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The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

April 13, 2007

Rating - 6 / 10 Hemingway had won a Nobel prize for this book. But just like you may not enjoy a movie which has won the Oscar for the best movie, I didnt like this book at all. Its a story of an old fisherman, Santiago, struggling to catch a big fish. The author takes us through his struggle during catching the fish, and then later carrying the fish back to the shore. The story was a drag, especially in the middle. It did get a little interesting in the end, when the sharks attacked Santiago in order to get hold of the massive fish that he had caught. It certainly teaches us never to give up and always keep a clear head when faced with tough situations. But apart from that there was little in the book that could keep me gripped to it.

The Lost World by Michael Crichton

April 11, 2007

Rating – 9 / 10 Lost World is the second book in the D-series by Michael Crichton. Two years have passed since the “InGen incident”, and the incident still remains a secret to most of the scientific fraternity. But there certainly have been few leaks and rumors floating around. After being declared as dead at the end of the first book, Dr. Ian Malcolm has miraculously survived. And this time, he has even more complex theories to explain. He teams up with Dr. Throne, Dr. Richard Levine and Dr. Harding, to enter the world of dinosaurs again, but now their intentions are purely to observe the behavior of the dinosaurs rather than to catch them. The story is filled with conclusions and inferences of the Darwin’s theory of evolution, the chaos theory (Malcolm’s favorite) and the theories of how species behave under different circumstances. Everything that happens on Isla Sorna, seems to be drawing from one of these theories. This book has more of science and less of the regular thrill, whic

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

April 11, 2007

Rating – 9 / 10 I have now read almost all the books that Dan Brown has written and I found Angels and Demons as the best amongst them. The story goes something like this - A new scientific discovery called anti-matter has been stolen and is going to be used as a very dangerous explosive for destroying the Vatican City by an organization called Illuminati. Illuminati considers itself as the organization representing all the enlightened minds among the human race, who wish to get rid of religion for good. The presentation of the story is perfect. Such is Dan Brown’s illustrious description of Rome and the Vatican City, that after reading the book I was actually planning to visit Rome. No wonder that these books, Da Vinci and Angels & Demons, have resulted in an actual increase in the number of tourists who visit these cities. The plot was great and the fact that an organization Illuminati actually existed at one point in history adds to the greatness of the story. I wonder if a movi

Prey by Michael Crichton

January 28, 2007

Rating – 9 / 10 Prey, another one of the science fiction thrillers from Michael Crichton, is based upon the growth of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence in the present world. At present, the two most studied fields in Artificial Intelligence are Evolutionary Computation (based on Darwin ’s theory of survival of the fittest) and Swarm Intelligence (which says that individual organisms defined by simple rules behave differently when in a swarm). In the story, a group of computer programmers put the above stated theories with nanotechnology to create a swarm of nanoparticles. The swarm is designed to work according to the PRED-PREY algorithm i.e. the particles are designed as predators trying to catch their prey (i.e. their goal). Now, during an experiment one of these swarms gets free. The swarm’s code contains bits of Genetic Algorithms (GA) i.e. the swarm keeps learning and at a very fast rate. It is actually solving problems in flashes of seconds. Every experience that t

Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

December 23, 2006

Rating – 8 / 10 In layman’s terms, Cryptology can be easily described as a race between a cracker and a hacker, where one is trying to protect a piece of information and the other is trying to steal it. It’s difficult to say which one of the two is justified in doing whatever he/she is doing and depends highly on what the information is. That’s precisely what the bottom line of this book is. For keeping only certain information as encrypted (and all the else as visible), the US government has to decrypt something which they have no clue about. The protagonist, Susan Fletcher, is a cryptologist in the NSA (National Security Agency). Trouble starts when a rebel from this organization (Ensei Tankado) takes this high level government organization for a ride when he gives them a ‘puzzle’ to solve. If they are unable to solve it, all their information/secrets will go public – a splendidly plotted digital extortion. The only problem is that he gets killed very early in the novel. That complet

Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton

December 17, 2006

Rating – 7 / 10 One of the first of Michael Crichton’s books, Eaters of the Dead circles around the lives of Vikings, their customs and their wars. This book is basically a more exciting version of the manuscript of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan. Faldlan was an Arab who, on one of his expeditions for his king, met with a group of Northmen i.e. Vikings. The Vikings decided to let go off Fadlan’s fellow travelers, but Faldlan is taken along as the thirteenth member (to bring good luck) on a hero’s quest to fight the ‘mist monsters’ in a North country. This book gives a detailed description of how Buliwyf, the leader of this team, plans and fights off the mist monsters and eventually kills the leader of the mist monsters, to save his people from these monsters. In this attempt, Buliwyf also gets killed but Fadlan survives and eventually leaves for returning back to his country. This book is nowhere close to the thrilling science fiction books that Crichton writes, and is famous for, today. It was cert