Still in the process of reading
The story so far (no I'm not divulging the plot here so its safe to read further)
Dan Brown is back with his fifth installment of highly successful novels and if you've read the previous four, this one doesn't disappoint you much. The keyword here is "much". After reading Angels and Demons and the Da Vinci Code, you get a decent feel for the way the story-line is written - an unassuming symbologist gets dragged into a plot that he has no clue about and eventually starts unraveling the mysteries through his knowledge about cultures, symbols and history in general.
What sets this book apart? Well nothing much really.
Is it worth reading? Definitely.
You might ask about what the point really is in reading a book which is not that different from the previous ones. Well the point is that its like a roller-coaster ride - every time you look at one, you know its going to put you through the same adrenaline rush and the same stomach churning G-forces. And yet we look forward to it and actually enjoy going through the same thing over and over again - let alone a different roller-coaster.
Written in a typical Dan Brown style, this book is not merely a novel with a thrilling plot - its a combination a good plot, a primer to the field of symbols and history, a thought provoking scientific argument and definitely something which will make you realize that what was taken for granted was not that way always. Confused? Well if an author has to describe an old home, they generally talk about the color of the furniture, the lush feel of the velvet carpet and so on and so forth. This kind of description although gives you a good picture of the scene, tends to make your brain tuned off after you are used to reading novels for a while (our mind processing capability is roughly 4 times our reading capability) since we already have a mental image in our mind and the elaborate description doesn't add much value to it.(I'd have added some stuff from Information Theory here but that seemed off-topic). On the other hand when Dan Brown describes the same house, he would still go over similar details but also adds facts like "in a typical Victorian style" - now that's what makes it interesting; you are not just creating a mental image of the house, but your mind also registers how a Victorian styled house is supposed to be.
The book "The Lost Symbol" deals with the story of Robert Langdon, a symbologist who is brought in to find a portal to a lost realm and hence the "Lost Symbol". So far I've finished 37 chapters (1/3rd of the book) and if time permits, I'd likely post something about the book itself in this week. (But knowing the lazy guy that I am, its likely that I'd end up making minor edits to this post and stop it there)
The story so far (no I'm not divulging the plot here so its safe to read further)
Dan Brown is back with his fifth installment of highly successful novels and if you've read the previous four, this one doesn't disappoint you much. The keyword here is "much". After reading Angels and Demons and the Da Vinci Code, you get a decent feel for the way the story-line is written - an unassuming symbologist gets dragged into a plot that he has no clue about and eventually starts unraveling the mysteries through his knowledge about cultures, symbols and history in general.
What sets this book apart? Well nothing much really.
Is it worth reading? Definitely.
You might ask about what the point really is in reading a book which is not that different from the previous ones. Well the point is that its like a roller-coaster ride - every time you look at one, you know its going to put you through the same adrenaline rush and the same stomach churning G-forces. And yet we look forward to it and actually enjoy going through the same thing over and over again - let alone a different roller-coaster.
Written in a typical Dan Brown style, this book is not merely a novel with a thrilling plot - its a combination a good plot, a primer to the field of symbols and history, a thought provoking scientific argument and definitely something which will make you realize that what was taken for granted was not that way always. Confused? Well if an author has to describe an old home, they generally talk about the color of the furniture, the lush feel of the velvet carpet and so on and so forth. This kind of description although gives you a good picture of the scene, tends to make your brain tuned off after you are used to reading novels for a while (our mind processing capability is roughly 4 times our reading capability) since we already have a mental image in our mind and the elaborate description doesn't add much value to it.(I'd have added some stuff from Information Theory here but that seemed off-topic). On the other hand when Dan Brown describes the same house, he would still go over similar details but also adds facts like "in a typical Victorian style" - now that's what makes it interesting; you are not just creating a mental image of the house, but your mind also registers how a Victorian styled house is supposed to be.
The book "The Lost Symbol" deals with the story of Robert Langdon, a symbologist who is brought in to find a portal to a lost realm and hence the "Lost Symbol". So far I've finished 37 chapters (1/3rd of the book) and if time permits, I'd likely post something about the book itself in this week. (But knowing the lazy guy that I am, its likely that I'd end up making minor edits to this post and stop it there)
Long list of books to finish before I get to this one, I just hope it isn't like the Harry Potter series which lost its sheen after the first few books and went on to become popular (the later parts) solely due to mass hysteria and curiosity factor rather than story value
ReplyDeleteSorry to disappoint - but its exactly that.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you know.. I am getting intuitive!
ReplyDeleteMore than intutive, I belive you are now able to see the trends better now. There are very few series where the sequels have lived up to the original. And with these books running into more than just sequels, it does tend to end up that way (more or less).
ReplyDelete