Insanity personified

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” 

I have no idea who said this but I know now that I am insane by definition. I have been struggling with my Digital Communication project. Well, I don't know how it happens but it starts acting like a total stranger every now and then. I am actually doing the same thing again and again but it also gives new results every time. So its more like a tie in insanity between me and my project. I may sound a bit defensive here but well somebody has to take the blame. And it will be better it this somebody is the project rather than me. For morale.

At the same time my computer has turned into a turtle. I know it wins at the end but I am not looking for end here. Simulations are already pretty time consuming without adding the contribution from my computer's speed.

 Thank God it doesn't take a MATLAB simulation to write a new blog post.

Reminiscence -2012

Tomorrow is going to be the last day of 2012. If I start thinking now, I realize that there will be a lot to remember this year 2012 for. However at this time I just want to recall all the books I read this year. In this year, it was more than usual especially in the later half. I don't know if I will be able to name them all but lets try...

1. Mata e Jaan Hai Tu by Farhat Ishtiaq---easily the best romance I have ever read. It was a little spoiled by the drama serial but still I will never forget Ibad and Hania of the novel

2. Hamsafar by Farhat Ishtiaq --- I read it because I hadn't watched the drama which is so famous. It was good, though the cliche story was only enlivened by Farhat's great ability of describing emotions.

3. The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins--- it was very good. All three books, though I liked the first one best.

4. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier --- simply the greatest of all

5. Happy Birthday by Danielle Steel --- I can still feel irritated

6. Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks --- good one

7. A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks --- another good romance novel

8. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks --- not bad

9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson --- one of those that affected me very much. It was a good thriller but you are just left horrified by the end.

10. The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson --- not as good as the first book in the trilogy

11. Divergent by Veronica Roth --- one of the very good ones

12. Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game by Tilly Bagshaw --- a fairly good attempt at imitating Sheldon's writing style but the story wasn't very strong

13. Shab e Arzoo ka Aalam by Aneeza Syed --- one of the most favorite in urdu

14. 4:50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie --- for the first time I understood why Agatha Christie is so widely liked

15. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga --- very true account of rural life in countries like India

16. Coraline by Neil Gaiman --- cutest fantasy ever

So that is all I can remember now. Currently I am reading The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman and also started The Casual Vacancy by J.k. Rowling. And I have a long to-read list.  

Currently reading The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

A little while ago, I was fussing about wanting to read The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling. Well, I started reading it. Its a common story about a town called Pagford. Probably its the story's demand but there are so many characters that every day I pick up the novel and fail to recognize almost any character mentioned. I reached almost 100 pages when I thought that I should start again. Its not that I didn't enjoy it but I realized its just something you have to take time with. So I am not rushing. I have put it down for a while and started another book I have been putting off for some time: The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks.

I think Sparks's books should be the comforting read that is needed after a more demanding book. Its not the case with me this time. I just finished reading A Walk to Remember just  a couple of days ago. I just opened it on an impulse. Its another simple (so far) yet special love story. Its about the very basic need of human beings of remaining close to nature. The picturesque imagination of natural beauty is something that can literally take the reader under a spell from which its just hard to recover. I want to read it again and again, especially the chapters Moving Water and Swans and Storms.

More on it later when I finish the book, which I expect will be soon. Its quite a short novel. 

A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks

Update March 29, 2013:

Sometimes when I review a book immediately after reading it, I think I am probably more excited than rational about it, both in like and dislike. Later, my opinion tends to deviate from the review. I was revisiting my older blog posts today when I just could not understand what I have written myself. A Walk to Remember was a good time-pass, but I don't know why I called it great. It was simple and cliche, the subject more suitable for a short story than for a whole novel. To sum it up: it was average. (Rest can be found below, but just try to filter out my excitement from it).

December 23, 2012:

It was simply great! The kind of story of an angel who teaches everybody how to love and help others.  The kind people call cliché. That you read as fairy tale as a child. But the best thing is that its not a fairy tale but a story that has all those common yet special characters we have around us in real life. Deeply moving.

