The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy -A Book Review

I might have been the last person on earth who didn’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I know if that was true, then there would be no purpose for this book review, but, I am sure there are some of you who still haven’t given it a try and for those of you I say: “if you want a good laugh then go read it”. I am now starting to wonder what took me so long to pick it up.

Well, I have just finished listening to the audio book “Just One Damned Thing After Another” by Jodi Taylor (which I reviewed on this blog) and was looking for my next audio book when I stumbled, somehow, onto this one.

This book was not what I expected, at all. The story is something you would never imagine, talks about a space journey of Arthur Dent and his alien friend Ford Prefect after the earth is demolished by another alien race to build a galactic freeway. I know it sounds silly, but it’s filled with moments that would make you forget the silliness and just enjoy the ride, and it even has a depressed robot named Marvin, who is perhaps my favorite character in the book.

Even though there was no deep plot to it, it was funny and enjoyable with lines like these:

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”

The book was narrated by Stephen Fry and it was awesome. Great voice acting. You’ll get the shouts, the sighs, the tiredness, all of it. I don’t think I have laughed this much out loud listening to a book like this before.

It turns out that this book is part of a series. I look forward to picking up the next one although it’s unfortunate that Stephen Fry is not narrating it. The next book is narrated by Martin Freeman (the same actor who played the lead role in the movie adaptation of this book, and Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit movies) but I think he would also be a good narrator. We’ll see.

The Fold – A Book Review

The Fold by Peter Clines is the follow up book to “14” (though it’s not published as a sequel. It has new characters and story line but some aspects of “14” appear in this one). I recommend this book but only after reading the previous one.

This story follows a guy named Leland Erikson “Mike” who has photographic memory where he can remember every single detail of anything he sees. So his friend hires him to find out what is going on with a top-secret research team who invented a device called the Albuquerque Door. This door creates a fold in reality dimensions that allows a person to travel miles with just one step. Similarly to “14”, mysterious and strange occurrences happen and Mike tries to find out what’s really going on.

I listened to this book in audio. My thoughts are very similar to “14” (you can read my review of “14” here). The things I liked and disliked about the book are mainly the same. You might ask which one I liked better? Well I’m not sure, each one had a different setting and characters so I’d say both were good. But I do believe that there should be another follow-up to these two. There are still many unanswered questions in both books and the ending of The Fold seems to set up a path for another. I look forward to that, if it happens.

14 by Peter Clines – A Book Review

“14” by Peter Clines is a book categorized as sci-fi, paranormal, mystery and fantasy. After finishing Ready Player One, I started looking for books similar to it and I found this one (it came up but it’s not actually very similar). It had very high reviews and was chosen the best sci-fi novel of 2012 by Audible. So I picked it up (in audio format).

The story follows a guy named Nate Tucker who rents a cheap apartment in the Kavach building. After moving in, he starts to notice that there are many secrets and mysteries surrounding this building and strange things happen like green cockroaches roaming around, a door to an apartment that is always padlocked and a room that doesn’t go beyond or lower than a certain temperature. He and his neighbors try to unravel the secrets and find out what is really going on (some reviews mentioned it has the same style as Lost, I can somewhat agree).

What I liked about it:

• The narration by Ray Porter was awesome, he did every single character with a different tone and accent so without knowing who is speaking you could immediately know which character it is (at some point I went back to check if it is one narrator or several).
• Fast paced, you get hooked up in the story from the start.
• The characters were well defined and likable.
• Intriguing, keeps you on the edge of your seat.
• The adventure like story and the unraveling of secrets.

What I didn’t like about it:

• I felt that there are some things that remained unanswered. I read that the author’s next book “The Fold” covers some answers in this book.
• What I disliked the most about this book was towards the end when the mysteries were starting to unfold [Spoilers] and the characters met the squid-like-god. I hate aliens and weird creatures. I really do. So this was a huge disappointment for me. [End of Spoilers] But none the less I finished the book and plan to read the next.
• Also towards the end, the story lost the excitement it had throughout the book.

Will let you know what I thought of the next book once I’m done. I do hope it has a better ending than this one but still I highly recommend it.

The Martian – A Movie Review

I don’t usually write movie reviews but this movie is based on one of my favorite books “The Martian”. If you want to check my book review just click here .

If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie yet (and you plan to) then don’t continue reading. [Spoilers] I was so excited to see the movie after reading the book and I know they can’t fit a whole book in a movie but I feel it missed some of the fun and interesting parts.

