Posts Tagged books

The Bourne Trilogy

Posted by Nalin in Fun, Movies on July 22nd, 2007

“Cain is for Charlie, and Delta is for Cain“

I finally finished reading all the three Robert Ludlum’s novels written around the fictional character Jason Bourne a.k.a David Webb… Having watched the first two movies, I just had to read the novels before I went for Bourne Ultimatum on 3rd August.

But, once I started reading the first novel, I realized that the movies, though based on the same lines, are still completely different from the novels. For example, in Bourne Supremacy, the novel takes Bourne to Hong Kong and his wife is very much alive, but in the movie, his wife is killed in the first 15 minutes itself and he never goes far east.

I really liked reading Bourne Identity, but didn’t like Bourne Ultimatum at all… Considering that the movies are just amazing, it was a little difficult to read these novels in beginning. I got really interested in Identity, only after about the first 150 pages. The way Ludlum tries to get the reader to understand Jason’s mental state is really amazing. Also, Ludlum’s use of a lot of French (in Identity) and Chinese (in Supremacy) makes the novel a lot more realistic (but annoying to read at times).

I didn’t like Bourne Ultimatum because it was too long and winding, with a lot of plots and sub-plots that were loosely related to each other. Jason Bourne is 50+ in this novel and knowing that it’s just a bit to hard to imagine him doing all that is written in the novel. Also, so much information was repeated over and over again. I just ended up skipping a lot of pages in the end…

Anyways, so much for the novels…. the movies have been quite amazing. I am really looking forward to the last movie in the Bourne Trilogy. The first two were just amazing and I want to see what’s Bourne up to now…

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Posted by Nalin in General on April 23rd, 2007

Finished reading this last night and it left me quite sad… I already knew that Dumbledore would die in the novel, but still… Anyways… I am happy to have finished reading all the novels as now I can peacefully take a break from this series… It’s quite stupid but I have actually started thinking how much better my life would be with all the magic described in the books. It’s something like wanting to have the Staple’s EASY button.

One thing that was good about this novel was that it wasn’t as difficult a read as the one before it… In The Order of the Phoenix, it was heart wrenching to be in Harry’s shoes all the time… He was portrayed as being so very helpless… but in this novel at least thats not the case. Also, this novel makes for a good setting for the next and the last novel.

There are many rumors going around about how it’s all going to end… I find myself discussing it now and again with people… well… everyone will come to know in July… :-)

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Harry Potter

Posted by Nalin in Thoughts on March 31st, 2007

Just finished reading Harry Potter – The Order of The Phoenix. I have spent the last 2-3 weeks reading the first five novels and now I am going to take a break, cause now it’s starting to get to me… :) I will start reading the sixth novel next weekend….

I didn’t think it would be a lot of fun reading these novels once I had already watched the movies, but I must say I have enjoyed reading all of them. JK Rowling has become one of the richest celebs now because of these novels, and for good reason. These novels are very well written. What I have really liked about them is:

  • There is an increase in complexity as you go from one novel to the other. It’s not like all the adventures are similar. First two novels were meant for kids, but the rest aren’t. Also, the latter novels are a lot more dark and sinister. But what I really liked the most is that there is always a reason or an explanation for everything in the end and everything makes sense.
  • There is a connectivity between all the novels, yet you don’t need to have read one to understand the other. And this connection of events there relevance is quite significant in every novel.
  • Everything has been written as being seen from Harry Potter’s point of view. No wonder it is so easy for one to get into Harry’s character and actually feel what Harry is going thru.

I think another reason that I enjoyed reading these novels more was because I had already watched the movies and I was able to better visualize what was happening. Also, now I have a better understand of the events in each movie because things have been explained in much more details in the novels.

Over all, I would say all these novels are definitely worth a read. Now I see what the Potter Mania is all about :-)

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Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web, Third Edition

Posted by Nalin in General, WWW on September 6th, 2005

It’s a book by Addison Wesley on basics of CSS and it’s uses. It’s nice reading for a person who already knows a bit about CSS and just wants to know more about it or refresh a few things.

Though they cover most of the things, I really wont suggest a beginner using this book as it does not have good examples. There is just too much information thrown at you with no exercise modules. It comes across as a novel at times, though it lacks the humor and one-to-one writing approach followed by O’Reilly books.

I really wont suggest people to read this book.

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