It is a short novel with a slow and steady pace. Jamie was a good-natured but an oddity-by-teenagers-standards girl. Landon, the narrator, is just an average person. Somehow they come to work together for a play. As Landon gets to know her, he finds himself falling in love with her. It is one of the best things about this novel: its not the usual caught-by-breath-taking-beauty and love-at-first-sight teenage romance (which irritates me unbearably), it’s the true love inspired by the goodness of character which can really have the kind of depth the story describes. I loved the character Jamie. She knew she was right and stood by her principles and inspired others around her to be like her. And I cried for her as much as any of the characters in the story. Like Landon, I also kept hoping for a miracle throughout the last chapter. One of my favorite excerpts:

"Jamie was more than just the woman I loved. In that year Jamie helped me become the man I am today. With her steady hand she showed me how important it was to help others; with her patience and kindness she showed me what life is really all about. Her cheerfulness and optimism, even in times of sickness, was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed"

Nicholas Sparks has a great gift when it comes to the genre of romance. He know how to keep his audience captivated with such a simple story. And in spite of sad endings, he always gives a hopeful insight. He never leaves the lovers miserable and dejected but they always manage to find solace from their love. I admired him for the same thing regarding Message in a Bottle.

So I am even bigger fan of Nicholas Sparks. And I’ll soon start another of his books. But right now I am turning to the much-awaited The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling.

Turning to Nicholas Sparks's

I am dying to read The Casual Vacancy by J.K Rowling but I thought I should give myself a break and read something lighter and less challenging and also something I am sure will be enjoyable. I have spent last three weeks with Stieg Larsson's Millenium (first two books) and I seriously need a change from murder mysteries and complicated plots.

That is when I turn to the genre of romance. Since Message in a Bottle, I have been wanting to read more of Nicholas Sparks. He has got a great gift in style of writing down his equally or even more gifted imagination. Among all the attributes of literature, writing style is what I value most. So Nicholas Sparks is one of my most favorite.

So I have started reading A Walk to Remember.

The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Update: Completed reading

I have to re-enforce my previous review: it was a disappointment. It took me two long weeks to drag myself with the story. I just couldn’t find it engaging which is completely opposed to my experience with the first book. I think that this book needs considerable editing or probably it is not one of the best translated novels. Nevertheless, it contains too much unnecessary and annoyingly detailed accounts of things that have nothing new or interesting to tell. There was absolutely nothing in almost first 200 pages. It has a strange pace. It drags on and on and on and then suddenly everything wraps up. Earlier I praised a journalist's vision. I still do but the writing style in this novel is more like I would like to read in a crime investigation report.

The story was rich with mind-spinning twists and turns with so many characters and places that I kept forgetting who was who. Larrsson has an art of clustering all types of odd characters together.

All in all the novel was all right but I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted and expected to.

Continuing with Millennium Trilogy

It’s somewhat disappointing after The girl with the Dragon Tattoo. After reading almost 100 pages, it has told nothing but Salander's shopping details. Larrson has probably tried to emphasize it as a big change in her life but I don’t think she was described particularly to be living hand to mouth in the previous novel. Her shopping frenzy is over emphasized.

I don’t even find the descriptions of her consistent with her previous image of an extremely autistic person. She has suddenly come to be at ease with having long conversations.

Salander's newly found interest in mathematics is funny and somehow that does go with her image of a nosy investigator.

And there should be at least one woman around Blomkvist who is not having an affair with him. I tried to ignore it in the previous novel but all his relationships start in a very stupid, lame way and without any kind of context.

The writing style in the previous novel was also better. Now it just seems to drag unnecessarily. It looks like Larrson was just trying to fill the pages.

I hope the story will be good and as enthralling as the previous one, once it starts. I hope it starts soon. More than hundred pages is a little too much for telling the context.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson

The book's synopsis says: "Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back". Nothing can be truer about this novel. I have come to realize that journalists can be very good story-tellers because they have a field of vision is much broader than a common  novel writer. The real world is actually more dramatic than any imagination.   I read "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga, who is also an Indian journalist a month ago. I am not comparing the two but I enjoyed both of them. I actually have a much greater fondness for novels that address more practical and bigger issues than the problems of three or four main characters.

The book tells about investigative journalism, high-level financial frauds, psychological problems and vulnerable position of women in Sweden. I don’t personally have any idea about women's position in Sweden but the facts presented in this novel are simply horrifying, if they really are facts. It tells in a frightening way how rotten someone can be behind a façade of wealth and glamour.

So the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starts with a prologue which makes its impact right away. I am generally not impressed by prologues because mostly there is hardly any word that the reader can understand from them and I usually read them again at the end to make some sense. But in this one, it’s the prologue alone that can make sure that the complete story is read.

