A few days before this past Valentines Day, I was tasked by my sister to write a poem for her to present at a val’s day program she was to attend. So, with her help, I was able to come up with what is below. I just decided to share it with the lot of you this season ‘cos the message is still relevant to easter. Enjoy.
Why wouldn’t he let me go
I don’t deserve his grace
For I am tattered and frayed
And full of life’s mistakes
Tags: easter, jesus, literature, love, poem, poetry, valentine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is one of the best written works of non-fiction I have ever read. If I were to base this review on the writing alone, it would get a 5 star rating easy. However, the content also has a part to play.
To put it quite subtly, Steve Jobs led a colourful life. He was a hippie (not even of the more mission oriented yippie variety). He was also quite spoiled as a child and the adults around him condoned and even sometimes encouraged his eccentricities and idiosyncrasies. As a result, he developed a sense of being able to do anything without facing the repercussions.
He had a brilliant, analytical and creative mind. His knack for finding the right people for the job and being able to bring out the latent potential of his staff made him the success he was.
This book exposes lots of the lesser known facts about Steve Jobs and also gives context and depth to the more popular stories.
In this book, you see a man who followed his beliefs and sometimes, even in the face of concrete evidence against whatever he wanted to do, went ahead and did it anyway.
Reading this book shows you that, although Steve Jobs receives most of the public’s praise and sometimes scorn for the outcome of Apple’s products, there are several talented people working behind the scenes who actually bring these products to life, all the while having to put up with constant verbal abuse from Steve.
I commend the author for giving a balanced, unbiased take into the life of one of this century’s greatest visionaries and largely leaving the task of coming up with an opinion of the subject to the reader.
Whatever conclusions one might come to about Steve Jobs after reading this book, I believe that his whole demeanor and personality quirks, coupled with the legendary “reality distortion field” may have been the right ingredients, in the exact proportions to enable the kind of global impact which he was able to create throughout his lifetime.
Traditionally, when I write a book review, I first do so on goodreads and then create a post here and copy directly from my goodreads review, often adding only formatting to make it more presentable. Today, I stumbled upon a lesser known feature of goodreads whuch enables me to cross post my reviews right from goodreads.com to this blog once I publish it there. So from now on, all my book reviews would automagically appear on this blog too!
Tags: Book reviews, goodreads
Rating: 
Little Brother follows the story of Marcus Yallow also known as “M1k3y” who, with some of his friends, was arrested and interrogated by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a suspected terrorist just because of his proximity to the site of a terrorist attack on a bridge. After he is released, he somewhat inadvertently founded an underground movement based around an network of hacked X-boxes running a distribution of Linux called ParanoidXbox.
The movement was called Xnet and its objective was to foil the increasingly frustrating restrictions which the DHS imposed on the people under the guise of trying to prevent another terrorist attack.
Marcus faces several challenges and somehow manages to overcome most, soliciting the help of others as he went along. Eventually, his deeds were catching up with him and he has to look for a way to end it all.
Over the years, I haven’t really read much of Sci-Fi. I guess the major reason is that I find it difficult to relate to a lot of the futuristic technology displayed in a lot of Sci-Fi titles. However, when this book was recommended to me by a friend, I decided to pick it up anyway.
I totally enjoyed myself while reading this!. The tech in this book is not futuristic at all. It is all present day technology. Reading this book gives you intermediate level insight into concepts such as Cryptography, Tunneling, spoofing IP, Tor (The Onion Router), Xbox hacking, linux, LARP (Live Action Role Playing), etc. All these technologies are integrated in such a way as to supplement the story telling and provide for a much richer story.
The author of this book, Cory Doctorow, is someone I have known of for quite sometime as something of an Internet celebrity in certain quarters. I knew he wrote fiction and have even glanced through a copy of the graphic novel version of one of his books , I, Robot, before, but I haven’t really read any of his fiction before this. After reading this, I’m resolved to try to pick up another one of his books. The themes of his books are ever more pertinent in this world of SOPA and PIPA.
Although Little Brother is published by Tor Books, it is also distributed online via a Creative Commons Licence. You can LEGALLY download it here
Tags: Cory Doctorow, Little Brother, M1k3y, Sci-Fi
It is not news anymore that Android can be a data guzzling beast. However, in these times when people are ever more conscious of thier spending habits it is important to know just how this data is spent and what can be done to curtail it.
What exactly is eating my data?
