Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Favorite Books 2

Book Review Nikolai Ostrovsky, How the Steel was Tempered, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, The Devil, Humayun Ahmed, Jochna O Jononi-r Golpo, Tales of Moonlit on the lap of a mother ebook pdf

Book: How the Steel was tempered
Author: Nikolai Ostrovsky (Russian, 1904 - 1936)

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Original Language: Russian
Category: War, Autobiography
Year: 1930

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Story: This is an autobiography of Nikolai Ostrovsky who had an immensely struggling life all through his short life-span. At several stages of the life of Pavel (the central character), you will feel the spark of fire and the tempering of steel out of crude iron.

Comment: This is a literary masterpiece; I read the Bangla translated paper book. Once there was a survey on Russian astronauts asking what they want to take with them to the space. Interestingly most of them replied that they would like to take a copy of this book with them. Nikolai Ostrovsky lived for 32 years only and was blinded at age 26. He wrote this masterpiece being in the blind state. This is an example how vast and powerful a mind can be.


Link: Free online reading at Scribd (English translation):

Part 1: Nikolai Ostrovsky - How the Steel was Tempered (Part 1)
Part 2: Nikolai Ostrovsky - How the Steel was Tempered (Part 2)

Bangla translated paper book should be available at Aziz Super Market bookstores at Shahbagh, Dhaka.

 


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Book: The Devil
Author: Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian, 1828 - 1910)

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Original Language: Russian
Category: Drama
Year: 1886
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Story: Eugene was once physically connected to Stepanida which is not socially legal anyway. Later all through his promising life he could not escape this attraction that he tries to escape from. It's the devil of the mind that makes the difference.

Comment: The novel has two alternate endings. I don't agree with the endings but anyway, these are two kinds of dramatic ends that might happen when you can't escape the devil inside. The flow of the story is as usual very aristocratic as can be expected from Tolstoy.


The story is influenced by a personal infatuation of Tolstoy himself which he later admits. This is the difference between great people and common people like us; we always try to pretend that we never felt the devil inside us.


I read the Bangla ebook created by Murchona.com.


Link: Free online reading at (English Translation): Lev Tolstoy - The Devil


The Bangla version should be available at Murchona




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Book: Jochna O Jononi-r Golpo (Translate as 'Tales of Moonlit on the lap of a mother')
Author: Humayun Ahmed (Bangladeshi, 1948 - 2012)

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Original Language: Bangla
Category: War
Year: Somewhere in 2000's decade
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Story: This is a story on liberation war of Bangladesh. The story-telling is an easy-going and pleasant reading. All the characters were real and the story was well-organized with historical evidences in the writer's concern.


Comment: The original language is Bangla. Unfortunately there is no English translation available. This is a nice book on liberation war of Bangladesh. However the pains and agonies of thousands of raped women was not portrayed in the book. The writer applogizes for this shortcoming and says that, this was too heart-touching a topic for him to write about and expects other writers to write about that.


Link: Bangla e-book is available at Murchona.com (22 MB).

Let us buy paper books. Let's enrich our mind and home library.

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