Why men love bitches – Sherry Argov

 it’s one of the books that i could say it’s the guide to how to get a man and how to keep him .. it’s pretty amazing actually that everything in it is realistic because it’s quoted from real life.  you may be wondering what kind of title is this or why are they using bad language .. well i think it’s a capturing title that would attract the readers more and the writer explained that she doesn’t mean the word bitch literally .. what she meant is being a powerful woman who wouldn’t accept to be mistreated by a man (as being a doormat ).

it has pretty useful tips but i don’t beleive that i would work all the time coz people has different personalities .. but it’s a real life examples that the writer gathered from interviewing people ..

i think the book is amazing but it’s a little bit long and it repeats itself in some chapters but it’s worth reading and the index at the end of the book is like a summary to the whole book which tells you what you need to know exactly sparing the details

i would give it  3.5/ 5

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a great novel by an afghan auther Khaled Hosseini, following the best selling the Kite Runner. It is a story of two women from Afghanistan, Mariam & Laila, taking place during the past thirty years.

Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man, living away in the outskirts of Herat with her mother Nana, the maid. Mariam is constantly reminded of her disgraceful existence in life by her own mother & the story takes a twist when Mariam stubbornly decides to visit her father’s house & meet her half sisters & brothers.  When her father drops her back home, he finds out something that forces him to take Mariam back with him & head to Herat. He quickly arranges for her marrige to a much older person, Rasheed and her suffer increases as time clicks by.

The other heroine Laila,  encounters a rough turn of fate. After her aspiring educated life, she loses her middle-class family to find herself with no roof above her head. Losing her friend Tariq also in the war, was devastating to her, so she decides to conceal her pregnency by marrying Rasheed.

Life goes on stumbbling upon those two women & as you read the book you’ll find yourself crying, empathizing with them. The book is simply captivating, describing the time of war, poverty but not despair.  I loved it, took me a while to finish it, but it is worth it, you won’t be expecting the ending !

I give it 4.75/5  not 5 because my heart broke over the sadness of the story, it is indeed well written but the amount of suffering is a little bit too much.

Jonathan Yardley said on the The Washington Post Book World: “Just in case you’re wondering whether Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns is as good as The Kite Runner, here’s the answer: No. It’s better.”

Eleven Minutes by PAULO COELHO

((once upon a time , there was a prostitute called Maria . wait a minute “once upon a time ” is how all the best children’s stories begin and “prositute” is a word for adults . How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since , at every moment of our lives , we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss , let’s keep that beginning. ))

this is the very first paragraph in the book .. i thought it’s very catchy and i fell in love with the book from the first paragraph ..lol

it’s one of the best books i’ve read so far .. a story of a simple girl living in a small village in brazil and had very big dreams of living in the city and get married to a rich guy and have kids .. she goes to Rio the capital city of brazil , meets a guy and he promised her to  make her a star because she was beautiful and she should just learn how to sing and dance .. a twist in her life happens and things doesn’t go the way she expected .. life takes her to a totally different path .. she eventually ends up selling her body to get money .. coz she thought it’s the only way to survive .. the story is about how she chose this path in her life .. and how she met her dream guy and fell in love ..

it’s a different kind of love story .. not the usual one .. you can understand how they happen to fall for each other and understand each other through their difficult experiences in life .. it’s really amazing how  they bonded  with each other

a very beautiful and well written book … meaningful and it make you think and wonder of your actual life  .. i think all of paulo’s books contains philosophy .. and everytime i read any of his books it makes me think about it for several days after i’m done with it .. it’s quite inspirational and he always have new ideas

it’s a little bit outrageous actually .. it contains some ideas that may seem inappropriate especially in our saudi society lol .. there should be this warning signs that says ( over 18 years only !!!)

i rate this book as( 5/5 )

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

This is a fascinating book, it has been made into a movie and most people who have read it have come to know the secret. It is not like any other books where there is a plot, characters, ironies or any other tools that are used in literature.

 

When holding the book in your hands you feel like you are holding a great secret. You continue on reading it because you want to know what is “The Secret”. The book includes experiences of people who have used the secret to attract the things they want and their dreams to come to them. It makes you think positively and that you will convince the universe that what ever you want is already yours. You might think that what I have just said is wired and insane but when you get to know “The Secret” you will believe what I have just mentioned.

 

“As you learn the secret, you will come to know how you can have, be, or do anything you want. You will come to know who you really are. You will come to know the magnificence that awaits you in life”

 

“It has been passed through ages, highly coveted, hidden, lost, stolen, and bought for vast sums of money. This centuries-old Secret has been understood by some of the most prominent people in history: Plato, Galileo, Beethoven, Edison, Carnegie, Einstein– along with the inventors, theologians, scientists, and great thinkers. Now the secret is being reveled to the world”.