Several factors contribute to give andriod its reputation as a data guzzler. Some of them are listed below:
Apps sync
After setting up your google account as well as other accounts such as facebook, twitter and yahoo on thier respective apps, these applications constantly synchronise themselves in order to get whatever new data that is available for them. These actions on thier own might not amount to much data but over a period of time, with several apps at once, it becomes significant. Some other apps that are not social or IM are also culprits of this. Most notable of which are news reader apps such as the “Pulse” news app.
Contacts Sync
The android phonebook can synchronize contacts from whatever online accounts that are linked to it. This can include Google, Yahoo, Facebook and even twitter. These synchronizations also take chunks out of your data plan
Tags: android, data usage, mobile phones, opera mini, smart phones, technology
Note: The book reviews I put on here are copied directly from my reviews on Goodreads. They are meant to be read by those who have actually read these books. If you don’t really get what I am saying, that is most likely because you have not read the book I am reviewing. The rating I give the book should tell you if I recommend it or not.
Rating: 
To say that I love Sherlock Holmes stories would be a great understatement. I have read everything from “A study in Scarlet” to “A Scandal in Bohemia” to “His last Bow” and almost every story in between.
I have always been weary of derivative works, especially in the visual format as they always fall short of the original. However, for a literary derivative, I do not have much experience.
I therefore had a feeling of both excitement and caution when I learned about “The Pirate King” by Laurie R. King which is based on the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a new protagonist in Mary Russel.
I’m not one to jump into a new book series in its 9th book though so I had to go get the book 1 and start from the beginning.
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is set in the early 1900s and stars a semi-retired Sherlock Holmes at his Retirement home cum Bee farm in Sussex, England. He seems to have resigned himself to a life of a Bee farmer, away from the hustle and bustle of his former life. By chance, he comes across a teenager, Mary Russel who just recently moved into a house/farm not far from Holmes. It turns out she possesses an intellect to match that of Holmes and thus began the unlikely apprenticeship turn partnership.
Tags: 4 stars, Beekeeper's Apprentice, Book review, Laurie R. King, mary russel, sherlock holmes
Note: The book reviews I put on here are copied directly from my reviews on Goodreads. They are meant to be read by those who have actually read these books. If you don’t really get what I am saying, that is most likely because you have not read the book I am reviewing. The rating I give the book should tell you if I recommend it or not.
Miracle Cure is a book revolving around a Couple. The Man, Micheal Silverman, is a renown basketball player with the NY Nicks and his wife, Sara Lowell, is a popular TV Network news reporter. Their family, friends and acquaintances all seem to be connected to a conspiracy involving serial murders, lies, suicides and other such gruesome acts all apparently related to a top secret AIDS clinic.
Miracle Cure is an old book having first been published in 1991. It was brought back into print last year. As a result, a lot of the issues addressed in the book have a dated outlook to them.
For one, the AIDS pandemic was much less widespread at the time and was mostly limited to Gay men and intravenous drug addicts. As a result, attention of the medical community to the disease was minimal.
A lot of societal issues were raised in such a masterful manner in this book that it did not hinder the story telling. You therefore get an excellent story, as well as education, albeit dated, into the goings on of the medical world in terms of AIDS and other pertinent issues.
What I liked the most about this book is the suspense. It is so thick that it can be cut with a knife. The suspense is also consistent throughout the book. As a matter of fact, you do not fully grasp what is going on until the final pages of the book. You might be able to accurately guess at some what is going on, but with the way the story is told, I believe it is almost impossible to figure it all out and when it is finally revealed, you’ll just go aaah! as you realize how much sense it all makes.
Miracle Cure is one of those books that you might not want to put down once you pick it up. Thankfully, its relatively small and would amount to a quick read, and so not eat up all your hours of productivity.
I wholly recommend this book and if you can look past its outdated nature and some of the touchy issues it addresses, you are in for a very enjoyable read!.
Tags: AIDS, Harlan Coben, HIV, Miracle Cure, Novel, review, suspense
Note: The book reviews I put on here are copied directly from my reviews on Goodreads. They are meant to be read by those who have actually read these books. If you don’t really get what I am saying, that is most likely because you have not read the book I am reviewing. The rating I give the book should tell you if I recommend it or not.
Rating:
This is the last installment in the Inheritance Series, also called Inheritance. It is the concluding part of the story of unassuming teenager turned Dragon Rider and his quest to rid Alagaesia of their evil king, Galbatorix.In this book, Eragon is obviously more matured. His conversations and thoughts nolonger sound like that of a confused teenager (or hatchling in Dragon speak), or an inexperienced rider.
