"Manakamana Temple" - The wish fulfulling goddess

The hilltop (1302m) also offers a vantage point for taking in the breathtaking view of the Manaslu, Himalchuli and Annapurna massifs to the north. Venerated since 17th century and commanding royal patronage, Mankamana is located south of the historic town of Gorkha and 6 km north of Mugling.

The cable car in Nepal takes you up on a spiritual adventure to the abode of Mankamana, the wish-fulfilling Hindu Goddess. Even if you have no wishes to make (assuming that you have got it all or you are not a believer), this place offers a unique look into Nepali people's faith in the Goddess Mankamana. The Mankamana temple overlooks terraced fields, and the Trisuli and Marshyang-di river valley.

In the past, millions of pilgrims used to do the long arduous trek up to the hilltop. Much still do. The cable car station in Cheres is about 104 kms, west from Kathmandu and about 102 kms east from Pokhara. From the base-station at Cheres one can get to Mankamana temple in 10 minutes flat or less. The ride covers a distance of 2.8 kilometers. With 31 passengers and 3 cargo-cars, each with a seating capacity of handling 600 persons per hour. You can book the trip to Manakamana by Cable Car with us or one of our national branches in the country.

The Wind Whispers War: A Vietnam Love Story Book One

The early 1960’s… America had elected the youngest President in U.S. history. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" was the challenge issued to young and old alike. Nightly news brought rioting and violence into our homes, either supporting or opposing Black civil rights. Through the miracle of television, taped footage showed our President being killed, then TV broadcast it’s first live murder days later. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich days of the 1950’s were gone forever. World events, and pop culture had repercussions on the lives of the people you knew, your family, your friends, and your neighbors. Living through those turbulent times, only to find myself in the midst of a miserable divorce, inspired me to create a life very different than my own to escape the horrible reality of ending a 30 year marriage.. Memories flooded my mind of stories that returning Vietnam Vets had shared with me throughout the years. For entertainment, since I had no TV, I developed a story line without the restrictions of a formula book publishing company. I chose to be self published as it became increasingly important to me to not change one word of any returning soldier's story.

This work is the prequel to future novels that, in part, detail several true life experiences of soldiers who survived their tour in Southeast Asia. To the Veterans who talked to me, thank you, for choosing not to be silent.

Find TRUE love!

From the publisher of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comes a new tale of romance, heartbreak, and tentacled mayhem.
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters expands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities. As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels? This masterful portrait of Regency England blends Jane Austen’s biting social commentary with ultraviolent depictions of sea monsters biting. It’s survival of the fittest—and only the swiftest swimmers will find true love!

Beauty of nature.

Nepal is the most famous tourist destination for adventure sports and adventure tours in Asia. The topography of this Himalayan Kingdom makes it the first choice for adventure tours. Let us have a look at most thrilling, electrifying and mind blowing adventure places, sports and activities that Nepal offers.

River journeys in Nepal are electrifying and nerve thrilling. Your life flashes before you as you comfortably hurtle towards monster boulders and towering walls of water. Sunkoshi, Trisuli, Marshyangdi, Seti, Kali Gandaki and Karnali are the major rivers of Nepal, famous for Kayaking and White Water Rafting. The wild, steep, warm and bug free rivers of Nepal tickle the tourists' adventurous side and embrace them in their crystal clear blue-green waters.

Boat trip in the lovely Phewa Lake is the foremost attraction of Pokhara. Paddling out into the middle of the lake is a nice way to spend a quite afternoon. Phewa lake is the largest lake in Pokhara valley and the second largest lake in Nepal. Encircled by Sarangkot and Kaskikot hills, the lake holds a pagoda-style temple. Another attraction is the reflection of Mount Machhapuchhre and Annapurna range on the crystal clear water of the lake. While boating in Phewa Lake, you can see several varitiies of fish.

