Post a Comment On: The Sceptic Dot

Been reading copiously lately. Making up for all the lost time over last semester. Not that I have all the time in the world even now. I however put in about 3-4 hours of reading everyday mainly while travelling to and fro to the place where I am doing my internship. Staying at IIT in Powai and travelling all the way to TIFR at the very tip of Bombay in Colaba is no simple task. I get to ride a cycle, a bus, a train and another bus for an hour and 40 minutes before I get from point A to point B. And I get to do this twice a day :) (once to get there and the second time to get back, you morons).

Back to where I started. After a hard semester, I was yearning for some good reads and decided I'd try a few recommendations.
Icon by Frederick Forsyth: Not good! I would not recommend to anyone except a stranded sailor on a remote island. There are lots of good books with russians, communists, journalists, spies and the underworld and this is definitely not it. Weak plot and the execution was run-of-the-mill. Seems like the author realised it eventually and put in quite a fight at the death.
Hammer of God by Arthur C Clarke: Arthur Clarke is good. Picked this up from a friend and is a very nice medium sized work and highly entertaining and intriguing. Most science fiction novels fail to convince most of us. They are more often than not lacking in research and conviction. But the Hammer of God is wonderfully scripted where this comet/asteroid comes hurtling out of nowhere headed for earth and our hero and his crew are sent to push it off course. Set somewhere in the future when it was finally decided that Star Wars was an impossibility and moon and mars have been colonized, the book is definitely worth a read.
A Time to Kill by John Grisham: It has been real long since I read any courtroom drama. Della Street and Perry Mason seem like long forgotten acquaintances. Back to Jake Brigance. For a first novel, the book is a real hit. Maybe his later novels like 'the Firm' and 'The Pelican Brief' received more acclaim, but this book is more than what I needed to become a fan of John Grisham. Unlike Perry Mason, Jake Brigance is a mortal. Jake is a married,30 something criminal lawyer living in Clanton, Ford County, Missisippi fighting for this black who kills two whites that raped his ten-year-old daughter. The book is filled with action, emotion, suspense and the triumph of good over evil :)
I definitely got to catch hold of his other books.

Bye, got to go catch the sunset by the rocky coastline of TIFR.