বুধবার, ৩০ মার্চ, ২০১৬
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Power of Habit comes a fascinating book that explores the science of productivity, and why, in today’s world, managing how you think—rather than what you think—can transform your life.
At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key concepts—from motivation and goal setting to focus and decision making—that explain why some people and companies get so much done. Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics—as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters—this painstakingly researched book explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently.
They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.
A young woman drops out of a PhD program and starts playing poker. By training herself to envision contradictory futures, she learns to anticipate her opponents’ missteps—and becomes one of the most successful players in the world.
A group of data scientists at Google embark on a four-year study of how the best teams function, and find that how a group interacts is more important than who is in the group—a principle, it turns out, that also helps explain why Saturday Night Live became a hit.
A Marine Corps general, faced with low morale among recruits, reimagines boot camp—and discovers that instilling a “bias toward action” can turn even the most directionless teenagers into self-motivating achievers.
The filmmakers behind Disney’s Frozen are nearly out of time and on the brink of catastrophe—until they shake up their team in just the right way, spurring a creative breakthrough that leads to one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
What do these people have in common?
They know that productivity relies on making certain choices. The way we frame our daily decisions; the big ambitions we embrace and the easy goals we ignore; the cultures we establish as leaders to drive innovation; the way we interact with data: These are the things that separate the merely busy from the genuinely productive.
In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charles Duhigg explained why we do what we do. In Smarter Faster Better, he applies the same relentless curiosity, deep reporting, and rich storytelling to explain how we can improve at the things we do. It’s a groundbreaking exploration of the science of productivity, one that can help anyone learn to succeed with less stress and struggle, and to get more done without sacrificing what we care about most—to become smarter, faster, and better at everything we do.
Download
শনিবার, ২৭ জুন, ২০১৫
PATRICK MODIANO (b. 1945) is one of France's most admired contemporary novelists and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation."
Modiano's novels all delve into the puzzle of identity, and of trying to track evidence of existence through the traces of the past. Obsessed with the troubled and shameful period of the Occupation -- during which his father had allegedly engaged in shady dealings -- Modiano returns to this theme in all of his novels, book after book building a remarkably homogeneous work. He writes constantly about the city of Paris, describing the evolution of its streets, its habits and its people.
NIGHT ROUNDS (1969)
NIGHT ROUNDS (1969) tells the story of a young man of limited means, caught between his work for the French Gestapo informing on the Resistance, and his work for a Resistance cell informing on the police and black market dealers. Under pressure from both sides to inform and bring things to a crisis, he finds himself driven towards an act of self-sacrifice as the only way to escape an impossible situation. The novel was recently re-issued in a revised translation as THE NIGHT WATCH, also included here.
* Download NIGHT ROUNDS (Knopf, 1971). Translated by Patricia Wolf. -- ePUB/MOBI + PDF
RING ROADS (1972)
RING ROADS (1972), awarded the French Academy's Grand Prix du Roman, is the story of a young Jew, Serge, in search of his father, Chalva, who disappeared from his life ten years earlier. He finds him trying to survive the war years in the unlikely company of black marketeers, anti-Semites and prostitutes, putting his meagre and not entirely orthodox business skills at the service of those who have no interest in him or his survival.* Download RING ROADS (Bloomsbury, 2015). Translated by Caroline Hillier, revised by Frank Wynne.
In MISSING PERSON (1978)
In MISSING PERSON (1978), Modiano portrays a man in pursuit of the identity he lost in the murky days of the Paris Occupation, the black hole of French memory. On one level a detective thriller, a 1950s film noir mix of smoky cafés, illegal passports, and insubstantial figures crossing bridges in the fog, on another level it is also a haunting meditation on the nature of the self.*Download MISSING PERSON (Godine, 2004). Translated by Daniel Weissbort.