 

Some of you might not like the book because it does not tell a story. But if you like books that give you self-esteem then I recommend this book for you to read. I do not want you to think that this is one of these boring tips that encourage you and teach you how to do things the right way. As I said this book is all about this secret and the experiences of people who used it.

 

In this book you use methods to get what you want, visualizing is just one of many.

 

I give “The Secret” 5/5 because when I read it I was completely depressed and had no hopes at that time. It helped me find away and to focus on what I want. From a personal experenice that I want to add to the other amazing experiences, I got what I wanted and God has helped me in choosing the right path.

 

For more information about the movie please visit www.thesecret.tv.

 

My Sister’s Keeper By Jodi Picoult

 

 When this book was Recommended to me by a couple of friends.. I  must say the book’s name didn’t really catch my attention, but the  small writing that was writing underneath the big title did:

 ” If you use one of your children to save the life of another,  are you being a good mother or a very bad one? “

 The story is about a 13-year-old girl called Anna, who’s went  through multiple surgeries, transfusions, & injections to save her  severely ill sister, Kate, who suffers from APL ” Acute  Promyelocytic Leukemia “, that’s a very rare subgroup of leukemia,  which is basically blood cancer. But when it gets to the point that  Anna should donate one of her kidneys to Kate, that’s when  everything started to come apart. Anna makes the decision to sue  her parents for the rights to her own body. Although in her own  words she admits that her parents made her or conceived her for  this particular purpose- that is to Save Kate- she starts  questioning that what if Kate wasn’t sick at all, would she be born?  :

 ” I’m telling you, if aliens landed on earth today and took a  good hard look at why babies get born, they’d conclude that most people have children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn’t one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren’t very flattering.

On the other hand, I was born for a very specific purpose. I wasn’t the result of a cheap bottle of wine or a full moon or the heat of the moment. I was born because a scientist managed to hook up my mother’s eggs and my father’s sperm to create a specific combination of precious genetic material. In fact, when Jesse told me how babies get made and I, the great disbeliever, decided to ask my parents the truth, I got more than I bargained for. They sat me down and told me all the usual stuff, of course- but they also explained that they chose little embryonic me, specifically, because I could save my sister, Kate. ‘ We loved you even more,’ my mother made sure to say, ‘because we knew what exactly we were getting.’

It made me wonder, though, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy. Chances are, I’d still be floating up in Heaven or wherever, waiting to be attached to a body to spend some time on earth. Certainly I would not be part of this family. See, unlike the rest of the free world, I didn’t get here by accident. And if your parents have you for a reason, then that reason better exist. But once it’s gone, so are you. “

The story if filled with many complex emotions, of abandonment, loneliness, confusion, and the feeling as though you have to choose one of two choices, knowing that the first would kill you and the other would cripple you for good. And I admit I did have a couple of teary eyed moments while reading it. It also mentions the conflict between morals & ethics, right & wrong when it comes to making a decision that may change your life, which made me think a lot of my life too.

In this story the author shows us the moment in the eyes of each character individually, but still, you can’t help yourself from taking sides. To me I was on Anna’s side the whole time. Even though her mother kept saying over & over that she really loved her. To me favoring a child over another for any reason, big or small, is just unfair.

I really enjoyed reading this story, especially that the ending wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. Even though there were some parts where there was some talk about how the world began or was created in the eyes of the Greek, and how Anna thought it really happened, which kind of conflicts with what our Holy Quran says. But it’s not a major topic in it, so I kind of started skipping those parts, because to be honest, they didn’t make any sense to me and made me uncomfortable.

I strongly recommend this novel if you’re into tragic stories that might change the way you look at things and your life after the last page.

Pleasant reading everyone

My Rating: 5/5..

More about the book: Click Here

If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern

Elizabeth, a successful interior designer in her thirties, takes over raising her 11-year-old nephew, Luke, being the caretaker of the family since her sister, Luke’s mother, has left just like their mother did years ago so each can live a free life away from responsibilities. She grew up too fast into a strict, realistic super-organized woman, not to mention, deeply wounded.
Her and Luke’s lives change completely after Luke comes up with an imaginary friend called Ivan. At the beginning, Elizabeth freaks out because she thinks there’s something wrong with his mind, but it’s about time that she starts seeing Ivan too and eventually falls in love with him.

