Meme: Reading In Public

I found this meme in Between The Covers (originally from Booking Through Thursday) and now is perhaps the best time to do this meme yesterday I tried to read a book during my 90 minute bus journey from college to home.

Reading In Public. Do you do it? Why, or why not?

I should be ashamed that I'm saying this, but my answer is no. At least not very often in the last three years. Most people who knew me from school would be surprised, because back then I wouldn't let a free minute slip by without reading a few pages off a book. On the way to school, on the way back, free hours, lunch hour. Sometimes I'd even be holding a book open with one hand even when I'm having lunch. But all that has changed now. The MP3 player has replaced books as my must-have on the bus, so I don't read there. And there are hardly any free hours in college, and even if there are any, I'll be busy completing long overdue assignments every single free minute.

Yesterday, however, I was actually desperate enough to open a book when I was coming back home from college. I've been late thrice in a row in returning the books to the library -- I didn't want to make it four. But I hadn't anticipated the difficulties of reading on a bus that's moving at about 60kph on terribly potholed roads. The bus was shaking so badly that I could only manage to read 20-odd pages in one hour -- less than a third of what I would read in that time had I been siting someplace more comfortable.

Lying comfortably on my bed without any noise nearby to disturb me is the way I prefer reading. And I like reading books a few hours at a stretch. A public place is the last place where I can read that way, so until I change my reading habits, that's definitely out of the question.

Meme: Trying A Simpe Meme

Looking around the blogosphere, I found a whole lot of bloggers who occasionally do memes on their blogs. I even found one blog, Booking Through Thursday, that's entirely dedicated to book related memes, and I thought, why not try a simple one on my own blog. So here it is...

Now for those of you who haven't heard of memes, here's a definition: "a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another." (For a better idea about memes, especially blog memes or "blemes", read this post.)

1. Grab the nearest book.


2. Open the book to page 123.


3. Find the fifth sentence.


4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.


5. Don’t search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Now, for the nearest book, there are thirty two of them lying two feet away from me on the shelf. I ignore Step 5 (because I'm still on Step 1 [*wink*]) and pick up one of the "coolest" books, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In the fifth sentence on page 123, Hermione is trying to get Professor Lockhart to give her permission to go through the restricted section of the library.

"I wanted to -- to get this book out of the library"

That's one easy meme. And a really pointless one. But at least it got me started on memes. Next week, I'll hopefully do (if at all I actually manage to do) something that's a bit more difficult than this one.

PS. In memes everywhere, I've noticed that the blogger tags a few people (usually five) to continue that meme. Unfortunately for me, I don't think there's much of a chance for me to find five people who will actually read this post, much less continue it. So I'm not tagging anyone, but you can continue this meme if you want to. And do leave a comment here if you found a really interesting sentence that just happened to be sentence 5 on page 125.

What Book Are You?

I was going through the blog, BookLust today and came across this post. I took the Book Quiz at Blue Pyramid. Here are the questions (options in brackets) and my answers. From my first answer, it's obvious that I'll have something more to add to everything, [*winks*] so I've put my own comments in brackets.

Q1: Are you long winded or concise? (Well, I do tend to go on and on and on... / Concise.)

A: Well, I do tend to go on and on and on... (and on and on and on...)

Q2: Do you feel old?

A: No. (Isn't 21 is a bit too early to start feeling old?)

Q3: Which of these is your mantra? (Just the facts ma'am... / Truth is stranger than fiction.)

A: Just the facts ma'am... (If fiction weren't strange, I wouldn't be reading books, would I?)

Q4: What do you study more? (Philosophy / Science)

A: Science. (As a matter of fact, I don't study anything except on the day before exams. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that I study science; I've never had to learn too much of philosophy for my Electronics and Communication Engineering course.)

Q5: How do you feel about messiahs? (A messiah would really help. / What messiah?)

A: What messiah? (The way things are going these days, the messiah himself would need help.)

Q6: Aren't dinosaurs cool? (Yes! / Uh, if you say so...)

A: Yes! (What could be more interesting than watching a velociraptor chasing its prey at a speed of nearly 24 mph (39 kph)? I'm assuming that I'm not the prey here.)

And the final result was:

You're Jurassic Park! by Michael Crichton You combine all the elements of a mad scientist, a brash philosopher, a humble researcher, and a money-hungry attracter of tourists. With all these features, you could build something monumental or get chased around by your own demons. Probably both, in fact. A movie based on your life would make millions, and spawn at least two sequels that wouldn't be very good. Be very careful around islands.

Not entirely surprising there. Jurassic Park is one of my favorites. But I was expecting something more on the lines of Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary or maybe Tom Sawyer. But Jurassic Park will do just fine.

Review: Red Dragon (Thomas Harris)

My rating: 7/10.

This is the book that introduced the cannibalistic Dr. Hannibal Lecter to the world -- although it's only a brief glimpse of the famous psychopath here. The book mainly focuses on another psychopath and an FBI agent who's pursuing him...

This is my first Thomas Harris book, but I've really wanted to read the Hannibal Lecter tetralogy after I came across this Hannibal Lecter article on Wikipedia. So I decided to pick up the first book in the series from the library.

A few weeks ago, I read Pet Sematary, my first Stephen King book. And what I felt about that book probably applies to this one as well. I wouldn't rate either of the books as outstanding, but they certainly left me wanting to read more of these two authors. Red Dragon is the kind of book that keeps surprising you right through to the last page, as it examines the mind of the psychopathic serial killer Francis Dolarhyde and the (psychic?) FBI agent Will Graham who's hunting him. I didn't at all like the beginning of the book. I read the first two or three chapters without having a clue what was going on. But I have to admit that after getting used to the book's style, it was difficult it put it down until I finished reading it.

