Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India
by Anita Jain
Published 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9781596911857

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Jacket Notes:

Is arranged marriage any worse than Craigslist? One smart and feisty woman's year in India looking for a husband the old-fashioned way reveals a rapidly changing culture and a whole host of ideas about the best way to find a mate.

Anita Jain was fed up with the New York singles scene. After three years of frustration and awkward dates, and under constant pressure from her Indian parents to find someone, she started to wonder: was looking for a husband in a bar any less barbaric than traditional arranged marriage? After all this effort, there had to be something easier.

After announcing in a much-discussed "New York" magazine article her intention to try arranged marriage, Jain moves back to India--the impoverished, backward land her parents fled--to find a husband. At age thirty-two, and well past the cultural deadline for starting a family, Jain subjects herself to a whole new onslaught of expectations. "Marrying Anita" is an account of romantic chance encounters, nosy relatives, and dozens of potential husbands. Will she find a suitable man? Will he please her parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins? Is the new urban Indian culture in which she's searching really all that different from America?

With disarming candor, Jain tells her own romantic story even as it unfolds before her, and in the process sheds new light on a country modernizing at breakneck speed. "Marrying Anita" is a refreshingly honest look at our own desires and the modern search for the perfect mate.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 05/26/2008

In 2005, Jain announced in a New York magazine article that she was tired of American dating and would consider an arranged marriage, an Indian tradition she had always resisted. Only mildly piqued by her parents' endearing obsession with brokering a shaadi, she had ribbed her father for writing her profiles on Indian matchmaking Web sites. In a radical return to tradition, she decides to move to her native India in search of a husband. Pondering the foibles of American dating strengthens her resolve to embrace life in Delhi, even as she adjusts to its new cosmopolitan energy and Western attitudes. Jain struggles to negotiate the security of tradition with the allure of modernity. She is flummoxed by the caste system as well as the stigmas attached to single women. Torn between "old-world" suitors and the confident, latter-day Indian male, she concedes, "Dating in Delhi is no less complicated, perplexing and ego-deflating than in New York." Even the ad her father places in the Times of India matrimonial pages ("thirty-three years old, Harvard graduate... looking for broad-minded groom") fails to arouse much interest. With her world-weary yet earnest voice that finds humor in humiliation, Jain is sure to delight readers. (Aug.)

The Faith Club: A Muslim, a Christian, a Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding
by Ranya Idliby
Published 2007 by Free Press

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780743290487

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Jacket Notes:

A groundbreaking book about Americans searching for faith and mutual respect, "The Faith Club" interweaves the stories of three women, their three religions, and their urgent request to understand one another.

Disobedience
by Jane Hamilton
Published 2001 by Anchor Books

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780385720465

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From Jane Hamilton, author of the beloved "New York Times bestsellers A Map of the World and The Book of Ruth, comes a warmly humorous, poignant novel about a young man, his mother's e-mail, and the often surprising path of infidelity.

Henry Shaw, a high school senior, is about as comfortable with his family as any seventeen-year-old can be. His father, Kevin, teaches history with a decidedly socialist tinge at the Chicago private school Henry and his sister attend. His mother, Beth, who plays the piano in a group specializing in antique music, is a loving, attentive wife and parent. Henry even accepts the offbeat behavior of his thirteen-year-old sister, Elvira, who is obsessed with Civil War

reenactments and insists on dressing in handmade Union uniforms at inopportune times.

When he stumbles on his mother's e-mail account, however, Henry realizes that all is not as it seems. There, under the name Liza38, a name that Henry innocently established for her, is undeniable evidence that his mother is having an affair with one Richard Polloco, a violin maker and unlikely paramour who nonetheless has a very appealing way with words and a romantic spirit that, in Henry's estimation, his own father woefully lacks.

Against his better judgment, Henry charts the progress of his mother's infatuation, her feelings of euphoria, of guilt, and of profound, touching confusion. His knowledge of Beth's secret life colors his own tentative explorations of love and sex with the ephemeral Lily, and casts a new light on the arguments-usually focused on Elvira-in which his parents regularly indulge. Over the course of his final year of high school, Henry observes each member of the family, trying to anticipate when they will find out about the infidelity and what the knowledge will mean to each of them.

Henry's observations, set down ten years after that fateful year, are much more than the "old story" of adultery his mother deemed her affair to be. With her inimitable grace and compassion, Jane Hamilton has created a novel full of gentle humor and rich insights into the nature of love and the deep, mysterious bonds that hold families together.

Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love
by Dava Sobel
Published 2000 by Penguin Books

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780140280555

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Jacket Notes:

While Galileo Galilei was under house arrest, accused of heresy for his claim that the earth revolved around the sun, his daughter Virginia, a cloistered nun, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength through the difficult years of his trial and persecution. Winner of the Christopher Award and named a Notable Book of the Year by the "New York Times". Illustrations.

The Dogs of Babel
by Carolyn Parkhurst
Published 2004 by Back Bay Books

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780316778503

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In Paul's fantastic and even perilous search for the truth about his wife's death, he abandons his everyday life to embark on a series of experiments designed to teach his dog Lorelei to communicate. Could she really give him the answers he is looking for?

A Passage to India
by E. M. Forster
Published 1965 by Harvest/HBJ Book

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780156711425

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Jacket Notes:

Among the greatest novels of the twentieth century and the basis for director David Lean' s Academy Award-winning film, A Passage to India tells of the clash of cultures in British India after the turn of the century. In exquisite prose, Forster reveals the menace that lurks just beneath the surface of ordinary life, as a common misunderstanding erupts into a devastating affair.

Fear and Trembling
by Amelie Nothomb
Published 2002 by St. Martin's Griffin

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780312288570

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According to ancient Japanese protocol, foreigners deigning to approach the emperor did so only with fear and trembling. Terror and self-abasement conveyed respect. Amelie, our well-intentioned and eager young Western heroine, goes to Japan to spend a year working at the Yumimoto Corporation. Returning to the land where she was born is the fulfillment of a dream for Amelie; working there turns into comic nightmare.

Alternately disturbing and hilarious, unbelievable and shatteringly convincing, "Fear and Trembling" will keep readers clutching tight to the pages of this taut little novel, caught up in the throes of fear, trembling, and, ultimately, delight.

A Free Life
by Ha Jin
Published 2009 by Vintage Books USA

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780307278609

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Jacket Notes:

From the acclaimed, award-winning author of "Waiting" and "War Trash" comes a new novel that eloquently re-imagines the American immigrant saga. Jin tells the story of the Wu family, as it sets out on a journey through contemporary America in search of a sense of belonging.

The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
Published 2006 by Virago Press (UK)

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9781844082933

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First published in 1905, "The House of Mirth" shocked the New York society it so deftly chronicles, portraying the moral, social, and economic restraints on a woman who dared to claim the privileges of marriage without assuming the responsibilities. Lily Bart, beautiful, witty, and sophisticated, is accepted by "old money" and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears 30, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing and to maintain her life in the luxury she has come to expect. While many have sought her, something--fastidiousness or integrity--prevents her from making a "suitable" match.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
Published 2008 by Riverhead Books

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9781594483295

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Winner of both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the most talked about--and praised--smash hit of 2007 follows the adventures of a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd plagued by a family curse.

The Last Lecture
by Randy Pausch
Published 2008 by Hyperion Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9781401323257

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Jacket Notes:

Based on the extraordinary final lecture by Carnegie Mellon University professor Pausch, given after he discovered he had pancreatic cancer, this moving book goes beyond the now-famous lecture to inspire readers to live each day with purpose and joy. Photos.