SUSPENDED SENTENCES
SUSPENDED SENTENCES is a trilogy of novellas -- "Suspended Sentences" (1988), "Flowers of Ruin" (1991), and "Afterimage" (1993) -- that form a single, compelling whole, haunted by the same gauzy sense of place and characters. Orphaned children, mysterious parents, forgotten friends, enigmatic strangers -- each appears in this three-part love song to a Paris that no longer exists.* Download SUSPENDED SENTENCES: Three Novellas (Yale UP, 2014). Translated by Mark Polizzoti.
HONEYMOON
HONEYMOON (1990) parallels the story of Jean B., a filmmaker who abandons his wife and career to hole up in a Paris hotel, with that of Ingrid and Rigaud, a refugee couple he'd met twenty years before, and whose mystery continues to haunt him.
* Download HONEYMOON (Godine, 1995). Translated by Barbara Wright. -- ePUB/MOBI + PDF
OUT OF THE DARK
In OUT OF THE DARK (1996), the narrator recalls his shadowy love affair in the 1960s with an enigmatic woman. Fifteen years after their breakup, they meet again, but she has changed her name and denies their past. What is real and what is not remain to be seen in the dreamlike novel that typifies Modiano's obsessions and elegiac prose.
* Download OUT OF THE DARK (University of Nebraska Press, 1998). Translated by Jordan Stump. -- ePUB/MOBI + PDF
DORA BRUDER (1997)
DORA BRUDER (1997) is a literary hybrid, fusing together several genres -- biography, autobiography, detective novel -- to tell the history of its title character, a 15-year-old daughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who, after running away from the safety of the convent that was hiding her, ends up being deported to Auschwitz. Modiano delivers a moving account of the 10-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Occupation and the paranoia of the Pétain regime as he tries to find connections to Dora.
* Download DORA BRUDER (University of California Press, 1999). Translated by Joanna Kilmartin.
The Night Watch
The Night Watch is a surrealistic reflection on betrayal and self destruction in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Attracted by easy money and the sheen of sophistication, the narrator, a young man, drifts into the French Gestapo and is assigned to penetrate a Resistance cell. Paris, the city of light, is distorted and confused in this dreamlike reminiscence, and all its beautiful places are stained with venality and fear. Only recently appearing in English, this is another must read for readers who only recently discovered Patrick Modiano.
Download THE NIGHT WATCH (Bloomsbury, 2015). Translated by Patricia Wolf, revised by Frank Wynne.
বুধবার, ১৩ মে, ২০১৫
Man Booker Prize Winners
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe.
The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and success; therefore, the prize is of great significance for the book trade. In contrast to literary prizes in the United States, the Booker Prize is greeted with great anticipation and fanfare.
It is also a mark of distinction for authors to be selected for inclusion in the shortlist or even to be nominated for the longlist.
(1)The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Man Booker Prize-2014)
A novel of the cruelty of war, and tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love.
Richard Flanagan's story — of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor haunted by a love affair with his uncle's wife — journeys from the caves of Tasmanian trappers in the early twentieth century to a crumbling pre-war beachside hotel, from a Thai jungle prison to a Japanese snow festival, from the Changi gallows to a chance meeting of lovers on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Taking its title from 17th-century haiku poet Basho's travel journal, The Narrow Road To The Deep North is about the impossibility of love. At its heart is one day in a Japanese slave labour camp in August 1943. As the day builds to its horrific climax, Dorrigo Evans battles and fails in his quest to save the lives of his fellow POWs, a man is killed for no reason, and a love story unfolds.
(2)The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Man Booker Prize-2013)
From the author of The Rehearsal and winner of the Man Booker Prize, a breathtaking feat of storytelling where everything is connected, but nothing is as it seems....
It is 1866, and young Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky. Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is a brilliantly constructed, fiendishly clever ghost story and a gripping page-turner.
(3) Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Man Booker Prize-2012)
Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.
At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's "Bring Up the Bodies" follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head?
The Sense of an Ending-Julian Barnes (Man Booker Prize-2011)
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.
Now Tony is retired. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove.