Friday, 29 November 2013

Angels & Demons

Angels & Demons is a 2000 bestselling mystery-thriller novel written by American author Dan Brown and published by Pocket Books. The novel introduces the character Robert Langdon, who is also the protagonist of Brown's subsequent 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code; his 2009 novel, The Lost Symbol; and the 2013 novel Inferno. Angels and Demons shares many stylistic literary elements with its sequel, such as conspiracies of secret societies, a single-day time frame, and the Catholic Church. Ancient history, architecture, and symbolism are also heavily referenced throughout the book.


Angels & Demons introduces the character of Robert Langdon, professor of religious iconology and art history at Harvard University. As the novel begins, he's awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN, the world's largest scientific research facility in Geneva, Switzerland. One of their top physicists had been murdered, with his chest branded with the word "Illuminati." Since Langdon is an expert on the ancient secret society known as the Illuminati, he's asked to help solve the murder. A high tech X-33 plane transports Langdon from Massachusetts to Switzerland in a little more than an hour.

The murder victim is Leonardo Vetra. Not only is he one of the world's leading physicists, he's a Catholic priest. He's a priest who has adopted a daughter, Vittoria, who is also a scientist at CERN. This was the largest suspension of disbelief for me, a man who is a priest, a father, and a top physicist, but accepting it sets the rest of the story in motion. Vetra and his daughter were using the world's largest particle accelerator to create antimatter, and then suspend the antimatter properly in canisters so that it doesn't interact with matter. If a canister is removed from the electrical system which keeps the matter and antimatter separated, then backup batteries will serve the same purpose for 24 hours. When those 24 hours expire, the two will collide in an instantaneous explosion of unprecedented power.

Lenoardo Vetra created the antimatter to simulate the Big Bang. In his mind, this would show proof that God exists, being able to create new matter and antimatter in the same way God created the universe. Vetra's murder, though, allows one of the canisters to be stolen. The question of who stole the canister and what they planned to do with it is soon answered. The canister is quickly found on a security camera in Vatican City, with its LEDs counting down the time until the batteries run out. The security camera, however, is nowhere to be found, leaving the canister's whereabouts a mystery too. Langdon and Vittoria Petra are quickly sent off to Rome and Vatican City, to help find the canister and return it to CERN before it explodes at midnight.

Not only does the canister threaten to destroy Vatican City, but with the recent death of the Pope, the cardinals of the Catholic Church are all within the city for the conclave to choose the new pope. They are all about to be locked within the Sistine Chapel where, according to church law, they must remain until a new pope is chosen. They are awaiting the preferiti, the four cardinals from four different European countries who are the preferred candidates to become the new pope. While Langdon and Vittoria are trying to convince the captain of the Swiss Guard and the camerlengo, the Pope's chamberlain who leads the church until the new pope is named, that the antimatter bomb is real, a phone call is received from a man who claims to be from the Illuminati. He has the four cardinals, which he will murder one by one, and then allow the bomb to destroy Vatican City, which houses not only the church hierarchy, but also its possessions and wealth. He has no demands; his only wish is the destruction of the Catholic Church in retribution for the church's treatment of scientists and the Illuminati over the centuries.

Langdon and Vittoria Vetra are in a race against time. They dig through archives and ancient mysteries to find clues, which also requires an extensive background in art history and religious symbology. This makes Robert Langdon the expert tour guide through all this arcane knowledge with his congenial and scholarly fashion, doing his best to educate without seeming superior with his own intelligence. Much like The Da Vinci Code, Langdon understands enough about each mystery to go in search of the missing pieces necessary to solve each puzzle, which leads him to the next one. Vittoria is beautiful, tough, intelligent, and determined to avenge her father's murder and keep the canister from exploding. The two of them are constantly one step behind the Illuminati, and once it's clear that the Swiss Guard and Vatican City have been penetrated by the ancient society, they don't know whom to trust. This leads them through churches, fountains, crypts, forgotten passages, secret passages, and catacombs. Death stalks them at every turn, in one form or another.

So it's time for the comparisons of Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. In some ways, Angels & Demons has a more suspenseful storyline with the antimatter bomb and the race to prevent the destruction of Vatican City. Both share a hired assassin, a tough and beautiful woman as Langdon's sidekick who's mourning the murder of a loved one, and mysteries that require extensive knowledge of art history, religious symbology, and secret societies. Robert Langdon is a protagonist that you can't dislike in any way, with just enough vulnerability to go along with his intelligence and right amount of charm. Angels & Demons is a looser story. It takes longer to get going, each new puzzle takes longer to solve, and too much character background is given for too many characters. While Dan Brown's writing style will never be called literary, he's obviously matured as a writer between the two books. The chapters in The Da Vinci Code are shorter, tighter, and the suspense is never allowed to wane.


The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol is a 2009 novel written by American writer Dan Brown.It is a thriller set in Washington, D.C., after the events of The Da Vinci Code, and relies on Freemasonry for both its recurring theme and its major characters.Released on September 15, 2009, it is the third Brown novel to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, following 2000's Angels & Demons and 2003's The Da Vinci Code

Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist who was Dan Brown's protagonist in The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, is back. He's called to Washington, D.C. on the spur of the moment to give a speech in the Capitol Building. The request ostensibly comes from his old friend and mentor, Peter Solomon. Solomon comes from old money and power and is a leader in the Freemasons. Langdon agrees to the request, only to find that the invitation was a hoax. Not only is there no speech to give, but the only evidence of Peter Solomon's presence in the Capitol is his severed hand. It's found in the center of the Capitol Rotunda, tattooed with symbols from the Ancient Mysteries, and the hand is pointing to the ceiling.

This lets Dan Brown do what he does best. It provides him with the opportunity, via Robert Langdon, to explore arcane knowledge of Washington, D.C. and to educate us about the Masons and their influence on the Founding Fathers as well as today's leaders. As Langdon struggles to understand the clues left by the severed hand, he explains the little he does know to Capitol security and the CIA, who treat him in an unfriendly manner. Solving a few of these clues take them to parts of the Capitol that even Langdon never knew about. The game is on and there is only a finite amount of time to find the answers that will save Peter Solomon's life.

The evildoer in The Lost Symbol is a man in search of ultimate power, Mal'akh (the name of an angel in the Hebrew Bible). He has covered almost his entire body with tattoos, undergone self-castration, and devoted himself to studying and mastering all the ancient arts that will allow him to become one with the gods. The Masons believe they protect the Ancient Mysteries, those powerful and mystic secrets that mankind is not mature enough to handle yet. Mal'akh believes the Masonic Pyramid, which will lead to the hiding place of this supernatural force, is in Washington, D.C. If Langdon doesn't help Mal'akh solve all the mysteries and clues that reveal where this treasure trove of power is hidden, then Peter Solomon will die.

A parallel storyline develops with Katherine Solomon, Peter's sister, who is a scientist studying noetics. She has performed experiments that prove thoughts have mass, and as such, can be concentrated to affect the physical world. While Langdon is exploring the Capitol, Mal'akh has time to try to murder Katherine and destroy her laboratory. He's afraid her research will make the supernatural power he craves available to any mere mortal. Eventually, Katherine and Langdon join forces and they're pursued by the CIA. With time always appearing to be running out, Katherine and Langdon dash among some of the most famous buildings in Washington, D.C., giving Langdon a few moments to comment on their history and the symbolic meaning of their paintings, statues, and architectural details.

Anyone who has read and enjoyed The Da Vinci Code will wonder how The Lost Symbol stands up in comparison to the novel that made Dan Brown famous. The answer is not very well. The main difference is pace. The Da Vinci Code began immediately with a corpse and the suspense never flagged until the end. Dan Brown mixed in enough esoteric information, ancient clues, and conspiracy theories to keep the reader hooked as Langdon managed to stay one step ahead of those who wanted to stop him.

The Lost Symbol starts slowly. Peter Solomon's hand isn't discovered until many chapters into the book. There are bursts of thrilling suspense only to have everything slow to a more somnambulist pace as Mal'akh's story is told or Katherine Solomon is working in her lab. These stops and starts are frustrating. Neither Mal'akh nor Katherine ever becomes that interesting. When the novel revolves around Langdon, it moves sharply while Langdon decodes clues and throws out historical information. About halfway through the book, the story takes off, and for 200 pages, you don't want to put the book down. Dan Brown knows how to make a thriller chilling and interesting.

The ending is disappointing. The climax occurs well before the end, and Dan Brown goes on for way too many pages exploring the final mysteries of the Masons in Washington, D.C. Instead of heaving a sigh of contentment as the book is closed, many readers will be left with the reaction, "That's it?" The best part of any Dan Brown book is that he makes you believe that the newly found secrets, the forgotten or hidden histories, and the conspiracies just might be true. At the end of The Lost Symbol, though, you're left not really caring whether they were true or not.

The Lost Symbol is not a bad read and very enjoyable for large parts of it. It doesn't live up to the standard set by The Da Vinci Code, and it would wrong of anybody to expect that. Dan Brown may write clunky prose at times, but you can forgive that when the thriller is running at full tilt. When the plot sags, that same prose grates on your nerves. If you think The Da Vinci Code was overblown and famous for all the wrong reasons, you won't enjoy The Lost Symbol. If you loved The Da Vinci Code, then you will enjoy some of Dan Brown's new novel. Just don't set your expectations too high.

The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to Mary Magdalene.


Robert Langdon is a Harvard Professor of art history and religious symbology. He has spent a lifetime exploring religions and theology and explaining the use of their symbols in art and history. He is a veritable gold mine of information about the Catholic church, pagan religions, and religious mysteries. As The Da Vinci Code begins, he is in Paris to give a speech and to meet with Jacques Saunière, the curator of the Louvre, although he's unaware of why Saunière wants to meet with him. Unfortunately, Saunière is murdered in the Grand Hall of the Louvre and the French police get Langdon out of bed, ostensibly to help them understand the information and symbols Saunière left at the murder scene. Actually, Langdon is their prime suspect and they want to see if he inadvertently gives incriminating information before they arrest him. Trapped within his own gallery, Saunière had enough time to leave clues to his killer and to the information for which he was murdered. Langdon, however, cannot understand the clues left behind and the captain of the French police, Bezu Fache, is certain that they point to Langdon as the killer.


They are interrupted at the murder scene by Sophie Neveu, a police cryptologist who claims to have broken the code of the seemingly random numbers left next to the corpse. Unknown to Bezu Fache, Sophie is also Saunière's granddaughter and she is certain the clues he left behind were meant for her and that Langdon is not only innocent, but the key to helping her understand it all. She manages to help Langdon fake an escape from the Louvre which sends Bezu Fache away long enough so Langdon and she can study the clues left behind by Saunière. The dead body is naked and lying spread-eagle with a circle around it. They realize that Saunière was duplicating Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting, "The Vitruvian Man." They quickly decipher the information which leads them to different paintings by Da Vinci, and Sophie finds the item left behind for her by her grandfather. She then understands why he didn't want it to fall into the hands of the police. She and Langdon hit the road, one step ahead of the police and the people behind Saunière's murder who want what they've discovered.

All that occurs in the first few short chapters and it sets a pace which never wanes for the rest of the book. Sophie and Langdon manage to barely escape from many dicey situations, but never in an unbelievable way. They continue to solve each ensuing puzzle and riddle they encounter, leading them deeper into more mysteries they must comprehend. Jacques Saunière was much more than just the curator of the Louvre; he raised Sophie after her parents died in an accident and he constantly entertained her with puzzles, riddles, and secret information. Sophie and Langdon soon realize that he was also a member of a secret society called the Priory of Sion, which over the centuries had included men such as Da Vinci, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Isaac Newton. Langdon is more familiar with the Priory, and he tells Sophie the story of their long history and that they purportedly keep hidden documents concerning the truth about the early Catholic church that the church never wants revealed, and that they also allegedly know the hiding spot of the Holy Grail.

Without giving more of the plot away, suffice it to say that everyone in this book is in the hunt for the secrets hidden by the Priory of Sion including the Grail. Some want to protect it, some want to expose it, and some want to destroy it. With the information provided to them by Jacques Saunière, Sophie and Langdon are ahead of everyone else, but police, assassins, and churchmen aren't far behind. The race is on, the tension is high, and the puzzles to be solved seem incomprehensible.

Along the way, Langdon educates Sophie as well as the reader in large amounts of information concerning religions, symbols, history, and the story of the Holy Grail. Dan Brown is crafty enough to have Langdon present this in a way that comes across like a professor (which Langdon is) passing it on to his class without a lot of moralistic overtones. His explanations for clues and tricks hidden within Da Vinci's paintings make you want to go look at them all and see if it's true. His comments about the early church, the origins of the gospels, and the assimilation of pagan rituals and symbols into the church's practices and holy days makes sense when he tells them and they come across as easily understood historical facts, whether true or not. The pages turn quickly as the information is presented, the latest puzzle is solved, and the next escape is done by the skin of their teeth.

The characters in The Da Vinci Code don't play second fiddle to the storyline. Robert Langdon is one of those highly intelligent people who doesn't use it to lord over those with inferior educations. He's even-tempered with a touch of sardonic wit and quick to admit when he doesn't know something. Bezu Fache is the hard-driving police captain, smart, thinking one step ahead, and always aware of the political implications of what he's doing. Silas, believing everything he's doing is for God, is an albino Opus Dei monk who murders by instruction from The Teacher, an unknown man who directs the search for the Priory's secrets. Leigh Teabing is an affluent and eccentric Englishman obsessed with the quest for the Grail and disparaging of most things French. Dan Brown uses each of these characters to poke fun at their own culture and bring realism to the international scenarios necessary when dealing with secret societies, religious conspiracies, and the quest for what might be the ultimate mysteries of Christianity. The character who ties everything together and brings the proper sense of humanity and morality to the story, though, is Sophie Neveu. Dealing with the death of her beloved grandfather, coming to understand more of her past, and being the possessor of information that could change history and religion, she strikes the right tone of strength and vulnerability to make everything else in this novel believable.

The chapters in The Da Vinci Code are short, usually not more than a couple pages. Most of them end with a cliffhanger that immediately catapults you into the next chapter. So grab this book, sit back, and prepare to be entertained and educated. It's well-written, it's intelligent, and best of all, it's fun.

Thursday, 28 November 2013

Inferno

Inferno is a 2013 mystery thriller novel by renowned American author Dan Brown and the fourth book in his Robert Langdon series, following Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol.


Harvard University professor Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital with a head wound and no memory of the last few days. His last memory is walking on the Harvard campus, but he quickly realizes that he is now in Florence. Sienna Brooks, one of the doctors tending to him, tells him he suffered a concussion from being grazed by a bullet and had stumbled into the emergency ward. Suddenly, Vayentha, a female assassin who has been following Robert, breaks into the hospital, shoots the doctor in charge of Robert's care, and approaches Robert's room. Sienna grabs Robert and they flee to her apartment.
After Sienna recounts the details of his admission to hospital, Robert finds a cylinder with a biohazard sign in his jacket and decides to call the U.S. consulate. He is told that they are searching for him and want his location. Per Sienna's guidance, Robert gives them a location across the street from Sienna's apartment to avoid getting Sienna more involved in his mysterious situation than she already is. Soon, Robert sees an armed Vayentha pull up to the location Robert gave the consulate. At this point Sienna and Robert believe the U.S. government wants to kill him.
Robert decides to open the container and finds a small medieval bone cylinder fitted with a hi-tech projector that displays a modified version of Botticelli's Map of Hell. At the bottom of the illumination are the words "The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death." Suddenly, soldiers raid Sienna's building; Sienna and Robert narrowly escape.

Robert and Sienna head toward the Old City, believing the cylinder must have something to do with Dante. However, they find that Florentine police and Carabinieri officers have sealed the bridges and are searching for them. They run into a construction site near the Boboli Gardens where Robert illuminates the modified "Map of Hell" again, notices that individual letters, which collectively spell "CATROVACER," have been added to each of the ten layers of the Malebolge, and that the layers have been rearranged. Moving them back to the order in the original Botticelli "Map of Hell" yields the words "CERCA TROVA". Robert recognizes these are the same words on the painting The Battle of Marciano by Vasari, located in the Palazzo Vecchio. Robert and Sienna manage to evade the soldiers and get into the Old City using the Vasari Corridor.
Robert stands in front of The Battle of Marciano trying to figure out where to go next by connecting the "eyes of death" phrase in the modified "Map of Hell" with his location. A custodian sees Robert snooping around and gets the director of the museum in the Palazzo Vecchio, Marta Alvarez. Marta recognizes Robert, having met him and Ignazio Busoni, the director of Il Duomo, the previous night. She leads Robert and Sienna up a set of stairs by The Battle of Marciano, and Robert realizes the top of the stairs is on the same level as the words "cerca trova" in the The Battle of Marciano painting. Marta tells Robert that she showed them Dante's death mask the previous night, which sits in a room down the hall from the Battle of Marciano painting. Robert realizes he is retracing his own steps from the previous night. Marta takes Robert and Sienna to the mask who find that it's gone. They look at security footage and see Robert himself and Ignazio stealing the mask. The museum guards turn on Robert and Sienna. At this moment, Marta calls Ignazio's office to question him but is greeted by his secretary, who informs Marta that Ignazio died of a heart attack the other night but left a message for Robert moments before he died. Ignazio's secretary asks to speak with Robert and plays to him Ignazio's message. In it Ignazio esoterically tells Robert where the mask is hidden, referring to "Paradise 25."

Robert and Sienna escape the guards, but the soldiers arrive. They cross the attic over the Apotheosis of Cosimo I, where Sienna pushes Vayentha to her death. Robert connects the phrase "Paradise 25" to the Florence Baptistry, where he and Sienna find the Dante mask along with a riddle from its current owner, a billionaire geneticist named Bertrand Zobrist. A man named Jonathan Ferris, with a large bruise on his chest which he hides from the two, claiming to be from the World Health Organization (WHO), comes and helps them escape the soldiers. They follow the riddle to Venice, where Jonathan suddenly falls unconscious. Robert is captured by a group of black-clad soldiers while Sienna escapes.
Robert is taken to Elizabeth Sinskey, the director-general of the WHO, and is given an explanation of what is going on: Zobrist, who committed suicide the week before, was a mad scientist and Dante fanatic who has supposedly developed a new biological plague that will kill off a large portion of the world's population in order to quickly solve the problem of the world's impending overpopulation. Elizabeth raided Zobrist's safe deposit box, found the cylinder, and flew Robert to Florence to follow the clues. However, Robert stopped communicating with Elizabeth after meeting with Marta and Ignazio, and the WHO feared he betrayed them and was working with Zobrist to unleash the plague. The soldiers were the WHO's emergency response team and never meant to kill Robert.
Zobrist had paid a shadowy consulting group called The Consortium to protect the cylinder until a certain date. When Elizabeth took it away, they were obligated to protect whatever the bone cylinder pointed to. They kidnapped Robert after the meeting with Marta and Ignazio, but Robert hadn't yet solved the whole riddle. They gave Robert benzodiazepine drugs to erase his short-term memory, created a fake head wound, and staged every event up to this point so that Robert would be motivated to solve it. Sienna, Vayentha, and Jonathan are all actors working for The Consortium; the call to the U.S. consulate was also staged. The leader of The Consortium, having become aware of the bioterrorism plot, has agreed to cooperate with the WHO.

Sienna goes rogue, and The Consortium realizes she was a secret supporter and lover of Zobrist. She learned where the plague is being kept after Robert solved the riddle and acquires a private jet to get to it before everyone else. Robert, the WHO, and The Consortium team up to stop her by going to the riddle's actual location: the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, where Enrico Dandolo is buried. Robert and the others find the plague is in the Cistern, but discover that Sienna is already there. The bag that held the plague had already been broken for an entire week, spreading through the outer world via visiting tourists. Sienna runs out of the Cistern yelling something in Turkish, which causes panic among the tourists who stampede out into the city.

It is discovered Sienna didn't puncture the bag; it was water soluble and had dissolved one week previously in the Cistern waters, meaning that the whole world has already been infected. It is also discovered that Sienna was trying to stop the virus herself, but didn't trust the WHO because samples of the virus would certainly find their way into the hands of governments performing weapons research. The leader of The Consortium tries to escape WHO custody with help from disguised underlings, but is caught later by Turkish police. It is implied that The Consortium will be investigated and ruined. Sienna receives amnesty in exchange for working with the WHO to address the crisis, since she is a medical doctor and transhumanist writer.
The plague that Zobrist created is revealed to be a vector virus that randomly activates to employ DNA modification to cause sterility in 1/3 of humans. Even with future generic engineering technology, changing the human genome back would be hazardous. The human race, therefore, has been forced into a new age.

Congo

Congo is a 1980 science fiction novel by Michael Crichton. The novel centers on an expedition searching for diamonds and investigating the mysterious deaths of a previous expedition in the dense rain forest of Congo. Crichton calls Congo a Lost World novel in the tradition founded by Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, featuring the mines of that work's title.


The novel starts with an abrupt end to an expedition sent by Earth Resource Technology Services Inc. in the dense rain forests of Congo (unspecified which Congo) when the team is attacked and killed by an unknown creature and all contact with them is lost. The expedition, searching for deposits of valuable diamonds, discovered the legendary lost city of Zinj (in Arabic Zinj or Zanj refers to the southern part of the East African coast). A video image taken by a camera there, and transmitted by satellite to the base station in Houston, shows a peculiar race of grey haired gorillas, to be responsible for the murders.
Another expedition, led by Karen Ross, is launched to find out the truth and to find the city of Zinj, where there are believed to be deposits of a certain diamond, type IIb, which are naturally boron-doped and thus useful as semiconductors, though worthless as gemstones. This time the searchers bring along the famous White African mercenary Munro, as well as a female gorilla named Amy, who has been trained to communicate with humans using sign language, and her trainer Peter Elliot. Time is of the greatest essence, as a rival consortium of Japan, Germany, and Holland has also set off into the jungle after the diamonds, turning the entire expedition into a race to the city of Zinj. Unfortunately for Ross and her team, the American expedition encounters many delays along the way, including plane crashes, native civil wars, and jungle predators.
Eventually, Ross and her expedition reach the City of Zinj and discover the consortium camp, like the original expedition's camp, in ruins and devoid of life. Ross and her team lose contact with the ERTS HQ due to a massive solar flare, then encounter the killer gorillas and are attacked. A brief battle ensues and several gorillas are killed. After studying the corpses and performing a rudimentary field autopsy, it is concluded the animals are not "true" gorillas by modern biological standards, but presumably a gorilla-chimpanzee or gorilla-human hybrid: their mass and height is closer to humans than gorillas, their skull is greatly malformed (the "ridge" that makes gorilla heads look "pointy" is nearly nonexistent) as well as their pigmentation is on the border of albinism: light gray fur and yellow eyes.
In addition, they exhibit different behavior: they are much more aggressive, ruthless and partially nocturnal (attacks are always at night, yet a very large group was observed feeding during the day). Peter Elliot intends to name them Gorilla elliotensis after himself. Afterwards, Ross, Elliot, and Munro explore the ruins and discover that the killer gorillas were bred by the ancient inhabitants of Zinj to serve as guard dogs to protect the diamond mines from intruders. After several more attacks, Elliot, with the help of Amy, finds a way to translate the language of the new gorillas (she refers to them as "bad gorillas") and piece together three messages ("go away", "don't come", "here bad"); they stop fighting the humans and become confused, leaving the camp. Their victory is cut short by the eruption of the nearby volcano, accelerated by the explosives placed by Ross for her geological surveys, that buries the city, the diamond fields and all proof of the "new" species under 800 meters of lava. Ross, Elliot, Munro, and the rest of the team's survivors are forced to run for their lives. The team then manages to find a hot air balloon in a crashed consortium cargo aircraft and uses it to escape. In an epilogue, it is revealed that Munro was able to retrieve a few hundred carats of the valuable diamonds and sold them to Intel for use in a revolutionary new computer processor, while Amy was reintroduced into the wild and was later observed teaching her offspring sign language

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is a science fiction novel written by Michael Crichton. Often considered a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering in the same spirit as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it uses the metaphor of the collapse of an amusement park showcasing genetically recreated dinosaurs to illustrate the mathematical concept of chaos theory and its philosophical implications. In 1993, Steven Spielberg adapted the book into the blockbuster film Jurassic Park. The book's sequel, The Lost World (1995), was also adapted by Spielberg into a film in 1997. A third film directed by Joe Johnston and released in 2001, drew several elements, themes, and scenes from both books that were ultimately not utilized in either of the previous films, such as the aviary and boat scenes.


The narrative begins in August 1989 by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on fictional Isla Nublar,[1] the main setting for the story. One of the species, a strange, small, lizard-like creature with three toes, is identified later as a Procompsognathus. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student, Ellie Sattler, are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond — founder and chief executive officer of International Genetic Technologies, or InGen — for a weekend visit to a "biological preserve" he has established on a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica.
Upon arrival, the preserve is revealed to be Jurassic Park, a theme park showcasing cloned dinosaurs. The animals have been recreated using damaged dinosaur DNA found in mosquitoes preserved in prehistoric amber. Gaps in the genetic code have been filled in with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA. To control the population, all specimens on the island are lysine-deficient females. Hammond proudly touts InGen's advances in genetic engineering and shows his guests through the island's vast array of automated systems.
Recent events in the park have spooked Hammond's investors. To placate them, Hammond means for Grant and Sattler to act as fresh consultants. They stand in counterbalance to a well-known mathematician and chaos theorist, Ian Malcolm, and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro. Both are pessimistic about the park's prospects. Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is especially emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system.

Countering Malcolm's dire predictions with youthful energy, Hammond groups the consultants with his grandchildren, Tim and Alexis "Lex" Murphy. While touring the park with the children, Grant finds a Velociraptor eggshell, which seems to prove Malcolm's earlier assertion that the dinosaurs have been breeding against the geneticists' design. Malcolm suggests a flaw in their method of analyzing dinosaur populations, in that motion detectors were set to search only for the expected number of creatures in the park and not for any higher number. The park's controllers are reluctant to admit that the park has long been operating beyond their constraints. Malcolm also points out the height distribution of the Procompsognathi forms a Gaussian distribution, the curve of a breeding population, rather than the distinctive pattern that a population reared in batches ought to display.
In the midst of this, the chief programmer of Jurassic Park's controlling software, Dennis Nedry, attempts corporate espionage for Lewis Dodgson, a geneticist and agent of InGen's archrival, Biosyn. By activating a backdoor he wrote into the park's computer system, Nedry manages to shut down its security systems and quickly steal frozen embryos, two for each of the park's fifteen species. He then attempts to smuggle them out to a contact waiting at an auxiliary dock deep in the park. However, during a sudden tropical storm, he exits his stolen vehicle to get his bearings and is killed by a pack of Dilophosauri. Without Nedry to reactivate the park's security, the electrified fences remain off and dinosaurs escape. The adult and juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex attack the guests on tour, destroying the vehicles, killing public relations manager Ed Regis, and leaving Grant and the children lost in the park.
Malcolm is gravely injured during the incident, but is soon found by Gennaro and park game warden Robert Muldoon and spends the remainder of the novel slowly dying as, between lucid lectures and morphine-induced rants, he tries to help those in the main compound understand their predicament and survive.

The park's upper management — engineer and park supervisor John Arnold, chief geneticist Henry Wu, Muldoon, and Hammond — struggle to return power to the park, while the veterinarian, Dr. Harding, takes care of the injured Malcolm. For a time they manage to get the park largely back in order, restoring the computer system by shutting down and restarting the power and resetting the system. Unfortunately, a series of errors on their part soon plunge the park into greater chaos. During their time trying to restore the park to working order, they fail to notice that the system has been running on auxiliary power since the restart; this power soon runs out, shutting the park down a second time. Furthermore, since the auxiliary generators did not produce enough electricity to power the fences, the fences were not reactivated when the system was reset, meaning all the fences — including the holding pen containing the park's Velociraptors, quarantined due to their intelligence and aggression — had been offline the whole time. Escaping their enclosure, the Velociraptors kill Wu and Arnold and injure Muldoon, Gennaro, and Harding. Meanwhile, Grant and the children slowly make their way back to the Visitor Center by rafting down the jungle river, carrying news that several young Velociraptors, bred and raised in the island's wilds, were on board the Anne B, the island's supply ship, when it departed for the mainland.
While Ellie distracts the Velociraptors, Grant manages to turn the park's main power back on. After escaping from several Velociraptors, Grant, Gennaro, Tim, and Lex are able to make it to the control room, where Tim is able to contact the Anne B and tell them to return to the island. The survivors are then able to organize themselves and eventually save their own lives. Word soon reaches them that the crew of the Anne B has discovered and killed the Velociraptor stowaways.
Gennaro tries to order the island destroyed as a dangerous asset, but Grant rejects his authority, claiming that even though they cannot control the island, they have a responsibility to understand just what happened and how many dinosaurs have already escaped to the mainland. Grant, Ellie, and Muldoon set out into the park to find the wild Velociraptor nests and compare hatched eggs with the island's revised population tally. Cautious in this pursuit, they emerge unharmed. Meanwhile, Hammond, taking a walk around the park and contemplating making a park improving on his previous mistakes, hears the T-Rex roar and falls down a hill where he is eaten by a pack of Procompsognathi. Concerning the dinosaurs' breeding, it is eventually revealed that using frog DNA to fill gaps in the dinosaurs' genetic code enabled a measure of dichogamy, in which some of the female animals changed into males in response to the all-female environment.
In the conclusion, before boarding helicopters, the group tell the Costa Rican air force that the dinosaurs had been killing people. The air force then say that the island is dangerous and releases napalm over the island, destroying the island and the dinosaurs. It is implied that Malcolm dies. Survivors of the incident are indefinitely detained by the United States and Costa Rican governments. Weeks later, Grant is visited by Dr. Martin Guitierrez, an American doctor who lives in Costa Rica and has found a Procompsognathus corpse. Guitierrez informs Grant that an unknown pack of animals has been migrating through the Costa Rican jungle, eating lysine-rich crops and chickens. He also informs Grant that none of them, with the possible exception of Tim and Lex, are going to leave any time soon.

Sunday, 24 November 2013

The Lost World

The Lost World is a techno-thriller novel written by Michael Crichton and published in 1995 by Knopf.It is a sequel to his earlier novel Jurassic Park.Like Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of the same name, Crichton's novel concerns an expedition to an isolated Central American location where dinosaurs roam—though in this case, the dinosaurs were recreated by genetic engineering, rather than surviving from antiquity.


Six years after the disaster at Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm—who is revealed to have survived the events of the previous novel via a retcon—teams up with paleontologist Richard Levine after learning about Isla Sorna, the "production facility" where the park's dinosaurs were hatched and grown near Isla Nublar (the Jurassic Park site). When Levine leaves without Malcolm, he plans a rescue, with a team consisting of Doc Thorne, Eddie Carr, and two stowaway children, R.B. "Arby" Benton and Kelly Curtis.
Simultaneously, another group—geneticist Lewis Dodgson, Howard King and George Baselton—also go to Isla Sorna, with plans to steal dinosaur eggs for Biosyn, the rival company of InGen, the company that created Jurassic Park. On the way to the island, Sarah Harding, an animal behaviorist who has worked in the African savanna, is on her way to meet with Dr. Thorne and Malcolm when she encounters Dodgson and his party. Dodgson at first dismisses Sarah until she reveals she is trying to make her way to Isla Sorna. He then offers to take her, but just before they reach the island, Dodgson throws Harding off the boat and leaves her for dead; she is then rescued by Malcolm's group. The entire rogue group is later killed by dinosaurs on the island.
The group finds Levine alive and well, but bitten. A velociraptor attack leaves Eddie dead and Malcolm is injured by the Tyrannosaurus Rex parents looking for their baby. Malcolm then spends much of the novel high on morphine, leaving him prone to talk at length about evolution on Isla Sorna, whose raptors are antisocial compared to those living on Isla Nublar. He discovers that InGen fed dinosaurs sheep infected with prion disease, which causes life spans of dinosaurs to be shorter than normal. The disease passes to animals bitten by them, leading to an eventual extinction of the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna. Kelly discovers a boat in an abandoned building and the group escapes the island. On the boat, Malcolm tells Levine about the prion disease, which was spread island wide by the scavenger procompsognathus species, but tells Levine his bites are fine and the disease would only infect dinosaurs.

Saturday, 23 November 2013

The Hobbit

The Hobbit is the prequel to the Lord of Ring series . The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, is a fantasy novel and children's book by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. The book remains popular and is recognized as a classic in children's literature.


This is one of the most freshly original and delightfully imaginative books for children that have appeared in many a long day. Like "Alice in Wonderland," it comes from Oxford University, where the author is Professor of Anglo-Saxon, and like Lewis Carroll's story, it was written for children that the author knew (in this case his own four children) and then inevitably found a larger audience.
The period of the story is between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men. To an adult who reads of Smaug the Dragon and his board, won by the dwarves but claimed also by the Lake men and the Elven King, there may come the thought of how legend and tradition and the beginning of history meet and mingle, but for the reader from 8 to 12 "The Hobbit" is a glorious account of a magnificent adventure, filled with suspense and seasoned with a quiet humor that is irresistible.

Hobbits are (or were) a small people, smaller than dwarves-and they have no beards-but very much larger than liliputians. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large, stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colors, chiefly green and yellow; wear no shoes because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick, warm brown hair; have long, clever, brown fingers, good-natured faces and laugh deep, fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day, when they can get it).

Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit whom we find living in his comfortable, not to say luxurious, hobbit hole, for it was not a dirty, wet hole, nor yet a bare, sandy one, but inside its round, green door, like a porthole, there were bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries, kitchens and dining rooms, all in the best of hobbit taste. All Bilbo asked was to be left in peace in this residence, known as "Bag-End," for hobbits are naturally homekeeping folk, and Bilbo had no desire for adventure. That is to say, the Baggins' side of him had not, but Bilbo's mother had been a Took, and in the past the Tooks had intermarried with a fairy family. It was the Took strain that made the little hobbit, almost against his will, respond to the summons of Gandalf the Wizard to join the dwarves in their attempt to recover the treasure which Smaug the dragon had stolen from their forefathers. Bilbo has an engaging, as well as an entirely convincing, personality; frankly scornful of the heroic (except in his most Tookish moments), he nevertheless plays his part in emergencies with a dogged courage and resourcefulness that make him in the end the real leader of the expedition.

After the dwarves and Bilbo have passed "The Last Homely House" their way led through Wilderland, over the Misty Mountains and through forests that suggest those of William Morris's prose romances. Like Morris's countries, Wilderland is Faerie, yet it has an earthly quality, the scent of trees drenching rains and the smell of woodfires.

The tale is packed with valuable hints for the dragon killer and adventurer in Faerie. Plenty of scaly monsters have been slain in legend and folktale, but never for modern readers has so complete a guide to dragon ways been provided. Here, too, are set down clearly the distinguishing characteristics of dwarves, goblins, trolls and elves. The account of the journey is so explicit that we can readily follow the progress of the expedition. In this we are aided by the admirable maps provided by the author, which in their detail and imaginative consistency, suggest Bernard Sleigh's "Mappe of Fairyland."

The songs of the dwarves and elves are real poetry, and since the author is fortunate enough to be able to make his own drawings, the illustrations are a perfect accompaniment to the test. Boys and girls from 8 years on have already given "The Hobbit" an enthusiastic welcome, but this is a book with no age limits. All those, young or old, who love a fine adventurous tale, beautifully told, will take "The Hobbit" to their hearts

The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings

"The Return of the King," Frodo Baggins fulfills his Quest, the realm of Sauron is ended forever, the Third Age is over and J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" complete. 



I rarely remember a book about which I have had such violent arguments. Nobody seems to have a moderate opinion: either, like myself, people find it a masterpiece of its genre or they cannot abide it, and among the hostile there are some, I must confess, for whose literary judgment I have great respect. A few of these may have been put off by the first forty pages of the first chapter of the first volume in which the daily life of the hobbits is described; this is light comedy and light comedy is not Mr. Tolkien's forte. In most cases, however, the objection must go far deeper. I can only suppose that some people object to Heroic Quests and Imaginary Worlds on principle; such, they feel, cannot be anything but light "escapist" reading. That a man like Mr. Tolkien, the English philologist who teaches at Oxford, should lavish such incredible pains upon a genre which is, for them, trifling by definition, is, therefore, very shocking.

The difficulty in presenting a complete picture of reality lies in the gulf between the subjectively real, a man's experience of his own existence, and the objectively real, his experience of the lives of others and the world about him. Life, as I experience it in my own person, is primarily a continuous succession of choices between alternatives, made for a short-term or long-term purpose; the actions I take, that is to say, are less significant to me than the conflicts of motives, temptations, doubts in which they originate. Further, my subjective experience of time is not of a cyclical motion outside myself but of an irreversible history of unique moments which are made by my decisions.

For objectifying this experience, the natural image is that of a journey with a purpose, beset by dangerous hazards and obstacles, some merely difficult, others actively hostile. But when I observe my fellow-men, such an image seems false. I can see, for example, that only the rich and those on vacation can take journeys; most men, most of the time must work in one place.

I cannot observe them making choices, only the actions they take and, if I know someone well, I can usually predict correctly how he will act in a given situation. I observe, all too often, men in conflict with each other, wars and hatreds, but seldom, if ever, a clear-cut issue between Good on the one side and Evil on the other, though I also observe that both sides usually describe it as such. If then, I try to describe what I see as if I were an impersonal camera, I shall produce not a Quest, but a "naturalistic" document.

Both extremes, of course, falsify life. There are medieval Quests which deserve the criticism made by Erich Auerbach in his book "Mimesis":

"The world of knightly proving is a world of adventure. It not only contains a practically uninterrupted series of adventures; more specifically, it contains nothing but the requisites of adventure... Except feats of arms and love, nothing occurs in the courtly world-and even these two are of a special sort: they are not occurrences or emotions which can be absent for a time; they are permanently connected with the person of the perfect knight, they are part of his definition, so that he cannot for one moment be without adventure in arms nor for one moment without amorous entanglement... His exploits are feats of arms, not 'war,' for they are feats accomplished at random which do not fit into any politically purposive pattern."

And there are contemporary "thrillers" in which the identification of hero and villain with contemporary politics is depressingly obvious. On the other hand, there are naturalistic novels in which the characters are the mere puppets of Fate, or rather, of the author who, from some mysterious point of freedom, contemplates the workings of Fate.

If, as I believe, Mr. Tolkien has succeeded more completely than any previous writer in this genre in using the traditional properties of the Quest, the heroic journey, the Numinous Object, the conflict between Good and Evil while at the same time satisfying our sense of historical and social reality, it should be possible to show how he has succeeded. To begin with, no previous writer has, to my knowledge, created an imaginary world and a feigned history in such detail. By the time the reader has finished the trilogy, including the appendices to this last volume, he knows as much about Tolkien's Middle Earth, its landscape, its fauna and flora, its peoples, their languages, their history, their cultural habits, as, outside his special field, he knows about the actual world.

Mr. Tolkien's world may not be the same as our own: it includes, for example, elves, beings who know good and evil but have not fallen, and, though not physically indestructible, do not suffer natural death. It is afflicted by Sauron, an incarnate of absolute evil, and creatures like Shelob, the monster spider, or the orcs who are corrupt past hope of redemption. But it is a world of intelligible law, not mere wish; the reader's sense of the credible is never violated.

Even the One Ring, the absolute physical and psychological weapon which must corrupt any who dares to use it, is a perfectly plausible hypothesis from which the political duty to destroy it which motivates Frodo's quest logically follows.

To present the conflict between Good and Evil as a war in which the good side is ultimately victorious is a ticklish business. Our historical experience tells us that physical power and, to a large extent, mental power are morally neutral and effectively real: wars are won by the stronger side, just or unjust. At the same time most of us believe that the essence of the Good is love and freedom so that Good cannot impose itself by force without ceasing to be good.

The battles in the Apocalypse and "Paradise Lost," for example, are hard to stomach because of the conjunction of two incompatible notions of Deity, of a God of Love who creates free beings who can reject his love and of a God of absolute Power whom none can withstand. Mr. Tolkien is not as great a writer as Milton, but in this matter he has succeeded where Milton failed. As readers of the preceding volumes will remember, the situation n the War of the Ring is as follows: Chance, or Providence, has put the Ring in the hands of the representatives of Good, Elrond, Gandalf, Aragorn. By using it they could destroy Sauron, the incarnation of evil, but at the cost of becoming his successor. If Sauron recovers the Ring, his victory will be immediate and complete, but even without it his power is greater than any his enemies can bring against him, so that, unless Frodo succeeds in destroying the Ring, Sauron must win.

Evil, that is, has every advantage but one-it is inferior in imagination. Good can imagine the possibility of becoming evil-hence the refusal of Gandalf and Aragorn to use the Ring-but Evil, defiantly chosen, can no longer imagine anything but itself. Sauron cannot imagine any motives except lust for domination and fear so that, when he has learned that his enemies have the Ring, the thought that they might try to destroy it never enters his head, and his eye is kept toward Gondor and away from Mordor and the Mount of Doom.

Further, his worship of power is accompanied, as it must be, by anger and a lust for cruelty: learning of Saruman's attempt to steal the Ring for himself, Sauron is so preoccupied with wrath that for two crucial days he pays no attention to a report of spies on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, and when Pippin is foolish enough to look in the palantir of Orthanc, Sauron could have learned all about the Quest. His wish to capture Pippin and torture the truth from him makes him miss his precious opportunity.

The demands made on the writer's powers in an epic as long as "The Lord of the Rings" are enormous and increase as the tale proceeds-the battles have to get more spectacular, the situations more critical, the adventures more thrilling-but I can only say that Mr. Tolkien has proved equal to them. From the appendices readers will get tantalizing glimpses of the First and Second Ages. The legends of these are, I understand, already written and I hope that, as soon as the publishers have seen "The Lord of the Rings" into a paper-back edition, they will not keep Mr. Tolkien's growing army of fans waiting too long.

The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings

Now, in a trilogy called "The Lord of the Rings," Mr. Tolkien continues somewhat differently his story of the third age of Middle Earth, a world inhabited by wizards, men, hobbits (courteous little oddities, like English householders three feet high with long hairy feet), elves and dwarves; and by the gorging orcs and blind Black Riders and their lord. It is a scrubbed morning world, and a ringing nightmare world. It seems, as any very distant age does, to be especially sunlit, and to be shadowed by perils very fundamental, of a peculiarly uncompounded darkness.


"The Two Towers" is the second part. The Dark Lord of Mordor has begun his assault on the sanity and grace of the world. The Fellowship of the Ring, the tiny band on whom rests all the hope of the resistance, is scattered; the hobbit Frodo plunges toward the frontiers of Mordor itself, carrying the fatal Ring that must be unmade in the fires of the Enemy domain. This, whatever that summary may sound like, is not for children; nor is it for whimsy-lovers and Alice quoters. Neither is it a dead moral apparatus festooned with poesy, like "The Faerie Queen." It is an extraordinary work-pure excitement, unencumbered narrative, moral warmth, barefaced rejoicing in beauty, but excitement most of all; yet a serious and scrupulous fiction, nothing cozy, no little visits to one's childhood.
This work is much admired by certain critics who have always practiced a highly conscious and proud intellectualism. Mr. Tolkien's fantasy is not metaphysical like E. R. Eddison's, nor theological like George MacDonald's; his appeal to the intellectuals is therefore interesting. After the first World War serious fiction tended toward literary Platonism or Berkeleyism. With a kind of brilliant tedium (called "sensitivity") novels refined on mental states. The authors assumed that the thought was the real act, of which the action was only a dubious copy. Plots gave way to insights. The clashing of multifarious big rhetorics, which had made Dickens and Scott, was replaced by the inner voice, very small but not still. Never had the distance between the popular appetite and serious art been so great as it then inevitably became. Many people, of what we might call the middle taste, turned to detective stories, which at least had plot; recently they have been reading science fiction, which has strong action. That "The Lord of the Rings" should appeal to readers of the most austere tastes suggests that they too now long for the old, forthright, virile kind of narrative.
Mr. Tolkien is a distinguished British philologist, and the language of his narrative reminds us that a philologist is a man who loves language. His names are brilliantly appropriate; the tongues he has devised for the elves and orcs perfectly express, just by their rhythms and phonemic systems, the natures of these races; his style is full of joy, the joy that follows the making of a perfect gesture. But more than this, the author has had intimate access to an epic tradition stretching back and back and disappearing in the mists of Germanic history, so that his story has a kind of echoing depth behind it, wherein we hear Snorri Sturluson and Beowulf, the sagas and the Nibelungenlied, but civilized by the gentler genius of modern England.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first volume in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic adventure THE LORD OF THE RINGS. 

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them



John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion


In "The Fellowship of the Ring," which is the first volume of a trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien continues the imaginative history of the imaginary world to which he introduced us in his earlier book but in a manner suited to adults, to those, that is, between the ages of 12 and 70. For anyone who likes the genre to which it belongs, the Heroic Quest, I cannot imagine a more wonderful Christmas present. All Quests are concerned with some numinous Object, the Waters of Life, the Grail, buried treasure etc.; normally this is a good Object which it is the Hero's task to find or to rescue from the Enemy, but the Ring of Mr. Tolkien's story was made by the Enemy and is so dangerous that even the good cannot use it without being corrupted.

The Enemy believed that it had been lost forever, but he has just discovered that it has come providentially into the hands of the Hero and is devoting all his demonic powers to its recovery, which would give him the lordship of the world. The only way to make sure of his defeat is to destroy the Ring, but this can only be done in one way and in one place which lies in the heart of the country; the task of the Hero, therefore, is to get the Ring to the place of its unmaking without getting caught.

The hero, Frodo Baggins, belongs to a race of beings called hobbits, who may be only three feet high; have hairy feet and prefer to live in underground houses, but in their thinking and sensibility resemble very closely those arcadian rustics who inhabit so many British detective stories. I think some readers may find the opening chapter a little shy-making, nut they must not let themselves be put off, for, once the story gets moving, this initial archness disappears.

For over a thousand years the hobbits have been living a peaceful existence in a fertile district called the Shire, incurious about the world outside. Actually, the latter is rather sinister; towns have fallen to ruins, roads into disrepair, fertile fields have returned to wilderness, wild beasts and evil beings on the prowl, and travel is difficult and dangerous. In addition to the Hobbits, there are Elves who are wise and good, Dwarves who are skillful and good on the whole, and Men, some warriors, some wizards, who are good or bad. The present incarnation of the Enemy is Sauron, Lord of Barad-Dur, the Dark Tower in the Land of Mordor. Assisting him are the Orcs, wolves and other horrid creatures and, of course, such men as his power attracts or overawes. Landscape, climate and atmosphere are northern, reminiscent of the Icelandic sagas.

The first thing that one asks is that the adventure should be various and exciting; in this respect Mr. Tolkien's invention is unflagging, and, on the primitive level of wanting to know what happens next, "The Fellowship of the Ring" is at least as good as "The Thirty-Nine Steps." Of any imaginary world the reader demands that it seem real, and the standard of realism demanded today is much stricter than in the time, say, of Malory. Mr. Tolkien is fortunate in possessing an amazing gift for naming and a wonderfully exact eye for description; by the time one has finished his book one knows the histories of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and the landscape they inhabit as well as one knows one's own childhood.

Lastly, if one is to take a tale of this kind seriously, one must feel that, however superficially unlike the world we live in its characters and events may be, it nevertheless holds up the mirror to the only nature we know, our own; in this, too, Mr. Tolkien has succeeded superbly, and what happened in the year of the Shire 1418 in the Third Age of Middle Earth is not only fascinating in A. D. 1954 but also a warning and an inspiration. No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy than "The Fellowship of the Ring."

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

The Count of Monte Cristo

I am sorry for lack of update since last week , i was sick and while i was recovering i reread one of my favourite classic book , The Count of Monte Cristo . It was written by Alexander Dumas in the year 1844 .Here is the review  : 


At the age of nineteen, Edmond Dantès seems to have the perfect life. He is about to become the captain of a ship, he is engaged to a beautiful and kind young woman, Mercédès, and he is well liked by almost everyone who knows him. This perfect life, however, stirs up dangerous jealousy among some of Dantès’s so-called friends. Danglars, the treasurer of Dantès’s ship, envies Dantès’s early career success; Fernand Mondego is in love with Dantès’s fiancée and so covets his amorous success; his neighbor Caderousse is simply envious that Dantès is so much luckier in life than he is.

Together, these three men draft a letter accusing Dantès of treason. There is some truth to their accusations: as a favor to his recently deceased captain, Dantès is carrying a letter from Napoleon to a group of Bonapartist sympathizers in Paris. Though Dantès himself has no political leanings, the undertaking is enough to implicate him for treason. On the day of his wedding, Dantès is arrested for his alleged crimes.

The deputy public prosecutor, Villefort, sees through the plot to frame Dantès and is prepared to set him free. At the last moment, though, Dantès jeopardizes his freedom by revealing the name of the man to whom he is supposed to deliver Napoleon’s letter. The man, Noirtier, is Villefort’s father. Terrified that any public knowledge of his father’s treasonous activities will thwart his own ambitions, Villefort decides to send Dantès to prison for life. Despite the entreaties of Monsieur Morrel, Dantès’s kind and honest boss, Dantès is sent to the infamous Château d’If, where the most dangerous political prisoners are kept.

While in prison, Dantès meets Abbé Faria, an Italian priest and intellectual, who has been jailed for his political views. Faria teaches Dantès history, science, philosophy, and languages, turning him into a well-educated man. Faria also bequeaths to Dantès a large treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo, and he tells him how to find it should he ever escape. When Faria dies, Dantès hides himself in the abbé’s shroud, thinking that he will be buried and then dig his way out. Instead, Dantès is thrown into the sea, and is able to cut himself loose and swim to freedom.

Dantès travels to Monte Cristo and finds Faria’s enormous treasure. He considers his fortune a gift from God, given to him for the sole purpose of rewarding those who have tried to help him and, more important, punishing those who have hurt him. Disguising himself as an Italian priest who answers to the name of Abbé Busoni, he travels back to Marseilles and visits Caderousse, who is now struggling to make a living as an innkeeper. From Caderousse he learns the details of the plot to frame him. In addition, Dantès learns that his father has died of grief in his absence and that Mercédès has married Fernand Mondego. Most frustrating, he learns that both Danglars and Mondego have become rich and powerful and are living happily in Paris. As a reward for this information, and for Caderousse’s apparent regret over the part he played in Dantès’s downfall, Dantès gives Caderousse a valuable diamond. Before leaving Marseilles, Dantès anonymously saves Morrel from financial ruin.

Ten years later, Dantès emerges in Rome, calling himself the Count of Monte Cristo. He seems to be all knowing and unstoppable. In Rome Dantès ingratiates himself to Albert de Morcerf, son of Fernand Mondego and Mercédès, by saving him from bandits. In return for the favor, Albert introduces Dantès to Parisian society. None of his old cohorts recognize the mysterious count as Edmond Dantès, though Mercédès does. Dantès is thus able to insinuate himself effortlessly into the lives of Danglars, Mondego, and Villefort. Armed with damning knowledge about each of them that he has gathered over the past decade, Dantès sets an elaborate scheme of revenge into motion.

Mondego, now known as the Count de Morcerf, is the first to be punished. Dantès exposes Morcerf’s darkest secret: Morcerf made his fortune by betraying his former patron, the Greek vizier Ali Pacha, and he then sold Ali Pacha’s wife and daughter into slavery. Ali Pacha’s daughter, Haydée, who has lived with Dantès ever since he bought her freedom seven years earlier, testifies against Morcerf in front of the senate, irreversibly ruining his good name. Ashamed by Morcerf’s treachery, Albert and Mercédès flee, leaving their tainted fortune behind. Morcerf commits suicide.

Villefort’s punishment comes slowly and in several stages. Dantès first takes advantage of Madame de Villefort’s murderous intent, subtly tutoring her in the uses of poison. As Madame de Villefort wreaks her havoc, killing off each member of the household in turn, Dantès plants the seeds for yet another public exposé. In court, it is revealed that Villefort is guilty of attempted infanticide, as he tried to bury his illegitimate baby while it was still alive. Believing that everyone he loves is dead and knowing that he will soon have to answer severe criminal charges, Villefort goes insane.

For his revenge on Danglars, Dantès simply plays upon his enemy’s greed. He opens various false credit accounts with Danglars that cost him vast amounts of money. He also manipulates Danglars’s unfaithful and dishonest wife, costing Danglars more money, and helps Danglars’s daughter, Eugénie, run away with her female companion. Finally, when Danglars is nearly broke and about to flee without paying any of his creditors, Dantès has the Italian bandit Luigi Vampa kidnap him and relieve him of his remaining money. Dantès spares Danglars’s life, but leaves him penniless.

Meanwhile, as these acts of vengeance play out, Dantès also tries to complete one more act of goodness. Dantès wishes to help the brave and honorable Maximilian Morrel, the son of the kind shipowner, so he hatches an elaborate plot to save Maximilian’s fiancée, Valentine Villefort, from her murderous stepmother, to ensure that the couple will be truly happy forever. Dantès gives Valentine a pill that makes her appear dead and then carries her off to the island of Monte Cristo. For a month Dantès allows Maximilian to believe that Valentine is dead, which causes Maximilian to long for death himself. Dantès then reveals that Valentine is alive. Having known the depths of despair, Maximilian is now able to experience the heights of ecstasy. Dantès too ultimately finds happiness, when he allows himself to fall in love with the adoring and beautiful Haydée.

I would highly recommend this book , i read this book once a year , its a timeless classic with alot of lesson of life . 

Friday, 8 November 2013

Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

I am fanatic fan of Manchester United ,i cant wait for this book to be delivered to me . I have pre-ordered this book from Kinokuniya .This is the preview of the book .

Sir Alex announced his retirement as manager of Manchester United after 27 years in the role. He has gone out in a blaze of glory, with United winning the Premier League for the 13th time, and he is widely considered to be the greatest manager in the history of British football. Over the last quarter of a century there have been seismic changes at Manchester United. The only constant element has been the quality of the manager's league-winning squad and United's run of success, which included winning the Champions League for a second time in 2008. 
Sir Alex created a purposeful, but welcoming, and much envied culture at the club which has lasted the test of time. Sir Alex saw Manchester United change from a conventional football club to what is now a major business enterprise, and he never failed to move with the times. It was directly due to his vision, energy and ability that he was able to build teams both on and off the pitch. He was a man-manager of phenomenal skill, and increasingly he had to deal with global stars. His relationship with Cristiano Ronaldo, for instance, was excellent and David Beckham has described Sir Alex as a father figure. 
Over the past four years, Sir Alex has been reflecting on and jotting down the highlights of his extraordinary career and in his new book he will reveal his amazing story as it unfolded, from his very early days in the tough shipyard areas of Govan.






The Man in the White Suit

The Stig is a character on the British motoring television show Top Gear. The Stig's primary role is setting lap times for cars tested on the show, as well as instructing celebrity guests, off-camera, for the show's "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" segment. The character is a play on the anonymity of racing drivers' full-face helmets, with the running joke that nobody knows who, or indeed what, is inside the Stig's racing suit.

When the Black Stig disappeared off the end of an aircraft carrier in 2003, we were introduced to The White Stig. Faster. Stranger. Harder to keep clean. And ever since, millions have wondered – who is The Man in the White Suit?

Ben Collins caught the car the bug young, kicking his dad's boss in the balls for not giving him a company Jag. This was the attitude that eventually led him to spend seven years sharing a cabin with Jeremy Clarkson's underwear, James May's PhD thesis and Richard Hammond's hairspray. Because he is The Stig.
Now he tells all about life inside the iconic white helmet. What it's like to guide a blind ex-RAF officer around the Top Gear track; pit a drug dealer's Mitsubishi Evo against a Trojan tank; set a Vauxhall Monara against Chloe the dancing Ninja; and race double-decker Routemasters against bendy buses. 

Not to mention all the inside stuff on how the show's amazing driving sequences are made.He also reveals how he got to be there – settinga Dunsfold lap time faster than Michael Schumacher's. Breaking records with the best of the best at Daytona and Le Mans.


This book is a must have for all Top Gear fans !

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Hotel K: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali's Most Notorious Jail

I bought this book after reading about the British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford who is on death row in Bali, Indonesia. Lindsay June Sandiford is a former legal secretary from Redcar, Teesside in North Yorkshire, England who was sentenced to death in January 2013 by a court in Indonesia after being convicted of smuggling cocaine onto the island of Bali. Although death is the maximum punishment for drugs-related offences under Indonesian law the severity of the sentence was greeted with shock because prosecutors had not recommended the death penalty for Sandiford. The ruling was also condemned by the British government and anti-death penalty campaigners.


Hotel Kerobokan, or Hotel K, Bali's most notorious jail. Its walls touch paradise: sparkling oceans, surf beaches and palm trees on one side, while on the other it's a dark, bizarre and truly frightening underworld of sex, drugs, violence and squalor. Hotel K's filthy and disease ridden cells have been home to the infamous and the tragic: a Balinese King, Gordon Ramsay's brother, Muslim terror bombers, beautiful women tourists and surfers from across the globe. Petty thieves share cells with killers, rapists, and gangsters. Hardened drug traffickers sleep alongside unlucky tourists, who've seen their holiday turn from paradise to hell over one ecstasy pill. Hotel K is the shocking inside story of the jail and its inmates, revealing the wild 'sex nights' organised by corrupt guards for the prisoners who have cash to pay, the jail's ecstasy factory, the killings made to look like suicides, the days out at the beach, the escapes and the corruption that means anything is for sale - including a fully catered Italian jail wedding, or a luxury cell upgrade with a Bose sound system. The truth about the dark heart of Bali explodes off the page.This book is a must read!