Sunday, September 02, 2007

 

Dark Tower - Not so Grand Finale

Finished reading Dark Tower, ending was quite unexpected & I didn’t like it much. Roland deserved a better fate although I can understand why Stephen King was forced to an ending like that. Any other ending would have led to many questions since The Dark Tower was supposed to be the axis of all parallel universes. If Roland was not shunted back to the beginning of the story after his completion of the quest King would have to find some explanation to what would happen to Roland after that. Be omnipotent? Anyway the ending took care of that conveniently. But that doesn’t make it anymore acceptable. Although I enjoyed the series immensely, after finishing it didn’t get the usual satisfied feeling. More like an unfinished tale, just like Roland’s life.

Anyway back to reading ‘The Neutronium Alchemist’ of Peter F Hamilton, which I have paused after I got the Dark Tower series. Which is the second book of The ‘Nights Dawn’ Series, preceded by ‘The Reality Disfunction’ . Currently searching for the 3rd & last book of the series ‘The Naked God’. Looks like I will have to wait for sometime until it surfaces here in Sri Lanka. Which is frustrating because it kills the whole fun of reading.

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# posted by Rambler @ 2:49 AM 2 comments

Saturday, August 25, 2007

 

Dark Tower Series - Stephen King


Hi..... After long time decided to update the blog again. Many thing lead to this long absence, getting a new job being one of them. Now the work is settled & have a bit of time free to write.

Two months back I bought something which had being eluding me for one reason or the other, the thing being 7 books of “The Dark Tower” series by Stephen King. The main 2 reasons were they were quite hard to find at one single location & money. I didn’t want to buy 2 books here & search for other 5 all over Colombo. Finally at Vijitha Yapa Bookshop I found all of them together & couldn’t resist buying them. I have read III & IV books of the series (The Waste Lands & Wizard and Glass )previously, when I was a member of the British Council.


The series include

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (1982)
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987)
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991)
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997)
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003)
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004)
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004)


Now I’m down to the last book (The Dark Tower ) of the series where Roland, Susanah & Oy are the survivor of their Ka-Tet & they just confronted the Minister of State of the Crimson King. It a fascinating story with vivid characters & fantastic situations. Although all of the books are quite good I like the first 5 of the series better. In 6th & 7th the Author himself becomes a character of the story & I think that it spoils the story somewhat. His real life accident becomes a major part in the books & I think that distract the whole plot of the story.

Anyway the whole series can be compared to the “Lord of The Rings” series by J.R.R. Tolkien. Which Stephen King describe as a inspiration for his story. Just like the Fellowship of the LOTR, in Dark Tower there is a collection on individuals who are on a quest. Although unlike LOTR, here Roland the Hero (or is he an Anti-Hero?) have two different groups called Ka-Tets to help on his quest at different time. In the beginning he has his childhood friends & afterwards here draws vastly different characters from different time planes of New York ( a white Heroin Junky- Eddie Dean, a Black activitist with two amputated legs – Odetta Susanah Holmes & a teenage boy – Jake Chambers ) & this last Ka-Tet include a animal special to Rolands world called Bumbler, who looks part dog, part raccoon & can speak or mimic .

In his quest for the Dark Tower, which controls the existence of all the parallel worlds, Roland is willing to sacrifice anything including his members of the Ka-Tet to achieve his goal. Although he doesn’t do it intentionally his or their actions lead to demise of many of members of the Ka-Tet. Story mainly moves between New York of different times, Roland’s world & Keystone world, where the Dark Tower resides. In other worlds Dark Tower takes shape of a Rose or some other thing. Books contain many sub stories of the history of people Roland meets along his way. And quite a few of these characters are from other novels of Stephen King!


I have around 200 pages to finish of the last book. Hopefully I may be able to finish it within this weekend. And I look forward to it too.

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# posted by Rambler @ 4:07 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

 

Find Me Guilty.... I'm not a Gangster..I'm a Gagster




No posts for sometime. The excuse ? can’t think of a one. May be I was busy or lazy or whatever..



Finished reading thief of time by Terry Prachett, Angels & Demons by Dan Brown and currently reading Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. And watched so many movies including Superman Returns, Inside Man, RV, Fanaa, Water & Final Destination 3. Currently playing Oblivion, Star Wars – Sith Lords & Battling with black list number 8 in Need for Speed – Most Wanted.


May be I will post something on them or may be not. But What “Find Me Guilty” starring Vin Diesel was a nice surprise. Although I have seen Diesel doing comedy in “The Pacifier” this has more to it than comedy. This film was based on a real life mobster Geocomo “ Jackie” Dinorscio from New Jersey. How he almost single handedly won a huge criminal trial, where he & his fellow acquaintances were facing severe punishments. Jackie successfully convinced the jury that they are not the monsters portrayed by the government by making jokes & making shrewd observations while representing himself as the lawyer. Many hilarious incidents follows, where he seriously piss off the government representatives, the judge & his own mob boss. But the jury laughs with him & in the end sympathies with him. Which results in a not guilty verdict for all the defendants in the longest criminal trial in America’s history.


The important part is Jackie does all this while serving a 30 year sentence for drug trafficking. He gets offered a deal to turn government witness where he his prison sentence is greatly reduced. But “ Jackie D never rats on his friends”. After the monumental victory he returns to the prison while his friends return home to celebrate. The real Jackie D was releases after serving 18 years of his sentence & died while the movie was in progress.


While the film is quite different from the standard Hollywood ones, it keeps the viewer interested by showing the emotions they go through while on the trial. The conversation between Jackie & his wife shows a glimpse of his personal life, where he was a very contradictory & complicated man. While he is not superb by any means Diesel does a creditable job of portraying the mobster. It is quite a deflection from his XXX or Riddick movies.

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# posted by Rambler @ 2:07 AM 2 comments

Friday, July 21, 2006

 

PC Upgrading

I made a huge errors in my quarterfinal predictions for the Football world cup, with Italy winning it in the end. Brazil made complete fools of them & Argentina somehow got beaten. From the 4 semi finalists I think the best team won. Anyway I never liked France. It’s now back to club football & cricket. With South Africa in Sri Lanka for a test series & a triangular ODI series which includes India, we are in for a couple busy months. Hope we can repeat the performance in England against them too.

Since we (me & my roommates) finished call of duty 2 sometime back we bought a couple of new games. Namely Oblivion & Devil May Cry III. To make a long story short, my pc crawls when I try to play Oblivion on it. I want to upgrade it but somewhat clueless about what the best option is. PC configuration is as follows

Processor 2.4GHz-Pentium

RAM 768MB

VGA 256 GeForce 5500

Motherboard Asus

Any suggestions about what should I upgrade since I cant afford to go for a new PC ??


# posted by Rambler @ 3:08 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

 

Cricket, Football & More Sports

All my recent spare time has been devoured by sports. This led to be no new post in the blog. With Sri Lanka virtually stomping over England in One Day International Cricket & Football in full flow I could be hardly blamed. Pommies has been bashed like they have never being before with Lankans going to the fourth ODI today with unassailable 3-0 lead. Mahela Jayawardena has led the team (which was suppose to be in transition & internal rife) admirably & most importantly led from the front. His magnificent Test century at Lords signaled his intentions which England seems fail to notice. His fabulous century at riverside sealed the ODI series with such emphatic style which left England side in disarray. At the beginning of the tour our team was supposed to be cannon fodder to England team. But now they have routed the injury depleted England side by such big margins the only excuse England have is the injury list. But with such a strong county cricket setup they should have been able to cover those injuries with ease. But it was Sri Lanka who coped with losing their regular captain Marvan Atapattu to injury & strike bowler Muralitharan to family reasons. The future bodes well for Sri Lanka with the only question being who will be the captain after Marvan returns. But right now many wants Mahela Jayawardena to stay as the captain, which I think is right. On the other hand England is clueless about how to cope without their captain Vaughn & talisman Flintoff . To them the future looks quite bleak.

And Brazil has just won 3-0 over Ghana who played quite well except their strikers. It could have been 3-1 or 3-2 easily. Or 2-3 even. Thankfully Ronaldo & co survived to fight another day. Brazil are slowly but steadily are coming to their best & the Ronaldo (whose waist lien attracted so much attention & criticism) looks more & more threatening. Now they will face France in quarter finals which should be a very good match. I think Brazil have more than enough fire power to over come France who stuttered though qualifying & somehow beat Spain. With England Vs Portugal & Germany Vs Argentina matches coming up it is going to be a feast of football. I’m going to stick my head out and say that Brazil, Itlay & Argantina will win their matches while England & Portugal match is too close to call. Will Scolari triumph over Ericcson again? Or will England fine any sort of rhythm to their play & shooting boots for Lampard ? With Deco & Costinha absent from Portugal midfield & Ronaldo doubtful after that horrendous tackle Portugal are up against it. Anyway should be a wonderful round of football for all the fans of the beautiful game.


Links:

Wisden Cricinfo

FIFA Worldcup2006


# posted by Rambler @ 9:46 PM 0 comments

Monday, May 15, 2006

 

The Da Vinci Code

When I started this blog I decided not to write about the books or movies which are getting plenty of coverage. Even when I like them a lot. So I didn’t write about The Da Vinci Code. Because everyone is bound to hear or read about them. But I came across this blog entry when I was surfing for credits in blogexplosion & quite liked it. So I’m linking that post as my entry about The Da Vinci Code.


honeymooning: The Da Vinci Code

# posted by Rambler @ 2:15 AM 1 comments

Friday, May 05, 2006

 

Cantury Rain - Alastair Reynolds

Bought Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds & The Traveler by John ‘Twelve’ Hawks. Finished both of them, but liked Century Rain better. May be because The Traveler was mentioned as the next “Da Vinci Code” & it is nothing of the sort. More about it later.

Century Rain is basically a Science fiction with romance & thriller mixed in. The main character Wendell Floyd is an American a musician acting as a private detective to make ends meet who lives in Paris. Much to his surprise Wendell & his partner is hired by a man to investigate a murder of Susan White who felled from the apartment she was living which belongs to him. Paris police thinks it is an accident while the landlord thinks otherwise. And in quite a different Paris, where it is covered from snow & made inhabitable by nano wars Verity Auger is searching for a old newspaper. This Paris is in the future, while Wendell’s Paris in not exactly in the past. It is not in a parallel universe either.

Story keeps changing back and forth until these two meet in Wendell’s Paris where Verity is forced to come to collect belongings of Susan White. After that it becomes a race against time to collect information about Susan’s death, who was an agent from Verity’s world & survive against the killing machines masquerading as kids.

While the end leaves the reader somewhat unsatisfied it is a good book, with Hard SF mixed with romance & thriller aspects. Reynolds explains hard physics stuff with relative easiness & clarity. I bought another one of his “Redemption Ark” after reading this. But since I have been busy changing my boarding place & other stuff, still I’m unable to start reading it. May be this weekend I will get the chance. But with “Call of Duty 2”, “Tomb Raider – Legend” & “Half Life 2” also demanding my attention I don’t think I will be able to finish it.

Links:Trashtron

SF Site

Wikipedia - Century Rain

Amazon.com




# posted by Rambler @ 2:16 AM 0 comments

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