 W. Somerset Maugham Belcutied 1 3.62 1915 پای‌بندی‌های انسانی
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1915
rating: 1
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date added: 2010/05/24
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]]> Message in a Bottle 3478
Nicholas Sparks is our very best chronicler of the human heart. His stunning first novel, The Notebook, has been given by friend to friend and lover to lover all over the world as a testament to the timeless power of love. But if we thought he could never again move us so deeply, he now shows us he can-in a story that renews our faith in destiny...in the ability of true lovers to find each other no matter where, no matter when... Message In A Bottle

Thrown to the waves, and to fate, the bottle could have ended up anywhere. Instead, it is found just three weeks after it begins its journey. Theresa Osborne, divorced and the mother of a twelve-year-old son, picks it up during a seaside vacation from her job as a Boston newspaper columnist. Inside is a letter that opens with:

My Dearest Catherine, I miss you my darling, as I always do, but today is particularly hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together...

For "Garrett," the man who signs the letter, the message is the only way he knows to express his undying love for a woman he has lost. For Theresa, wary of romance since her husband shattered her trust, the message raises questions that intrigue her. Who are Garrett and Catherine? Where is he now? What is his story?

Challenged by the mystery, and pulled to find Garrett by emotions she does not fully understand, Theresa begins a search that takes her to a sunlit coastal town and an unexpected confrontation. Brought together by chance-or something more powerful-Theresa and Garrett are people whose lives are about to touch for a purpose, in a tale that resonates with our deepest hopes for finding that special someone and everlasting love.

Shimmering with suspense and emotional intensity, Message in a Bottle takes readers on a hunt for the truth about a man and his memories, and about both the heartbreaking fragility and enormous strength of love. For those who cherished The Notebook and readers waiting to discover the magic of Nicholas Sparks's storytelling, here is his new, achingly lovely novel of happenstance, desire, and the choices that matter most...]]> 342 Nicholas Sparks 0446676071 Belcutied 5 3.99 1998 Message in a Bottle
author: Nicholas Sparks
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/11/23
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]]> Nights in Rodanthe 15926

Did You Know?---
The main characters' names were Christmas presents to Nicholas's in-laws (Paul and Adrienne)?
This was Nicholas's first book to debut at #1?]]> 222 Nicholas Sparks 0446612707 Belcutied 5 3.86 2002 Nights in Rodanthe
author: Nicholas Sparks
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1)]]> 42156 Something Borrowed tells the story of Rachel, a young attorney living and working in Manhattan.

Rachel has always been the consummate good girl—until her thirtieth birthday, when her best friend, Darcy, throws her a party. That night, after too many drinks, Rachel ends up in bed with Darcy's fiancé. Although she wakes up determined to put the one-night fling behind her, Rachel is horrified to discover that she has genuine feelings for the one guy she should run from. As the September wedding date nears, Rachel knows she has to make a choice. In doing so, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren't always neat, and sometimes you have to risk all to win true happiness.

Something Borrowed is a phenomenal debut novel that will have you laughing, crying, and calling your best friend.
]]> 336 Emily Giffin 031232118X Belcutied 5 3.89 2004 Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1)
author: Emily Giffin
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/11/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)]]> 227443 a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise

"129 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)..."

