Three stories

How long does it take to read three books? Three months? Hmmm, that seems too long. Nope. Not for me at least. three weeks is a likely figure. and much closer one as well. but thats not all. i got these books more than five months ago... cost me a cool 1100 bucks to buy them. and it stayed in my library, well hidden, for more than 4 months. of course people knew about it. and the likes of jinendra actually came and looked for them in my library. sorry to dissappoint you folks, but my library is much bigger than my room. very few people know about my extended library, where i keep all my hidden books, and the few that actually know its existence and wherabouts do not care anything about books. The best part is that i finished all three books in the timeframe of a person who started one of the books, but has not yet finished it, at least until last time we had a decent communication.

Which books am i talking about? I can see these questions forming in your minds. well that is natural of course. the books must have been really interesting, or else I wouldn't have finished them so soon. And no, its not those Harry Potter books. I have read all of them long time ago, and finished re-re-rereading them. the new one won't be out for a few years now, so, it definitely is not HP books. Then what else could it be? Well there is one author who is as good as JKR. and his writing style is very different from hers. the only trouble is his earlier publications were relatively unknown. Who am I talking about? the one and only, author of Da Vinci Code... Dan Brown. But I am not talking about DVC. That was an awesome book. really good one. so I went ahead and bought all of his earlier works, Deception Point, Digital Fortress and Angels and Demons.

I started in chronological order, with digital fortress. its a must read for data security enthusiast. It describes what NSA is capable of. I doubt NSA has such a big machine, and the idea that all cypher can be cracked by brute-force attack. If you have encyphered text, you can decipher with any key, but none but one particular key will return the original text. So to brute-force a cypher is two step process, decode and see if it makes sense. but then, what if the text is encyphered twice? how does any machine know to decipher it twice? thats just one of my objection to the "theory of brute-force attack" to every encyphered text. the practicality of a machine so fast it could brute-force the strongest of encoding in a matter of hours is a question on its own. so no matter what Dan Brown says, I remain a skeptic. I don't think the technology that can decrypt strongest of cypher keys of mid-90's exists today. may be with massively parallel computing that uses millions of internet users, but definitely not under a single roof.

The second in order was Deception point. it revolves around a NASA and its biggest dicovery -- a large meteorite containing something unimaginable. I don't want to have spoilers here, so I won't say what it is, even though it is not a big suspense in the story. i am not a rocket scientist nor a marine biologist, so i can't say anything on the technology depicted in it. so let me just move on toward the third book: Angels and Demons. Now, I know the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) exists, and CERN has confirmed that it is used to create antimatter. I also know that antimatter can be created, and it will annihilate, producing brust of energy, when it comes in contact with any matter particle. so far, few atoms of anti-hydrogen has been created and their tracks have been photographed -- their life extending a few nanoseconds. But, of course, antimatter are also charged particle and magnetic field has anti-same effect as with matter particle. so, if you could create a magnetic field that curves around itself, trapping the antimatter particle, you could store it. but once that field is gone, there's nothing but a bright light and intense heat.

I liked all three concepts, but did not like the books, may be except the third one. I was so used to with HP story that I had forgotten there are different writing styles. JKR writes everything with Harry's point of view, and so far, I can remember only four events when Harry was not around in the plot. and he saw one of them in a dream. DB writes with everyone's point of view. one paragraph is from one character and another paragraph is from another character in a different continent!! and for those who have not yet read DB, nope, I am not exaggerating! and there was one chapter that one only a few sentences long.

The concept of the books were very good. I also liked the writing style. But the ending... hm... I dont' have words to describe them. they were awful, at least the first two of them. the third one was considerably better, not as much as DVC, but captivating story nonetheless.

now you may ask why it was hidden for so long. the answer is in my previos posts. if you remember them, i said i was busy with transcription project. I did not want to start a new project before finishing the other one!

One curious thing though. When I started the first of the books, I knew jenu was somewhere in the middle of Angels and Demons. When I finished all three of them three weeks later, she was still somewhere in the middle of that book. I wonder if she finished reading it. she should have, its been, what, three weeks since i finished them?

and if you are still wondering why the title is Three stories? Its after all about three books. Well, it is, but its a tribute to 21st episode of House,M.D., season 1.