Subzero Blue

The Da Vinci Code

I finished reading “The Da Vinci Code” a couple of nights ago, and well it was a really good read.

I’ve been wanting to read this book for over 2 years actually. I wanted to buy it from Jordan last year, but it was sold out, and when I found it in Tunisia it was in French, and this year when I went to Jordan it was banned!
So, I had to find a way to order it online and that’s what I did.

Back to the book. I really enjoyed reading it; it sucked me in and I found myself thinking and trying to solve riddles and clues with the characters as the events started racing and the plot thickened.

I’ve always been a fan of detective style books. When I was younger, I used to fly through Sherlock Holmes books and then I’d go out trying to apply his ways of noticing every little thing on people.

What’s really cool about this book is that it combines the detective style with some history and art. It discusses a number of beliefs, theories and philosophies that I knew little or nothing about, which was very interesting.
I don’t think I could’ve taken one more reference to the sacred feminine and the symbology around her though, there was definitely too much of that.
Of course, this is a work of fiction and just like there is some truth to some of it, there are things that were added for dramatic effect.

It has a lot of riddles, clues and twists; those are always cool in a book like this. Although half way through the book I started prediciting some of the future twists.

In short, it was a really good and fun read, which was pretty well written.
Now I can’t wait for the movie to come out next year. I’m sure Tom Hanks will be doing a great job as Robert Landgon.

I recommend this book to everyone.
My score for it: 8.5/10

The Hobbit

Last night, I finally finished reading “The Hobbit” by J.R.R Tolkien, the tale of Bilbo Baggins and his greatest adventure. And what a read that was.

I have to thank my dear friend Saqf again for giving me this amazing book and encouraging me to read it right away. You rock man!

I totally enjoyed every bit of it. My imagination ran wild; middle earth was recreated in my brain with every tiny detail; I took the trip with Bilbo, the hobbit, Gandalf and their dwarve friends over and under hills, through forests, across rivers and all over middle earth.
At times I even was so sucked into the story, I felt like I was living the role of the hobbit.

The book is magnificently written, Tolkien’s style is just awesome, and at times it feels less like fantasy and more like myth or maybe even ancient history; it’s as if all this did happen a long time ago when the world was full of hobbits, elves, dwarves, goblins, dragons and more.

I totally wish Peter Jackson goes on to make a movie out of this book too.
It’d be one hell of a cinematic experience, I’m sure.

I totally recommend reading this book.
It’s simply beautifully amazing.

Reading “The Hobbit”

As the reading section on the right column of my blog shows, I’m reading “The Hobbit” by J.R.R Tolkien.

First of all, a big thank you to my dear friend Saqf for this wonderful gift. I’m enjoying every second of it 🙂

It’s taking me a bit longer than it usually does for me to read a book because I barely find time to sit down and read these days. Anyway the book has truly sucked me in and I love it. The story is really cool and catching, and my imagination is working on overdrive.

Something I find really cool is that many of the characters also appear in “The Lord Of The Rings”, and unlike when you see a movie before you read the book, this time you’ve seen the characters in a movie about some story, and now you’re imagining them in another story, in other settings and you’re using your imagination to build this whole world around them.

One of the greatest things in fantasy books is how you get to create your own version of the world being described and of the different characters. But reading this book now, I have something to build on because of the great work that was done on “The Lord Of The Rings” movies.
Now we have a vision of how Middle Earth looks like; how hobbits, dwarves, orcs, goblins, …etc look like and it just enriches the story even more. It’s as if a big set of detailed photos was added to the book.
This is one of the things that is making me enjoy the book even more.

Another thing I love about this book is how some events relate to stuff in the “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy. It gives a new understanding of some things.

I totally recommend reading this book.
You can expect another post from me about it once I’m done with it.

Btw, I watched “The Return Of The King” DVD again last night, and wow what a movie; I just love it!

Bookworm

Roba tagged me with this book meme. So here goes:

Number of books I own:
I have no idea. I’ve been reading books ever since I was a kid, so how many I have in my collection or how many I have read is just beyond me.

Last book I bought:
“The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown.

Last book I read:
“Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss, and I’m currently reading “The Hobbit” by J.R.R Tolkien.

Five books that mean a lot to me:
Every book is special in its own way, so I’ll be picking five random books that I really enjoyed reading.

1. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
2. 1984 (George Orwell)
3. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
4. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
5. Eastern Standard Tribe (Cory Doctorow)

The book I am reading since long but could not finish:
It was “Atonement” by Ian McEwan, but I got to finish it during my last visit to Jordan. And it was really good.

Five people I tag with the bookworm:
Zied, Adib, Houssein, Jordan, Ahmed.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

A few days ago, I finished reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. The book self-describes itself as “The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation”, and it sure is. This woman is very passionate about punctuation.

I first knew about this book when Newsweek reviewed it upon its release, and I’ve been wanting to get it ever since.

What caught me is this funny little story on the back of the book:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.”Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“I’m a panda,” he says at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

So, punctuation does really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

I’ve always wanted a handy book about punctuation to keep as reference, as I sometimes do find myself in situations when I’m not too sure what do with it all. This book does a really good job at showing you how important punctuation is, as well as giving you all the golden rules on how, where and when to use it.

My score for this book would be: 8/10.

(PS: I’m gonna start rating everything from books, to movies, to music cds, to places …etc.)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Today, I finished reading “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” by Mark Haddon.
It’s such a light and great book, I just flew through it.

It is a murder mystery told by an autistic 15 year old boy who is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child’s quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers.

I loved the way the book was written and how simple it is. You really feel the boy telling the story and you go into his little world with all his quirks and thoughts and live it with him.

I highly recommend this book. It’s really fun and it will truly touch you too.

Atonement – Ian McEwan

I finished reading “Atonement” by Ian McEwan today.

When I bought this book a few months ago, I had never heard of it nor its writer. I started reading it and the first couple of chapters didn’t really get me that attached to the book as it was mostly character development, so I kept leaving it for a while and coming back a number of times. That’s until the story picked up and things started becoming interesting, then really interesting, then amazing and I was sucked in.

This is a truly great book. The characters feel so real and are so well developed you feel as if you’ve known them for years. The story is amazing and very well told in a fascinating writing style.

It tells the story of a 13 year old English girl (Briony) who lets her imagination overwhelm her judgement leading to close family ties being irreparably severed, and a promising young man’s (Robbie) prospects being destroyed.
The book goes on to track Robbie’s attempts to recapture the grace of his life before the fall, and Briony’s attempts to atone for ruining his future.

The ideas I loved most in it were how with a bit of imagination a number of different versions of a story can come to life, some of them really destructive.

I also loved how the writer told the story through the characters’ eyes and thoughts. It was so beautiful.

I really recommend this book. It was actually nominated for The Booker Prize award a few years back.

Judging Books

They say that you should never judge a book by it’s cover, I say you shouldn’t even judge it by it’s first two chapters.

Many times, while reading a new book, especially novels, I’d find it so boring in it’s first chapters that I’d start to think about quitting or it’d take me so long to just get through a chapter.

But then when I get past the first chapters that the writer obviously wanted to use as a long introduction of the characters and to give some background to build his story on, the book becomes a lot more interesting and exciting, sucking you into the story.

Other books suck you in from the very first sentences. It doesn’t mean they’re better, it just reflects the writer’s style and how he wants to approach and tell his story.

Personally, I read and finish books that suck me in from the beginning faster, the ones that don’t take a bit more time before I’m stuck to the book and can’t let go of it.

Book Fair

We just came back from the international book fair, and man are we tired, we’re just exhausted.
It was full of people as usual, although more bearable than the first days of its opening.

There were basically the same countries that come with their books every year, but I did notice a little change in the type of books that were being exhibited. Religious books are still dominating, although less then last year, and the two new types of books that are coming strongly into center stage are children’s books and books about health, beauty and macrobiotics.

The thing that brings me down though is that most of the Arab books are either old re-issued books or translated ones. It’s as if there are little to no new Arab writers nowadays, which is a big shame.
Each year I keep hoping it will change and that there will be some kind of revolution in Arab literature, but it hasn’t happened yet. Still I remain optimistic that the day will come.

I came out of the whole thing with two novels: Pattern Recognition and Secret Smile. They seem like 2 good reads.
I’ll let you know when I get around to reading them after finishing the book I already have in hand.

All in all, it was great visiting the book fair, as always. It’s good to see that people still read and that they’re encouraging their children to read.

Siddharta by Hermann Hesse

I bought “Siddharta” by Hermann Hesse from a used book store in downtown Tunis a couple of weeks ago, and only got around to finishing it today although it’s not that long.
Not much time left for me to read these days with work and a bunch of other things taking up my time.

When I first picked this book, I thought it was about the life of Siddharta, The Buddha. It turns out it’s not. It’s about the spiritual journey of an Indian man called Siddhartha during the time of the Buddha. He actually meets the Buddha but doesn’t follow his teachings because he no longer believes in teachers.

The story is an interesting one and does provoke thought in a number of places. I especially like the character’s thoughts on time, good vs. evil, and this quote: “Knowledge Can Be Communicated, But Not Wisdom”, which I think is true.
I also agree with the point that is made about everyone having the right to make their own mistakes, learn from them and use them to understand the world more.

I think this is a good book to readm especially for people who are at that stage of their lives when they’re searching for the meaning to it all and trying to make sense of everything. It gives another perspective and understanding of life which is always interesting.