Prospect of Tourism(Kapilvastu)

When one talks to the local people in Kapilvastu about the prospect of tourism there, they do not seem really enthusiastic. They say, 'Yes. There is a potential.' And that's it.
This is the place where Lord Buddha perhaps spent more years than anywhere else. A few kilometers from Taulihawa, the district headquarters, is his father's palace, where he was brought up. It was when he was living here that he famously saw 'sick people', 'old people', 'dying people' and it was from here he left his wife and young son at midnight, in his search for enlightenment.
Much of palace has perished. One can see the brick walls, about one and a half feet above the ground, revealing the structure of the rooms of the palace. Parts of the 10-feet wide wall covering the citadel can also be seen. Trees and undergrowth cover most part of the site.
The site is not well managed and not well promoted. It looks forlorn and you will hardly meet two visitors at a single time.
Then there is Kudan, few kilometres south of Taulihawa. The monastery was build by King Suddhodana, the father of Lord Buddha for Lord Buddha and his monks, after he returned enlightened. Here was Lord Buddha presented with Kashya Vastra by Prajapati and later on Rahula, the son of Buddha, entered into monkhood. This place has preserved some majesty befitting Lord Buddha.
Even here, when we visited it, there was no one and there was no system of charging for visiting the site--money that could go at least toward maintaining it. Only some children who followed us, asking chocolates.
Kapilvastu is not very far from Lumbini and even if tourists who come to visit the latter are attracted to visit this place too, that could probably do wonders for the district economically. Unfortunately, the people who can make this happen seem too busy in petty politics.

'A History of Nepal will be of interest to any student of South Asian studies, since it fills a serious lacuna in scholarship on the region. … Whelpton's text is the first accessible overview of Nepal's political history published by a university press in English. … Whelpton deserves much praise for rising to the challenge of writing a comprehensive yet orderly history of a nation … Whelpton succeeds on all accounts. As a result, A History of Nepal is a compelling narrative introduction to this frequently misunderstood country.' Times Higher Education Supplement'… very well written and organised, … an excellent one-volume up-to-date history of Nepal in addition to being an extremely good reference book.' The Britain-Nepal Society Journal'… Whelpton's History of Nepal is a valuable introduction to that country. It will be useful to all non-Nepalese specialists interested in South Asia: it gives a good and accurate account of the historical events and provides general information on a wide range of quite disparate topics.' Contributions to Nepalese Studies.

Nepal emerged as a unified state over two hundred years ago, centred on the Kathmandu Valley with its two thousand years of urban civilisation. While John Whelpton’s history focuses on the period since the overthrow of the Rana family autocracy in 1950–51, the early chapters are devoted to the origins of the kingdom and the evolving relations of its diverse peoples. By drawing on research on Nepal’s environment, society and political institutions, the author portrays a country of extraordinary contrasts, which has been constantly buffeted by its neighbours, the two ASIA agiants, China and India. Economic and political turmoil over the last fifty years came to a climax in the massacre of the royal family in 2001, when the country erupted into civil war. The book is comprehensive and its accessible approach will appeal to students, professionals and those visiting the region.

Sea of Poppies(love)

The first in Amitav Ghosh’s new trilogy of novels, Sea of Poppies is a stunningly vibrant and intensely human work that confirms his reputation as a master storyteller. At the heart of this epic saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean to the Mauritius Islands. As to the people on board, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts. In a time of colonial upheaval in the mid nineteenth century, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed village-woman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited European orphan. As they sail down the Hooghly and into the sea, their old family ties are washed away, and they view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers, who will build whole new lives for themselves in the remote islands where they are being taken. It is the beginning of an unlikely dynasty.

The sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields by the Ganga, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of China at the time of the Opium Wars. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, which makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive—a masterpiece from one of the world's finest novelists.

Hard working Dog Of Siberian.

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  The Siberian HUSKY is an affectionate, powerful, energetic, and muscular sled dog from the Arctic. This hard-working dog is known for its incredible endurance. It is a fast runner with a smooth gait. Huskies are often put on dog teams in the Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska.
  The Siberian Husky was bred hundreds of years ago by the Chukchi, a tribe from eastern Siberian, in the Arctic. Generally a quiet dog, the husky doesn't bark, but howls and makes a woo-woo sound.
  Fur: The Siberian Husky has a long, thick coat that lets it live in extremely cold weather, down to -75°F. The insulating coat is made of two layers, a short, dense, oily underlayer and a long, coarse guard coat. The husky grooms itself fastidiously; it is a very clean dog.
  Eyes : In some huskies, one eye may be blue while the other is brown. This trait is called a "pinto eye," a "parti eye," or a "split eye."
  Anatomy: The Siberian Husky is a medium-sized dog. It is just under 2 feet (60 cm) tall at the shoulders and weighs about 45 to 60 pounds (20-27 kg). The male is a bit larger than the female.
  

Deep heat solutuion.......

Scientists from the universities of Leicester and Cambridge and from the British Geological Survey have published new research in the journal Geology this month (November) shedding new light on a 500-million year old mystery.

