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Saturday, April 13, 2013

When The Signal Turns Red by Jayanand Ukey

When The Signal Turns Red by Jayanand Ukey

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

ISBN (edition I've read): 9788180460852

Read between: 10-04-2013 to 13-04-2013



Review:
Reviewed on the personal request by the author, himself.
It was start of the days when I started getting many mails regarding my review policy. This is the first book which was personally shipped by the author for reviewing.


About the author:
Jayanand Ukey works for an IT company and is also a freelance journalist and blogger. He has a computer engineering degree from VESIT, Mumbai University. In a career spanning a decade, he has kept his hobby alive by writing three books. This book is his first published work. Jayanand lives in Mumbai with his family. To know more about the author, visit him at www.whenthesignalturnsred.com or email him at email@jayanandukey.com.

Plot:
A global ordeal 
A couple in distress 
The struggle to keep afloat 
Prudent thinking in tumultuous times 

Girish and Prajakta are in love. Very soon Girish will be joining the numero uno IT company of the country. He prepares himself by buying expensive clothes and other accessories he had always dreamed of. He and Prajakta have together planned to build on a good bank balance and then meet each others families to talk about marriage, probably after a year or two. Unexpectedly, the families get involved before Girish can join the IT company. Against all odds, the couple manages to convince their family and an engagement date is fixed. But destiny has other things in mind. A global catastrophe mars their plan which leads to the engagement getting annulled. 

Will Girish find a way out of his predicament? Will he ultimately win Prajaktas hand or will he move on in life, learning to live without her?

My take on the book:
The start of the book was pretty boring. The amateurishness of the author was crystal clear in his writing. A few pages past, the writing improved. Of course, there were occasional glimpses of the same amateurishness, the use of few high-lighting words made up to the use of ill-sounding sentences.

There are no chapter in this book. The whole book is divided into three parts. The first two parts of almost equal size and a tiny final part. The first part starts with Girish receiving his appointment letter from DCL and extends till when the disaster strikes. The most likable thing about the whole story is that there is more white in the book than black. I mean in the sense that though the story has no chapters, every scene is different with a symbol and the spacing and the font size is bigger compared to various other books. The large spacing and bigger font size makes it bearable to read the book. The pages just fly by. The major second part of the book deals with the details of the disaster and its consequences. The tiny third and the final part contains the tremendous twist in the story, which would result to the happily ever after kinda ending.

The writing was one of the easiest. I can't tell that there weren't any spelling mistakes, but for a first-timer the editing was very well. The spelling and grammatical mistakes were very few.

Wondering why with so many positive sorts, I rated the book so low? Well, even though the secondary aspects were very well taken care of, the primary aspect of a book - the story, itself - was pretty disappointing. There was a lot of boring bits in the whole story. The detailing got into my nerves. Maybe finding a easy way to skip the boring details would have helped. But then, the story was pretty slow. It is not that the author didn't try to make it sound interesting, but in the process, he messed the whole story. Especially the third part of the story - the climax - was pretty damn far from reality. I have learnt somewhere that the ending is what the spectator takes back home. And the author messed the very same ending.

The language was easy. Narration was boring but easy. Story was slow and boring, but readable. Overall, the book was total turn down.

Recommendations:
Though the book is bad, I am sure there are some people who might like this book. I would especially recommend this book to those first time readers, who are just into reading and didn't read much of non-desi blockbusters.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells

The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells

Rating: 5 out of 5

ISBN (edition I've read): 9780460873048

Read Between: 08-03-2013 to 04-04-2013

Review:
It almost took a whole month for me to complete this book. I wasn't even reading any other book. It took 4 days or, at most, a week for me to complete reading a book of this volume, but it took 27 days to complete this book. What was the reason? Was the book/story/narration boring? Was I too busy to read this novel? In search of the answer the review follows below...

Plot:
An aspiring bussinessman stumbles upon Cavor, an eccentric genius. In a world still struggling to accept X-Rays and Radio Waves they construct a Gravity-Defying Sphere- and man finally lands on the dead surface of the moon. But with the first light of the day the surface bursts into life. From the caves below come the Selenites, protean creatures, horrific in appearance, who adapt their shape to their function. Over them riles the Grand Lunar, a creature that is almost entirely brain ... a brain of awesome power.

Only one of the earthmen will return to tell the tale.

About the edition:
"The only edition with introduction, text summary, selected criticism and chronology of Well's life and times." So it says on the back cover of the book.

My take on the book:
I have been a big fan of Jules Verne ever since I came to know that the movie, 'Journey to the center of the Earth' was based on a novel by him. From some search I found out that Jules Verne is called as 'Father of Science Fiction; and also read that, and so is H. G. Wells called.

When I looked into his best books, I had choice between 'The Time Machine', 'The War of the Worlds', 'The Invisible Man' and 'The First Men in the Moon'. Somehow, for reason I don't fathom, I got 'The First Men in the Moon'. It lay with other books for about four months before I picked it and started reading it.

Add to that, a extra month before I complete reading it. Perhaps, this is the slowest read I've ever read.

If the story was boring, I wouldn't rated it a 5 star. Perhaps, the very imagination of the author swept me off my feet. The very concept, of space travel without a rocket, can't be any more brilliant.

Bedford, the narrator, is a businessman visits Lympne for writing a play in seclusion, where he meets Cavor, who was a weird (like many of them are) scientist. Cavor expresses his research on a substance called Cavorite, named after himself, to the author, which has a magnificent effect of Gravity-Defying. Beford like anyone in his place was too excited to accompany him and both of them take off in a sphere built of Cavorite.The very idea was very brilliant. The gravity-defying substance used to space travel and detail of how they navigated in the infinite space and landed on Moon was excellent. With the first light of the day, the dead surface of the moon breaks out with life. There were wild trees growing in every possible direction. There was a light breeze hinting at the presence of air.

The following details Earthly life on Moon was awesome. The idea that it was effortless to leap on moon due to its low gravitation pull and Lunar day consisted of 14 Earthly days, everything that followed about the Moon was awesome. All the while I kept wondering how it was possible to write a story of such brilliance. The imagination of the author mind blowing.

Overall, my slow progress turned out to be because of my lacking interest in reading, but not the story/narration of this book.

Hats off to H. G. Wells. Expecting to read more of his books...

Recommendations:
To every sci-fi lover.

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