The story starts with magazine Millennium's editor Mikael Blomkvist recounting the recent events that led to him being sentenced for two months in prison and a heavy fine. He had tried to expose a fraud billionaire industrialist Wennerstrom but he had been unable to prove his allegations. So he leaves the magazine thinking it would be better for all and goes on leave. At the same time, another industrialist Henrik Vanger, 82 years old and retired, offers him evidence against the Wennerstrom in exchange for his services in solving the mystery of his grandniece's disappearance 37 years ago. For the old man, nothing has ever been more important for the last 37 years. He lost all interest in his business which had to faced huge amount of loss. He is psychologically handicapped when it comes to forgetting her grandniece's disappearance. He has devoted entire 37 years to try to work out what happened to her and believes that someone in his own family murdered her. Now as he thinks he will die soon, he wants to make one last effort. For that, he contacts Blomkvist, who believes that there cannot be anything  left to be unraveled after 37 years. But it turns out there is yet a lot to be discovered from old photographs and diaries and old newspaper articles and in less than a year the mystery starts to unfold and reveals unspeakable horrors still prevailing within the Vanger family.

Now there is a strange character called Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo. She is a social outcast and has some extraordinary talents, not all legitimate. She works as a freelancer and provides services as n investigator. The mysteries about this character have not been revealed in the novel but it is hinted that she suffered from some mishaps in her past that left her socially incapable. But her mind was not affected and she was still a very gifted investigator. She is engaged by Blomkvist to help in his research about the 37-year-old murder mystery. She lives with Blomkvist and he becomes closest thing to friend she ever had and she falls in love with him. Together they expose the dark truth about Vanger family.

After they finished their job, it turns out that Henrik Vanger's knowledge about Wennerstrom was useless. Here again Salander, using her talents in hacking, finds all the evidence against Wennerstrom for Blomkvist who publishes the whole thing and Millennium finds back all the glory, a happy ending.

The only thing I don’t understand is why the book is named as it is. Salander is one of the main characters but the story is not about her. I think the name is a bit misleading.

I was a long story but so compelling that it was impossible to put down. Not at a single point did it lose its pace. And I am dying to read the sequels.

4:50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie

 

I picked this book randomly, without expecting much from it. I am not a big fan of Agatha Christie. I have read her Nemesis, Sparkling Cyanide and a couple others whose names I don’t remember. I found them good but not exceptionally engaging. I liked the character of Miss Marple from Nemesis but wasn’t a big fan of her. So when I picked this one, I thought it would be a good time pass but nothing too demanding (actually I am still having my exams). 

It turned out that I was wrong about this one. I have never written a review of a mystery novel before, so I apologize in advance for any spoilers. Its very hard to discuss this one without taking away all the fun but I will try.

This novel is composed of a chain of extremely uncommon circumstances. Really its hard to digest the fact that all of them occurred in the same story. First, an elderly lady Mrs. McGillycuddy (no offences to anybody, I spent some time enjoying the name, trying to pronounce it correctly.. I don’t think I succeeded though) witnesses a murder taking place in a train running parallel to hers. Now it was extraordinary how the window curtain of that murder-train flew at the right time in front of the right person because Mrs. McGillycuddy was going to visit her friend who was none other than Miss Jane Marple, the Nemesis, the old lady with remarkable detective instincts.

So Mrs. McGillycuddy, being a responsible citizen, reports the matter to the authorities. However, no evidence of any murder was found. Now Miss Marple, on her own, starts investigating the situation. She makes quite an effort in travelling back and forth in the train. She gathers some ideas about what might have happened. She has a theory that the dead body of the victim was buried in a house. She then engages Lucy Eyelesbarrow, who is a "professional domestician" to get a job at the house and find the body, which she manages quite soon. Personally, I think Lucy Eyelesbarrow was an odd character although intelligent and pretty and graceful and all that but somewhat out of place. I mean are there really "professional domesticians"in England. Its an odd occupation to choose.

Then begins the search for the murderer. Local police and Scotland Yard get involved. The investigation part is mind-boggling. There is a twist and a turn on literally every page. It was impossible to put it down. The extraordinary events never fail to happen. At last, the most unlikely and good-natured person turns out to be the murderer. This, I think, is Agatha Christie's favorite result of any investigation. I must say that the murderer was also exceptionally intelligent.

But the most ironical part is that after all the efforts by police, it was only a question of a witness identifying a criminal which was arranged by Miss Marple based on her knowledge of how human brain works.

I really like Miss Marple's character. I liked her from Nemesis and I like her more now. Its funny how she relates very different people and draw conclusions about them. How she places herself in their place and predict what they would do. She makes it all so simple by saying that all her capabilities come from knowledge of human nature. It sounds somewhat like Sherlock Holmes's "nothing is ever new" philosophy. 

I enjoyed this novel very much and I am going to read more of Agatha Christie.