The 500 million year-old fossils of the Burgess Shale in Canada, discovered over a century ago, still provide one of the most remarkable insights into the dawn of animal life. The beautiful silvery fossils show the true nature of the life of that time, just after the “Cambrian explosion” of animal life.
Yet, their existence is a paradox: the fossils have been buried deep in the Earth’s crust and heated to over 300°C (~600 °F), before being thrust up by tectonic forces to form a mountainous ridge in the Rockies. Usually such extreme conditions are thought to destroy fossils. But, in the Burgess Shale the most exquisite detail of soft tissues has been preserved.
Now, by careful restudy of its fossils (published in the November issue of the journal Geology) Alex Page and his colleagues Phil Wilby, Sarah Gabbott and Jan Zalasiewicz, of the universities of Cambridge and Leicester and the British Geological Survey, have solved this riddle.
They have shown that as the delicate organic tissues of these fossils were heated deep within the Earth, they became the site for mineral formation. The new minerals, forged at these tremendous depths, picked out intricate details such as gills, guts and even eyes.
Alex Page said: “This provides a whole new theory for how fossils form. The deep heating may not have cremated them, but it certainly left them stone baked.”
Once an ancient sea bed, the Burgess shale were formed shortly after life suddenly became more complex and diverse – the so-called Cambrian explosion – and are of immense scientific interest.

Discovring ofGAINT ROAMING DEEP SEA.......

Groove-like tracks on the ocean floor made by giant deep-sea single-celled organisms could lead to new insights into the evolutionary origin of animals, says biologist Mikhail "Misha" Matz from The University of Texas at Austin.

Matz and his colleagues recently discovered the grape-sized protists and their complex tracks on the ocean floor near the Bahamas. This is the first time a single-celled organism has been shown to make such animal-like traces.
The finding is significant, because similar fossil grooves and furrows found from the Precambrian era, as early as 1.8 billion years ago, have always been attributed to early evolving multicellular animals.
"If our giant protists were alive 600 million years ago and the track was fossilized, a paleontologist unearthing it today would without a shade of doubt attribute it to a kind of large, multicellular, bilaterally symmetrical animal," says Matz, an assistant professor of integrative biology. "We now have to rethink the fossil record."
The team's discovery was published online today in Current Biology and will appear in a subsequent print issue.
Most animals, from humans to insects, are bilaterally symmetrical, meaning that they can be roughly divided into halves that are mirror images.
The bilateral animals, or "Bilateria," appeared in the fossil record in the early Cambrian about 542 million years ago, quickly diversifying into all of the major animal groups, or phyla, still alive today. This rapid diversification, known as the Cambrian explosion, puzzled Charles Darwin and remains one of the biggest questions in animal evolution to this day

GLOBALE of OUR.(ROCK)

Earth's 4.5-billion-year history is filled with several turning points when temperatures changed dramatically, asteroids bombarded the planet and life forms came and disappeared. But one of the biggest moments in Earth's lifetime is the Cambrian explosion of life, roughly 540 million years ago, when complex, multi-cellular life burst out all over the planet.

While scientists can pinpoint this pivotal period as leading to life as we know it today, it is not completely understood what caused the Cambrian explosion of life. Now, researchers led by Arizona State University geologist L. Paul Knauth believe they have found the trigger for the Cambrian explosion.

Knauth and co-author Martin Kennedy, of the University of California, Riverside, report their findings in the journal Nature. Their paper presents an alternative view of published data on thousands of analyses of carbon isotopes found in limestone that formed in the Neoproterozoic period, the time interval just prior to the Cambrian explosion.
"An explosive and previously unrecognized greening of the Earth occurred toward the end of the Precambrian and was an important trigger for the Cambrian explosion of life," said Knauth, a professor in Arizona State's School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Rising HEALTH care

Thirteen years ago Bill Clinton became president partly because he promised to do something about rising health care costs. Although Clinton's chances of reforming the US health care system looked quite good at first, the effort soon ran aground. Since then a combination of factors—the unwillingness of other politicians to confront the insurance and other lobbies that so successfully frustrated the Clinton effort, a temporary remission in the growth of health care spending as HMOs briefly managed to limit cost increases, and the general distraction of a nation focused first on the gloriousness of getting rich, then on terrorism—have kept health care off the top of the agenda.
But MEDICINAL costs are once again rising rapidly, forcing health care back into political prominence. Indeed, the problem of medical costs is so pervasive that it underlies three quite different policy crises. First is the increasingly rapid unraveling of employer- based health insurance. Second is the plight of Medicaid, an increasingly crucial program that is under both fiscal and political attack. Third is the long-term problem of the federal government's solvency, which is, as we'll explain, largely a problem of health care costs.