The book is good, and at times you almost feel sorry for the serial killer, especially when Harris describes Dolarhyde's childhood and the circumstances that turned him into a psychopath. At the same time I was disappointed that except for a brief glimpse, there is very little about "Hannibal the cannibal", and Hannibal's the character I wanted to read about. Anyway, there are three more books left in the series. Now I can't wait to read Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.

Related Posts:

• Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris)

Review: The Brethren (John Grisham)

This is probably the first time that a John Grisham novel has failed to impress me. It's not actually a bad story, but it's not really as good as the rest of the Grisham novels I've read.

The plot of this book -- at least to me -- feels quite unrealistic. Three judges in a minimum security prison convicted of various offenses doling out justice within the prison?! And at the same time running a mail scam without being caught? The CIA selecting a man to run for President and then flooding him with campaign funds? And the Director of CIA himself working on the election ads!? You'd think the CIA had nothing better to do!

Grisham drags you through nearly a third of the book with two seemingly unrelated plots before you start seeing the connection. Then he ups the pace a little bit, but still I found this a very, very average book.

The book is different from the normal John Grisham books -- there's very little of legal jargon here, none of the courtroom battles or the "lawyer-hero fighting against all odds to save his innocent client" type stuff. This is my seventh Grisham book and I think this is the farthest he has ever ventured from his legal thrillers, and maybe he deserves a pat on the back for trying to explore a different genre. But give me the choice and I'll pick the courtroom drama any day.

My rating : 5/10.

Review: Terminal (Robin Cook)

A few years ago, I'd have definitely rated Robin Cook as one of my favorite authors. But for some time now, I've had this feeling that his books have lost their charm and all that medical jargon that used to sound so unique and interesting feels too technical and unnecessary. Fever, Outbreak and Acceptable Risk were the earliest Robin Cook thrillers I read, and I loved all of them. But since then most of his books have been disappointing, and Terminal is perhaps the worst of them all.

A Harvard medical student gets an opportunity to work in a cancer research center with a cent percent remission rate for medulloblastoma patients. When he's not allowed to work on the cancer research project, he starts snooping around and finally discovers that the research center is itself causing the cancer that it later cures, so that the patients donate money generously for "saving" their lives.

Well, that was supposed to be the plot. It's difficult to notice, but if you read carefully enough, you'll find that plot scattered across the book. But for most part Cook goes on and on about -- to roughly quote one of his lines from the book -- "... the new commercialism that is poisoning science in general and medical research in particular..." I do agree that Cook's thrillers generally have a message within them, but this is taking it to a totally different level. This one sounds almost as if it's a preachy message with a thriller hidden somewhere inside it.

Okay, maybe I'm being a bit too harsh here, and having not taken a biology course in more than three years makes the book less easy to understand. But we must remember that the vast majority of this world cannot tell the difference between medulloblastoma and medulla oblongata. Many of the people who read Cook -- like me -- have a very superficial knowledge of the subject and mainly read his books only because they like his plots. (I mean some of his plots. Not this one.)

Robin Cook's strength is his fast paced narrative laced with some medical jargon. I've never read his books for their literary merits, and that's because they don't have any. They're just a story that you read only because the plot keeps you interested right through to the last page. So when the plot gets bogged down with too much of preaching, there's nothing much left in the book to enjoy. Right now I can only hope that the dozen odd of his books that I have yet to read are better than this one. Much better than this one.

My Rating: 3/10

Review: Pet Sematary (Stephen King)

Stephen King has this reputation as one of the best horror novelists around. Add to that King's claim in the introduction to this book that it's the scariest book he's ever written. So it's reasonable to expect that someone who's never read King before would be more than a little bit scared by this book.

Unfortunately, Pet Sematary doesn't succeed in doing what you'd normally expect any good horror story to do -- scaring the readers. And when it comes to someone who's considered the King of horror -- sorry about the pun there ;-) -- you'd expect something more than just good... it must be outstanding, which I'm afraid this book isn't.

The interesting thing that I noticed here is that King has relied less on gory images and more on uncomfortable ideas to create the horror. Yes, there is plenty of gore -- like Victor Pascow with half of his skull smashed in, or the accident that kills the little boy Gage Creed, or towards the end of the book where... er... well, read it yourself, I'm not revealing spoilers here. But that's not what creates the horror here. When you read about Pascow who's lost half a skull and is dripping his brains everywhere on a hospital floor, the curiosity about what he wants to tell Louis Creed overweighs the feeling of sickness over his condition. The questions that King asks are far more terrifying than these images.

And he does ask quite a few questions. Like, what if you could bring back the dead? What if you were in Louis Creed's place, would you have acted the same way? Would you care that your loved ones weren't the same as before, as long as they weren't dead? And why? Why would you do it if you knew that once they're back they'd be somehow... empty..?

Here I must admit that even though I'm not very fond of this particular book, I'm not writing off the author as someone I wouldn't read. I'm not even saying that it's not a good book. Although I don't consider it scary enough to qualify as an outstanding book of the horror genre, it's still a book I wouldn't want to miss. And it's hard to forget some of the mis-spelled lines from the book -- "Pet Sematary", "Smucky the cat, he was obediant" -- and Ellie Creed's screaming "Let God have his own cat..." when faced with the fact that someday her pet will be dead. And the ending of the book will definitely leave you wondering "What next?" After coming back from the dead, is Rachel Creed going to ever be the same person again, or...??? King leaves that question open to us to answer it anyway we like.

My rating: 6/10.

Links:

• Review on Mine Own Book Reviews.


• Pet Sematary on Wikipedia.

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