A sweet, beautifully written and unforgettable childish-spirited journey. And like any other book of Cecelia’s, you’ll live through different emotions, you’ll laugh, cry, and feel everyone’s pain, and it will be impossible to put it down! It’s one of my very very favorite books, and Ivan is definitely my no.1 fictional crush

 

My Rating: 9.5/10

More about the book, click here.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

It is the first book that started the twilight saga, making girl fans everywhere go crazy.

It starts with Bella moving from the sunny Phoenix, Arizona to rainy town of Forks, Washington and as a daughter of their Police Chief, she draws the students attention at her new highschool.

There, she wonders about a group of five chalky white beautiful siblings-the Cullens as her new friend told her-Alice Cullen the shortest of all, Edward Cullen the one with the reddish brown hair, Emmet Cullen the huge muscular one and the foster twins the blonds Jasper and Rosalie Hale. To bella  they didn’t look anything alike, not like anyone else either ; sitting in the cafeteria yet weren’t eating.

As Bella grows to know Edward, he tells her their little secret of them being vampires. Her careless response surprised him and then the predator falls for the prey and the human falls for the vampire.

The story pictures the struggle between instincts and desires. Absolutely breath taking, deeply romantic and easy to follow. I fell in love with it immediately. It had me thinking about them, really feeling it like it was in front of me..I really recommand it to whoever wanting to be enchanted .

My rating : 5/5

*there is a twilight movie to be released on 21st of November 2008.

*The cover symbolizes Bella’s and Edward’s love, which is forbidden, similar to the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,  It also represents choice.

Can You Keep A secret? By Sophie Kinsella

This is one of the most hilarious books I have ever read. Sophie a chick lit writer and a great writer has this great talent in making the reader stuck to the book no matter what, it is hard to be apart for minutes.

 

The story is about Emma Corrigan who has many secrets that she kept from her friends, boyfriend and even her own mother, Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world.. In the beginning of the book they list a couple of her secrets:

 

“- My Kate Spade bag is fake.

- I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even exactly what it is.

- I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like ken. Barbie and Ken.”

 

One day on a flight from Scotland back to London she was sitting by this handsome stranger, she gets scared and thinks that it is the end of her life because of some air turbulence that she blurts all of her secrets to him. The stranger turns out to be Jack Harper the company elusive CEO a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her and also her boss.

 

I don’t want to spoil the book for those who haven’t read it yet, but the book is worth every moment. You will never stop laughing at all the stupid things that happen and at one point you will feel really sorry for Emma after the climax there is a turn of events that will glue you again to the book.

 

I give the book 5/5 because it is one of the best books I have read. All in all Sophie is one of my favorite authors.

 

I recommend this book it is A MUST READ book.

 

To support what I’ve just said here are some of the reviews on the book:

 

“Sophie Kinsella gives chick lit lovers a reason to stay home from the mall”

-Entertainment weekly.

 

“This book is an indulgence that is worth every penny”

- Company (UK).

 

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

A great story about two Afghani boys, Amir and Hassan. Amir is the book-devouring son of a rich Sunni businessman, while Hassan is the illiterate son of Amir’s father’s Shiite servant. Yet the two grow up together and spend most of the time with each other. More like brothers than just friends.

The story takes a twist when the two boys’ lives and relationship take different paths forever, first by Amir’s betrayal, then the invasion of Russian army and Taliban revolution. Amir and his father flies away to the United States, away from the bloody chaos in Afghanistan. He goes to college, gets married, and have a new life there. But he can’t stop thinking about Hassan and wondering what’s going on with him.

Years later, after his father passed away, Amir leaves to Pakistan to meet his father’s best friend, Rahim Khan.

Rahim Khan reveals long buried secrets to Amir, about him, his father, and Hassan. Shocked, Amir now realizes it’s time to pay his childhood mate back.

The book takes you to a whole different world that I never thought it existed. Cruelty, betrayal, tragedy, sectarianism, love, beliefs, relationships, and injustice. An amazing mix that will make this book unforgettable! I LOVED it. I gasped and threw the book away furiously at one point, cried Hassan at another, and felt sad for days. Hosseini did a great job describing people, feelings, and situations using such a simple language and words which makes it even more enjoyable reading. Even though it was denied, I still think it was mostly adapted from his own life, either that or he’s one hell of a writer.

My rating: 5/5.

More about the book, click here.

Dream A Little Dream/Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

This book is talking about the story of a widow who has a son. She’s back to the town that hates her due to her corrupted past, and she met a guy whose wife and child died in a tragic accident. It’s a love story, romantic in it’s own way and it’s also dramatic.

It’s a nice book but I didn’t really like it. It’s not one of my favorites since I have a huge collection of books . But I can say it’s entertaining just to waste your time lol. My sister liked it, but hey people have different tastes.

It’s like one of the chick flicks movies.