Tasty TASTY food

It's salty, smoky, and SWEET. It's experiencing a culinary renaissance. It can make almost any dish better. It's bacon, and it's the best meat ever. And now, here's the book that celebrates that deliciously sinful strip of cured pork belly.
In Bacon: A LOVE STORY, popular bacon blogger Heather Lauer serves up a piping hot dish of fun and facts with this definitive love letter to what she calls meat candy. Heather explores the ins and outs of how bacon finds its way to your skillet and what to do with it when it gets there. Bacon: A Love Story features:
Makin' Bacon: a tour of country-style bacon outfits and their time-honored methods and traditions. Hankering for some pepper, cinnamon, honey, jalapeño, or vanilla bourbon-flavored bacon? They've got it! There are also tips for making your own signature cure.
"Bacon Nation": profiles of bacon-loving chefs across the country who incorporate the meat into their menus in increasingly innovative ways.
There's Bacon in This?: Heather dishes out more than twenty delicious recipes for tons of bacon goodies like Bacon-Wrapped Tator Tots, BLT with caramelized bacon, Jalapeño-BACON PIZZA, and a few surprises like Bacon Bloody Marys and Bacon Brownies.

BOOK OF PUNISHMENT

A book on tortures inflicted by Church and State.
First published in 1896, this is a catalog of early American crimes and their penalties, with chapters on the pillories, stocks, the scarlet letter, the ducking stool, discipline of authors and books (egad!), and other horrifying examples of ways in which those who transgressed the laws of Colonial America were made to pay for their sins. This strange book will fascinate anyone interested in crime and punishment and the never-ending saga of man's inhumanity to man.

The collection of the books of GARDEN OF flower

The ultimate source of inspiration for the gardener, The Complete Garden Flower Book offers a host of ideas and advice about a vast range of different plants, from perennials to shrubs, herbs to cacti. This handy resource covers every flowering plant you can imagine and shows how to get the most from plants¾whether you want to create stunningly attractive individual features or to complement existing planting schemes.
Gardeners are increasingly looking for more unusual planting ideas and The Complete Garden Flower Book explores the immense range of plants that are available today. The book looks at long-established favorites, providing a guide to growing both traditional plants such as honeysuckle and more unusual varieties such as Cymbidium orchid.
Each section opens with an introduction to planting, followed by in-depth plant profiles. Each plant profile offers detailed at-a-glance information with a month-by-month reminder on how, when, and where to grow each plant. Easy-to-follow growing advice is included throughout on over 600 plants and the book also explores what can go wrong and how to protect different species.
A comprehensive guide for both the novice and expert, The Complete Garden Flower Book includes everything you need to know to create a beautiful and harmonious flowering garden. Inspirational opening sections offer exciting ideas and useful tips, which will help you to choose the right plants for your garden.

THE GARDNER HELPER fr u

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  Subroto has one important message for the current generation about to start their careers - do not overplan. As Rabbi Sherre Hirsch says "We Plan, God laughs". God does laugh even at Subroto every now and then, and to overcome this he shows how a heads down approach has worked very well for him, and should work for most of us too.One flaw in the book from my perspective is that even Subroto falls prey to presenting his DCM experience with a senior manager as a "I'm right, and he was wrong" view. Similarly with his last conversation in WIPRO with Azim Premji. Humility? Errrrr...


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  One must read this book.it really motivates the young blood 2 stand still in adverse condition and to give more respect to our subordinates than superiors.the feeling after reading this book is really unexpliclable.


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  Subroto Bagchi shares his life and learning - at various stages - in a candid and forthright manner. The practical insights are deep and enable the reader to relate them to his/her situational context. A must read for all ages - not just the young professional, as today's organisational setting is in a huge state of flux.

Nepal architecture

Kathmandu, a delightful oasis set back from the hustle and bustle, ideally located between Durbar Square and Thamel. Sample Kathmandu and the Nepali culture at the hotel itself. Kantipur House is a landmark of its own with its beautiful Newari carvings and architecture. Also, the lovely staff are becoming word-of-mouth famous. Relax in the tranquillity of the peaceful garden, or enjoy the calm of a meditation class. Savour the atmosphere in the courtyard then move to the rooftop garden and the views of Swayambhunath.