I liked a lot more things in “Inheritance” than I hated, hence the 4 star review. I liked the fact that, although I knew going in that Eragon would defeat Galbatorix, because he just had to, I was still pleasantly surprised at times. I also liked, surprisingly enough, the fact that at the end, nothing transpired romantically between Eragon and Arya. Somehow, it would just have been too weird. I found myself smiling when several generally known facts in the real world were introduced in Inheritance as new information, most notably, “The world is round!”. I also like the fact that the author tried not to leave any stone unturned and small parts of the story such as the part with Katrina’s father, Sloan, was still revisited before the story was over.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Arya, Brisingr, Eragon, Inheritance, Inheritance Series, review
Mockinjay is the Book 3 of the Hunger Games Series. To see my review of the Book 1, Hunger Games, click here. The Review of the Book 2, Catching fire can also be read here.
Rating:
So, I’m finally done with this book, and with that, the series. The only thing to look forward to now would be the movie!. I actually enjoyed myself reading this series. However, even though I gave the first two books a 4 star rating, i am giving this one 3 stars.
Although, it was a solid book and a somewhat befitting end to the story, I wasn’t feeling it at some places. For instance, the whole mood swings and behavioral ticks Katniss was having throughout this book grew tiring at a point. She is portrayed as somewhat clueless and yet somehow ends up doing the right thing when the time comes.
She also turns to something of a cold blooded killer, killing even a harmless civilian after invading her home. Peeta’s story is just one which I was a little angry about.It all turned out okay for him though so I can’t complain too much on that regard.
For me, the story was a little hard to follow at times. Take for instance, the time spent underground while they were trying to get to President Snow’s mansion. There were some places when I had to ask myself if they were still underground ‘cos I wasn’t getting an clues from what I was reading that they were, or weren’t. I just had to keep on reading until I came across something in the story that told me where they are and then I began reforming the mental picture of the story in my head and pick up from there.
Overall though, I enjoyed this story, and like the fact that it had a relatively happy ending. I didn’t think Prim had to die though, but that’s just me.
Note: The book reviews I put on here are copied directly from my reviews on Goodreads. They are meant to be read by those who have actually read these books. If you don’t really get what I am saying, that is most likely because you have not read the book I am reviewing. The rating I give the book should tell you if I recommend it or not.
Tags: district 13, hunger games, katniss, mockingjay, peeta
Catching Fire is the Book 2 of the Hunger Games Series. To see my review of the Book 1, Hunger Games, click here
Rating:
After reading book 1 of “The Hunger Games” series, I was wondering what story was left to tell. Sure, they were all still under the capitol’s rule and nothing had really changed much, but it seemed like there was no loose end left to tie and the story had come to an acceptable, albeit anticlimactic end. This, in an odd way, made me want to read the sequel even more and after fighting the urge for a while, I gave in and picked it up.
A couple of pages into “Catching fire”, I began to grasp what the story was gonna be about … or so I thought anyway. There were rumours of rebellion and the catalyst was Katniss and Peeta’s rebellious acts during the Games. About halfway into the book, I realised that there was going to be yet another games, and even worse, this new games would feature Katniss and Peeta as contestants again. At this point, I was disappointed. I closed the book and didn’t look at it again for quite a while.
You might be wondering why then this book gets a 4 star rating from me. The reason is, after about two weeks, I picked it up again. I had lost most of my initial anger but still knew that I didn’t like where the story was going. I am not one to read a book halfway and abandon it forever though so I picked it up in order to complete it. I was pleasantly surprised when I began to enjoy the story again. Although there was gonna be another hunger games, it was nothing like the first one. The contestants were much more mature and the agenda was not just kill or be killed.
Finally, unlike the first book with its anticlimactic ending, this book ends the way all books that are in the middle of a series should; with lots and lots of suspense. It leaves the reader wondering, first of all, just how powerful district 13 is, if peeta is still alive, what role katniss will still play in the rebellion, and if the rebellion will even be successful or not.
I will definitely be picking up the third book. Can’t wait to see how this all ends.
Note: The book reviews I put on here are copied directly from my reviews on Goodreads. They are meant to be read by those who have actually read these books. If you don’t really get what I am saying, that is most likely because you have not read the book I am reviewing. The rating I give the book should tell you if I recommend it or not.
Tags: catching fire, hunger games, katniss, katniss everdeen, mockingjay, peeta, peeta mellark, review
