Books about Maladies from Amazon.com

Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's title story, would certainly have his work cut out for him if he were forced to interpret the maladies of all the characters in this eloquent debut collection. Take, for example, Shoba and Shukumar, the young couple in "A Temporary Matter" whose marriage is crumbling in the wake of a stillborn child. Or Miranda in "Sexy," who is involved in a hopeless affair with a married man. But Mr. Kapasi has problems enough of his own; in addition to his regular job working as an interpreter for a doctor who does not speak his patients' language, he also drives tourists to local sites of interest. His fare on this particular day is Mr. and Mrs. Das--first-generation Americans of Indian descent--and their children. During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Kapasi becomes enamored of Mrs. Das and then becomes her unwilling confidant when she reads too much into his profession. "I told you because of your talents," she informs him after divulging a startling secret.

I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.

Of course, Mr. Kapasi has no cure for what ails Mrs. Das--or himself. Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage. Yet the situations Lahiri's people face, from unhappy marriages to civil war, transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story, "The Third and Final Continent," comments: "There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family. --Alix Wilber.
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The most widely recognized sourcebook on infectious diseases provides detailed, accurate, informative text for public health workers in official and voluntary health agencies, including those serving in the armed forces and other governmental agencies, and for all students of medicine. Each listing is easy to read and includes identification, infectious agent, occurrence, mode of transmission, incubation period, susceptibility and resistance. The 18th edition of this text is available, for the first time, online. Translations into several languages-currently Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Serbian, Indonesian and Italian make this text a global treasure..
Price: $27.72 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Many otherwise intelligent and talented people have trouble spelling correctly, and yet a single misspelled work on a letter or important document creates a bad impression, and can even damage job prospects or networking opportunities. Yet the way traditional dictionaries are organized makes it very difficult for misspellers to look up words unless they already know how to spell them. Computer spell-checkers can be a big help, but they don't address the issue with homophones--a big spelling problem for those who write down words based on how they "sound." Finally, here's a solution for all of the frustrated misspellers who can't spell a word well enough to find it in a dictionary. 1,001 Commonly Misspelled words features an easy-to-use phonetic access system, so that readers don't need to know how to spell words correctly before looking them up. In addition, readers get handy memory techniques (i.e., there's a "rat" in separate) and other tips so that they can remember correct spellings in the future. Lean and mean enough to carry around and use easily, 1,001 Commonly Misspelled Words is comprehensive enough to protect readers from the words they are most likely to get wrong..
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Forty-seven songs including: The Fall of Troy from the Dead Man Walking soundtrack, Frank s Wild Years, Good Old World, Jockey Full of Bourbon, A Little Rain, Shoreleave, Rain Dogs and many more..
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Surviving the teenage years isn't easy. Especially, if you've just found out why you're feeling so, totally, different from the rest of the kids at school. In My Strange and Terrible Malady, Ronita Baker, 11th-grade individualist, is not happy. Doctors just diagnosed her with Asperger Syndrome. It's hard enough being the misfit daughter of a perfect mother. School isn't much easier. Things change when Ronnie meets Hannah and she takes the time to explain the mysteries of social interaction and other conundrums of daily life to Ronnie. Hannah soon makes more sense to Ronnie than the despised Life Coach. At first … but that changes when the Life Coach starts relating better to Ronnie. My Strange and Terrible Malady takes a look at Asperger Syndrome from a young woman's point of view. Ronnie is clearly not socially savvy, but she is learning. Social and emotional interaction can be learned..
Price: $16.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A quirky, cosmopolitan novel about life and literature by the prize-winning Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas, author of Bartleby & Co.

The narrator of Montano's Malady is a writer named José who is so obsessed with literature that he finds it impossible to distinguish between real life and fictional reality. Part picaresque novel, part intimate diary, part memoir and philosophical musings, Enrique Vila-Matas has created a labyrinth in which writers as various as Cervantes, Sterne, Kafka, Musil, Bolaño, Coetzee, and Sebald cross endlessly surprising paths. Trying to piece together his life of loss and pain, José leads the reader on an unsettling journey from European cities such as Nantes, Barcelona, Lisbon, Prague and Budapest to the Azores and the Chilean port of Valparaiso. Exquisitely witty and erudite, it confirms the opinion of Bernardo Axtaga that Vila-Matas is "the most important living Spanish writer.".
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"North American evangelicals learned to do church in relation to modernity," asserts David Fitch. Furthermore, evangelicals have begun to model their ministries after the secular sciences or even to farm out functions of the church whenever it seems more efficient. As a result, the church, too often, has stopped being the church. In The Great Giveaway, Fitch examines various church practices and shows how and why each function has been compromised by modernity. Discussing such ministries as evangelism, physical healing, and spiritual formation, Fitch challenges Christians to reclaim these lost practices so that the church can regain its influence. Pastors, leaders, and students who minister to the postmodern world will find in this book fresh insight that will stir the hearts of many and spark much-needed discussion about the evangelical church..
Price: $6.28 [Notify me when price goes down.]