Story of the Mool

On a September morning in 1912, French painter Paul Chabas finished the painting he had been working on for three consecutive summers. Thus completed, it was aptly titled "Matinee de Septembre" (September Morn). As was typical of his style, the painting was of young maiden posed nude in a natural setting. This time the icy morning waters of Lake Annecy in Upper Savoy formed the natural setting and the maiden was a local peasant girl. The head, however, had been painted from the sketch of a young American girl, Julie Phillips (later Mrs. Thompson), which he had made while she and her mother were sitting in a Paris cafe. Apparently, he had found her profile to be exactly what he was looking for. The completed painting was then sent off to the Paris Salon of 1912 to be exhibited. Although the painting won Mr. Chabas the Medal of Honor, it caused no flurry of attention. Hoping to find a buyer, the artist shipped the painting overseas to an American gallery.
It was here in America that the painting was destined to receive undreamed of publicity and popularity. One day in May of 1913, displayed in the window of a Manhattan art gallery, it caught the eye of Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Horrified by what he saw, he stormed into the store, flashed his badge, and roared: "There's too little morn and too much maid. Take her out!" The gallery manager, however, refused to do so. The ensuing controversy was given wide publicity by the press and the painting was simultaneously denounced and defended across the entire country. Meanwhile, curious crowds filled the street outside the shop straining to see the painting that caused such a stir.
Soon enterprising entrepreneurs were reproducing September Morn on everything conceivable: calendars, postcards, candy boxes, cigar bands, cigarette flannels, pennents, suspenders, bottle openers, and more. Purity leagues tried to suppress it. Postcard reproductions were forbidden in the mails. The painting became the object of stock show gags and even inspired an anonymous couplet that swept the country, "Please don't think I'm bad or bold, but where its deep it's awwful cold."
The painting went back to Paul Chabas who sold it to a Russian collector for the ruble equivalent of $10,000. After the Russian Revolution it turned up in Paris in the Gulbenkian Collection. Ultimately the painting was purchased by Philadelphia Main Liner Willaim Coxe Wright and donated to Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum in 1957 after being refused by the Philadelphia Museum of Art because it had no significance in the twentieth century stream of art. It's estimated market value in 1957 was $30,000. The painting still hangs in the Metropolitan Museum as an example of 20th century French works and reproductions can be purchased in the museum's gift shop.

Jungle book

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories written by Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contained illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six-and-half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Vermont.

The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle.

Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.

The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of an abandoned 'man cub' Mowgli who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The most famous of the other stories are probably "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the story of a heroic mongoose, and "Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young elephant-handler. Kotick, The White Seal seeking for his people a haven where they would be safe from hunters, has been considered a metaphor for Zionism, then in its beginning.

As with much of Kipling's work, each of the stories is preceded by a piece of verse, and succeeded by another. The title of each is given in italics in the list of stories below.
The Jungle Book, because of its moral tone, came to be used as a motivational book by the Cub Scouts, a junior element of the Scouting movement. This use of the book's universe was approved by Kipling after a direct petition of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, who had originally asked for the author's permission for the use of the Memory Game from Kim in his scheme to develop the morale and fitness of working-class youths in cities. Akela, the head wolf in The Jungle Book, has become a senior figure in the movement, the name being traditionally adopted by the leader of each Cub Scout pack.

About the track of the mountain

I'm fast becoming a Robert Macfarlane fanboy. After reading the moving and inspiring The Wild Places (more of which sometime soon) I've recently bought his Mountains of the Mind and, on his recommendation, Waterlog by the sadly deceased manifestation of the Green Man, Roger Deakin (it was this beautiful elegy for Deakin that first alerted me to Macfarlane's writing, and subsequently Deakin's). Now I see this in Saturday's Guardian - an account of his journey to the massive Minya Konka mountain on the Chinese side of the Himalayas. Macfarlane is an academic at Cambridge, teaching English; he's also already got a wide history of exploration behind him, both local to Britain and otherwise. All this and he's only 32. The swine.

The books of the backside of the city

Hundreds of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians took part in a silent rally in Katmandu Sunday, urging peace and religious tolerance in response to rioting last week that included an attack on a mosque Violent protests erupted in Nepal after news surfaced that 12 Nepalese hostages were executed by Muslim militants in Iraq. Two protesters were killed in the demonstrations in Nepal. The government has ordered a probe into attacks on the mosque, media offices and Middle Eastern and Pakistani airline offices in the Nepalese capital.