"Bridget Jones' Diary" is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement — a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult - and learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and — like millions of readers the world round — you'll find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"]]> 288 Helen Fielding 014028009X Belcutied 5 3.81 1996 Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)
author: Helen Fielding
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/11/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada, #1)]]> 5139
Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job “a million girls would die for.” Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts Prada! Armani! Versace! at every turn, a world populated by impossibly thin, heart-wrenchingly stylish women and beautiful men clad in fine-ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants that show off their lifelong dedication to the gym. With breathtaking ease, Miranda can turn each and every one of these hip sophisticates into a scared, whimpering child.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA gives a rich and hilarious new meaning to complaints about “The Boss from Hell.” Narrated in Andrea’s smart, refreshingly disarming voice, it traces a deep, dark, devilish view of life at the top only hinted at in gossip columns and over Cosmopolitans at the trendiest cocktail parties. From sending the latest, not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda’s children in Paris by private jet, to locating an unnamed antique store where Miranda had at some point admired a vintage dresser, to serving lattes to Miranda at precisely the piping hot temperature she prefers, Andrea is sorely tested each and every day—and often late into the night with orders barked over the phone. She puts up with it all by keeping her eyes on the prize: a recommendation from Miranda that will get Andrea a top job at any magazine of her choosing. As things escalate from the merely unacceptable to the downright outrageous, however, Andrea begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for may just kill her. And even if she survives, she has to decide whether or not the job is worth the price of her soul.]]> 384 Lauren Weisberger 0307275558 Belcutied 4 3.82 2003 The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada, #1)
author: Lauren Weisberger
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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date added: 2009/11/06
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]]> Gone with the Wind 18405 1037 Margaret Mitchell 0446365386 Belcutied 5 4.30 1936 Gone with the Wind
author: Margaret Mitchell
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1936
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Notebook (The Notebook, #1)]]> 15931
Set amid the austere beauty of coastal North Carolina in 1946, The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner returned home from World War II. Noah, thirty-one, is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories...until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once again.

Allie Nelson, twenty-nine, is now engaged to another man, but realizes that the original passion she felt for Noah has not dimmed with the passage of time. Still, the obstacles that once ended their previous relationship remain, and the gulf between their worlds is too vast to ignore. With her impending marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to confront her hopes and dreams for the future, a future that only she can shape.

Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just the beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments and the fundamental changes that affect us all. Shining with a beauty that is rarely found in current literature, The Notebook establishes Nicholas Sparks as a classic storyteller with a unique insight into the only emotion that really matters.

"I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough."

And so begins one of the most poignant and compelling love stories you will ever read...The Notebook]]> 214 Nicholas Sparks 0553816713 Belcutied 5 4.07 1996 The Notebook (The Notebook, #1)
author: Nicholas Sparks
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> Jane Eyre 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 Belcutied 5 4.14 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 5
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]]> Sense and Sensibility 14935 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141439662

'The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!'

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

This edition includes explanatory notes, textual variants between the first and second editions, and Tony Tanner's introduction to the original Penguin Classic edition.]]> 409 Jane Austen 0141439661 Belcutied 5 4.10 1811 Sense and Sensibility
author: Jane Austen
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1811
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/11/06
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]]> The Time Traveler's Wife 14050 537 Audrey Niffenegger 0965818675 Belcutied 4 3.90 2003 The Time Traveler's Wife
author: Audrey Niffenegger
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1)]]> 41865
First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that part might be - that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight is a love story with bite.]]> 498 Stephenie Meyer 0316015849 Belcutied 1 3.66 2005 Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1)
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2005
rating: 1
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date added: 2009/11/06
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]]> Pride and Prejudice 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 Belcutied 5 4.28 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/11/06
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]]> The Diary of a Young Girl 48855
In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
--back cover]]> 283 Anne Frank Belcutied 5 4.19 1947 The Diary of a Young Girl
author: Anne Frank
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1947
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/11/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy]]> 480479
Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In Under the Tuscan Sun, she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table.]]> 304 Frances Mayes 0767900383 Belcutied 5 3.77 1996 Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy
author: Frances Mayes
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/11/06
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]]> Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Belcutied 5 4.03 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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]]> Les Misérables 24280 1463 Victor Hugo 0451525264 Belcutied 4 4.19 1862 Les Misérables
author: Victor Hugo
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1862
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Little Women (Little Women, #1)]]> 1934 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780451529305.

Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.

It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with "woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the "girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.

]]> 449 Louisa May Alcott Belcutied 5 4.16 1868 Little Women (Little Women, #1)
author: Louisa May Alcott
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1868
rating: 5
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]]> A Tale of Two Cities 1953 A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.]]> 489 Charles Dickens 0141439602 Belcutied 4 3.86 1859 A Tale of Two Cities
author: Charles Dickens
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1859
rating: 4
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]]> The Alchemist 865 197 Paulo Coelho 0061122416 Belcutied 4 3.85 1988 The Alchemist
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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]]> The Great Gatsby 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Belcutied 4 3.93 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Belcutied
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 4
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]]> To Kill a Mockingbird 2657 "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Belcutied 5 4.25 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird
author: Harper Lee
name: Belcutied
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 5
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