• There was a lot of humorous dialog not mentioned and I feel that they didn’t portray what was going on in Mark’s head as good as they could have (maybe more entry logs). Like one of my favorites: “Maybe I’ll post a consumer review. “Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped  working. 0/10.”
• Another thing that was missing was when Pathfinder didn’t work and he lost all communication with NASA.
• The trip to Ares 4 had a lot of action and the movie depicted none, not even how he tried to avoid the storm that was coming. He just drove through peacefully.
• I thought they could have done a better CGI job showing us how thin Mark became on Mars. They just filmed the back of some thin guy with no face. They should have checked the CGI people who worked on making Chris Evans so thin and small in Captain America: The First Avenger.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie. I liked watching how he grew the potatoes and how NASA worked on saving him. I also liked the ending, the book ends when he gets on the Hermes but the movie added what I thought was a better ending where each crew member is back on earth watching the launch of Ares 5 and Mark is teaching future astronauts.

The Martian – Movie Trailer

Finally a trailer for the movie “The Martian”! If you’ve been following my blog you would know that this book is one of my favorites and you can find my review here. The movie will be in theaters on November 25th this year. Hopefully it will live up to the expectations of the book readers.

Here’s another video they released before the trailer “The Martian – First Look Ares 3”:

The Martian – A Book Review

This book is fun. Period.

I’ve read this book a couple of months back and since then I’ve been recommending it to everyone I know who reads and even the ones who don’t read I had to talk about it. Yea it’s that kind of book.

I don’t read sci-fi very often but The Martian by Andy Weir is one of the very few that caught my attention and when I heard it’s going to be a movie that comes out by the end of this year I thought I’d read it before it did.

The story line was much better than I expected when I first started reading. I read somewhere that this book is like a mix between Cast Away and Gravity so I assumed there’s going to be a guy stranded on Mars and that’s it. I am glad I was wrong. You do get a guy stranded on Mars, but you also get a lot of science terminologies and things you learned in high school (don’t worry you don’t have to remember anything), obstacles and a lot of action and humor where you’ll find passages like this one: “Maybe I’ll post a consumer review. “Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped  working. 0/10.”

Nexus – What I’m Currently Reading

From my previous post you’ve probably noticed that I couldn’t decide on which book to read next. Well, I finally decided and so far read about a third of the book Nexus by Ramez Naam. It’s a Sci-Fi book and the first book in the Nexus trilogy. So far it’s pretty intriguing and I think anyone into biotechnology, computer programming and nano-technology would enjoy. Here’s what it’s about:

In the near future, the experimental nano-drug Nexus can link human together, mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it.

When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he’s thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage – for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes.

From the halls of academe to the halls of power, from the headquarters of an elite US agency in Washington DC to a secret lab beneath a top university in Shanghai, from the underground parties of San Francisco to the illegal biotech markets of Bangkok, from an international neuroscience conference to a remote monastery in the mountains of Thailand – Nexus is a thrill ride through a future on the brink of explosion.

Latest Book Releases

I thought I’d share a bunch of interesting books in the fantasy and sci-fi genre that have been recently released. I have added links for each book that will take you to their Goodreads profile.

• Shadows for Silence in the Forest of Hell (Cosmere) by Brandon Sanderson. This book was originally published in 2013 but was recently released again in Kindle Version.

• The Mermaid’s Sister by Carrie Ann Noble. It received the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. This books talk about a  sixteen-year-old Clara lives with her sister, Maren, and guardian Auntie and then one day, Clara discovers shimmering scales just beneath her sister’s skin.

• Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. This is the 15th book in the Dresden Files series ( I have only read the first one Storm Front so far). It was published in paperback this month.

• The Legacy Human by Susan Kaye Quinn. This is the first book in the Singularity series and was published in paperback last month. I like the cover of the book and the story line seems very interesting.

• Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson: this is book 2 of the Stormlight Archive series. I have read this one and it will have its own blog post so I won’t say much about it (only that it is awesome!). It was released in mass paperback this month.

• A Blink of the Screen: Collected Short Fiction by Terry Pratchett. This book is a collection of short fiction from Terry Pratchett, spanning the whole of his writing career from schooldays to Discworld and the present day.

From the list, I have read only “The Words of Radiance”. If you have read any of the above books then would love to hear what you thought about them.