The books of the nature

"Techniques of Natural Light Photography", in easy to understand language necessary for anyone interested in nature photography, opens up your mind to the wonders and variety of natural light. Understanding how the colors and intensity and "nature" of light impacts the photograph is critical to successful photography.
In "Perfect Exposure", again, Zuckerman tackles the simple but introduces it in a new way so you see beyond the simple essense of exposure in photography to understand the importance it really plays in the art form. He concentrates on working with a hand held meter to backup your in-camera meter, but also shows you how to do both.

Introduction of book of middle age

A book which is a collection of maps is an atlas. A more specific reference book with tables or lists of data and information about a certain topic, often intended for professional use, is often called a handbook. Books which try to list references and abstracts in a certain broad area may be called an index, such as Engineering Index, or abstracts such as chemical abstracts and biological abstracts.

An atlas
Books with technical information on how to do something or how to use some equipment are called instruction manuals. Other popular how-to books include cookbooks and home improvement books.
Students typically store and carry textbooks and schoolbooks for study purposes. Elementary school pupils often use workbooks, which are published with spaces or blanks to be filled by them for study or homework. In higher education, it is common for a student to take an exam using a bluebook.

Books of the modern

Each book is specified by an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, which is unique to every edition of every book produced by participating publishers, world wide. It is managed by the ISBN Society. An ISBN has four parts: the first part is the country code, the second the publisher code, and the third the title code. The last part is a check digit, and can take values from 0–9 and X. The EAN Barcodes numbers for books are derived from the ISBN by prefixing 978, for Bookland, and calculating a new check digit.
Commercial publishers in industrialized countries generally assign ISBNs to their books, so buyers may presume that the ISBN is part of a total international system, with no exceptions. However many government publishers, in industrial as well as developing countries, do not participate fully in the ISBN system, and publish books which do not have ISBNs.

Books on library shelves with bookends, and call numbers visible on the spines
A large or public collection requires a catalogue. Codes called "call numbers" relate the books to the catalogue, and determine their locations on the shelves. Call numbers are based on a Library classification system. The call number is placed on the spine of the book, normally a short distance before the bottom, and inside.
Institutional or national standards, such as ANSI/NISO Z39.41 - 1997, establish the correct way to place information (such as the title, or the name of the author) on book spines, and on "shelvable" book-like objects, such as containers for DVDs, video tapes and software.
One of the earliest and most widely known systems of cataloguing books is the Dewey Decimal System. This system has fallen out of use in some places, mainly because of a Eurocentric bias and other difficulties applying the system to modern libraries. However, it is still used by most public libraries in America. The Library of Congress Classification system is more popular in university libraries.[citation needed]
Information about books and authors can be stored in databases like online general-interest book databases.

Books collection

Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books, (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) first appeared in classical Greece. In ancient world the maintaining of a library was usually (but not exclusively) the privilege of a wealthy individual. These libraries could have been either private or public, i.e. for individuals that were interested in using them. The difference from a modern public library lies in the fact that they were usually not funded from public sources. It is estimated that in the city of Rome at the end of the third century there were around 30 public libraries, public libraries also existed in other cities of the ancient Mediterranean region (e.g. Library of Alexandria).Later, in the Middle Ages, monasteries and universities had also libraries that could be accessible to general public. Typically not the whole collection was available to public, the books could not be borrowed and often were chained to reading stands to prevent theft

Book structure

The common structural parts of a book include:

• Front cover: hardbound or softcover (paperback); the spine is the binding that joins the front and rear covers where the pages hinge.
• Front endpaper
• Flyleaf: The blank leaf or leaves following the front free endpaper.
• Front matter
• Frontispiece
• Title page
• Copyright page: typically verso of title page: shows copyright owner/date, credits, edition/printing, cataloguing details
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Body: the text or contents, the pages often collected or folded into signatures; the pages are usually numbered sequentially, and often divided into chapters.
• Back matter
• Appendix
• Glossary
• Index
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Colophon
• Flyleaf: The blank leaf or leaves (if any) preceding the back free endpaper.
• Rear endpaper
• Rear cover

A thin marker, commonly made of paper or card, used to keep one's place in a book is a bookmark. Bookmarks were used throughout the medieval period, consisting usually of a small parchment strip attached to the edge of folio (or a piece of cord attached to headband). Bookmarks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were narrow silk ribbons bound into the book and become widespread in the 1850s. They were usually made from silk, embroidered fabrics or leather. Not until the 1880s, did paper and other materials become more common

Introduction of the books

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page. A book produced in electronic format is known as an e-book.
Books may also refer to a literature work, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature.