Archive for September, 2008

Imagine what would happen if NASA found an astonishingly rare object, which proved the existence of extraterrestrial lifeforms in the universe. The world would fall into a state of complete awe, and science would reach a standstill, even if only for a second, as everyone watched news coverage of the event. It would go down as one of the greatest days in history for science.

Dan Brown’s novel, Deception Point, explores such a scenario. The story is an intense political thriller filled with espionage, action, and even romance. The author is well known for his fiction books based on prominent and even some unforeseen conspiracy theories. Dan Brown also wrote The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Digital Fortress. All of his novels have quickly become New York Times bestsellers, including Deception Point. When it comes to writing conspiracy thrillers, Dan Brown is certainly not a novice.

The book follows Rachel Sexton, the daughter of a presidential candidate running for office. Rachel’s relationship with her father is certainly far from comfortable, and she makes it clear to everyone that she harbors an intense hatred for him. Her job as an NRO intelligence analyst and her attitude toward her father earn her a visit at a classified NASA site in the Arctic. Rachel quickly finds that the current President, Zachary Herney, has been planning to use her as a political tool to thwart her own father’s campaign by validating the special NASA discovery with her opinion. Soon thereafter, flaws are found in the NASA data, and Rachel and fellow scientists are pursued to keep the mistakes covered up. An intense political and life threatening battle ensues, involving Rachel and many others.

The novel is both intense and enveloping and is tough to put down once it has been cracked open. The most astonishing part is that all of the electronic equipment and devices introduced in the book are used in the modern world today. Some of the gadgets are incredibly technical, including a tiny, fly-sized helicopter, which can record and playback audio and video. Dan Brown certainly does his homework before writing any of his fictional novels.  It’s always amazing to see what conspiracies could exist out there on the horizon.

This is a book recommended for film and digital editors, whether they are wannabes, beginners, more advanced professionals or experts in their field. The Blink Of An Eye is written by Walter Murch, the editor behind Apocalypse Now and Cold Mountain. He talks about film editing and how it has evolved from the simple splice and dice of the early 1900s to the digital world of now.

Walter Murch talks about how he edits his films and the techniques he has learned to develop over the years. He has his own way of editing, which he always does in a standing position at an angle with his right hand on the editing machine and the left side of his body focused on the screen and the shots to be edited. It’s a little funny and strange, but then you realize that everybody has his own unique working style and what may work for one may not necessarily work for another person.

Murch also talks about the technical language of editing that all film and digital editors should know. It boils down to style, but Murch discusses the rules of editing because there are basic rules that should be followed.

It’s a good read, especially for those just beginning to become film and digital editors. Murch gives a basic overview of what editing is and of life as an editor. He tells it like it is and, unlike his job, he doesn’t edit anything.

As a high school student, there are a lot of books that I am “forced” to read. The announcement that my class is reading another book usually instigates several groans and sighs from my classmates. Much of the literature we read is boring, and often hard to comprehend. We have no way of relating to the authors, some of which seem ancient. We know that the books are all classics, but other than that, they tend to carry no other meaning to us. Finally, in class, I came across a book I enjoyed: The Great Gatsby.

If you haven’t read this book, I’d suggest that you take the time to do so. First published in 1925, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby was a story unique for its time. Today, it is a standard for most high schools across the nation. What Fitzgerald did was capture the American values and lifestyle of his time. He developed characters that could represent a wide variety of people. People similar to these characters still exist today, so when I read the novel, I found myself relating to the text, even if it was written more than eight decades ago.

The story is told by Nick Carraway, a character who moved from the Midwest to Long Island in order to continue his work. His home is located next to a large mansion owned by a man named Gatsby. There is something odd about Gatsby. Though he holds grand parties every week, no one seems to know where he gets his money or why he suddenly moved to Long Island.

Within this short novel, there are enough plot twists to fill an entire TV series. Fitzgerald gives readers a backstage pass to the “rich and famous” of the 1920s. These people weren’t above the scandals and affairs of modern times; there were plenty to go around.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult is about a bullied high school kid who seeks revenge on his classmates who have bullied him all his life. Jodi Picoult attempts to get inside the head of the person who could commit such a crime and the people in the same town who are directly affected by this tragedy.

Picoult writes vividly what could have happened at that time during the shooting and afterwards. She tries to make us, her readers, understand what Peter, the shooter, could have been thinking when he decided to shoot his classmates. Picoult also takes us back in time to the start of Peter’s school life to learn why he could have done what he did. We learn to sympathize with him and think of him as a high school kid, and not as a psychopath who went on a shooting rampage at his school.

Picoult also takes us into the mind of the victims and the parents of the victims to have a sense of what’s happening. We get into the mind of Josie Cormier, Peter’s former best friend, whose boyfriend is killed by Peter. We also get in the mind of Alex Cormier, Josie’s mother, as she tries to help her daughter understand the situation and, at the same time, understand the mind of her daughter.

As with her other books, Nineteen Minutes is a book that tugs at your heart more and more with every page. You will root for the seemingly wrong people and curse the right ones. But most of all, you will be able to understand even for a bit what happened and why it happened. In Picoult’s website’s message board, a lot of of readers said that Nineteen Minutes helped them understand what was an otherwise senseless act.

Brisingr (try saying that three times fast), certainly does sound like some form of gibberish a two year old would mutter. The word, however, is the title of Christopher Paolini’s new masterpiece and third novel in the Inheritance cycle. The word Brisingr means “fire” in the ancient Elven language from the world of Alagaesia. Brisingr was first planned to be the final novel in a trilogy, but Paolini decided the book would end up much too large.

The series began with Eragon, and was followed by Eldest, no more than a year later.

The story follows a young man named Eragon who lives in a world known as Alagaesia. In the first novel Eragon discovers a small dragon egg in the woods, which later hatches and a dragon is born. Eragon raises the little dragon, soon bonds with it, and decides to name it Saphira. When the dragon finally grows, Eragon realizes he can ride it through the endless sky.

About that time a great man named Brom reveals to Eragon that there was a time when dragon riders thrived about the land, but they were thwarted by an evil sorcerer named Galbatorix. Galbatorix wanted to claim every dragon in existence for his own use, so he slaughtered all the dragon riders and stole the eggs. His rule remains a dark shadow over the land still, and Brom also reveals that the sorcerer will soon chase after Eragon and his dragon in an attempt to slay them. Brom tells them of a resistant force known as the Varden, who fight against Galbatorix, and insists they travel to their stronghold immediately.

Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, start on a journey towards the Varden and a plan to overthrow Galbatorix.

There was a movie released based on the first novel named Eragon, but it did not do the book justice. It should be taken into consideration that if you saw the movie you would be best suited to read the novel. It will grasp hold and keep you interested the entire duration of both novels; which in this day and age is tough to come by in a series.

Brisingr is set to be released in September and is applauded widely by a large, and growing, number of fans. Having read both books in the series, I personally can’t wait to begin reading the new novel and see what happens to Eragon and Saphira next. Until the release date, however, I have been reading the excerpt posted on the official site to keep my quench satisfied; so far it seems to be amazing.

How do you choose which books to read? Do you depend on the recommendations of your family or friends? Do you choose based on instinct? Do you do lots of research before finally choosing what book to read?

Usually, I choose books to read through three ways:

1. Recommendations by family, friends or book reviews (which includes critics, bloggers and journalists)

I ask around a lot and try to find out from my family and friends the books they’ve read and what they liked, loved and hated. From that information, I can decide whether a book is up to my liking. There are hits and misses, of course. But thankfully, there are more hits than misses.

I also consult best-seller lists. I try to study the top books in the list and determine whether I’d be interested in reading them. Or I read book review articles or blogs to find out the good books worth reading.

2. Instinct

I like going to bookstores and just browsing the books in the store. I usually go to the new releases first and grab the first one that catches my eye. Then I go to different departments and go through the same motions. This is a little dangerous since it follows some impulsive shopping, but I’ve made some good discoveries with this method.

3. Familiarity

I am always on the look out for new books from my favorite authors. Luckily, I have several authors on my watchlist, and they release at least one new book every year.

How do you choose the books you read? Do you have a certain method you use to choose a book? Which ones work more than others?

Even if you’re not a fan of his band’s music, Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, along with Larry Sloman of Howard Stern fame, collaborated back in 2004 to churn out Scar Tissue, a funk-based drug-slinging, barking, clawing, brake-screeching semi-apocalyptic, star-studded documentary of the life of the L.A. vocal monk, Anthony a.k.a. Tony Flow. Anthony provided the stories of love, anger, and death, while Mr. Sloman traveled to interview and validate the stories of these lovers, haters, and grim reapers.

The story really is a more concentrated copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Imagine Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty had stayed in their lives of hitchhiking for, let’s say 42 years, sinking and emerging from multiple heroin-needle wounds, five-story diving acts, and a funk band that has a bad habit of switching its lineup every other day.

The formerly mysterious Kiedis reveals sides of him never before known, such as romantic celebrity connections, while on the opposite side of the spectrum he covers deep lessons in life.

By the time you reach Tony’s twentieth year, you are amazed that the author isn’t an animated corpse, using an infected needle to pound the keyboard because his fingers gave way years ago.

But the work is truly inspirational and shows the great potential of other sides of anyone’s life that easily can be missed. These are sides that Anthony Kiedis plays off of well, as he clearly states early in the book that he has a natural talent of taking advantage of a situation.

While Mr. Flow may have dabbled with the Cobain-killer since the year this book hit shelves, it is not known, and his spark of creation transcends as much as his story does the same.