Dawnshard

This is an offshoot novella from the main Stormlight Archive series. It takes 2 minor PoV characters from the main series creates an adventure arc for them within the main series. It will be difficult to follow if you haven't read the main series as it assumes prior knowledge of the world, political situation & magic system.

The plot is about an exploratory voyage to a mysterious island which has an oathgate (a means of instantaeneous travel between a pair of oathgates). There are 3 main PoV characters. Lopen a knight radiant who is optimistic & funny in the main series but, we explore his personal introspections. Rysn a merchant lady and owner of the ship who is paralyzed hip-down. She owns a rare larkin that is sick which she hopes to cure on course of this voyage as the larkin was native of the mysterious island. Nikli is a new PoV character introduced in this book and is deeply entangled with the mysteries of the island.

Though it does not have the dramatic ending usually associated with Brandon Sanderson's books it adds to the wordbuilding in the main Stormlight series.

Midnight's Children

I think I might be shifting gears from lots of movie posts to books. Well, technically its only the third book I'm going to mention right now but, who knows. I just saw 20 movies and read 4 books during the christmas break :O I'll post details if I recover from the shock (Just to give a little background on that I happened to raid my friends place and made off with 50 movies and 15 books :D).

One of those was Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. All these years I stayed away from his books mainly because of his notorious reputation for 'you know what' and the fact that he's got a Booker prize (I have strong prejudices against prizes given out by committees :/). But, I'm glad I din't stand fast on my prejudices. Midnight's Children is an excellent book; I was vaguely expecting it to be a flaky fantasy but, it was deliciously different from anything I've ever read before (I had the same feeling when I read Catch-22 a long time ago). The narrative was descriptive and witty (if not always gripping). I particularly like the autobiographical tone of the narrative where Saleem Sinai gives you some glimpses of events that are going to happen in the future (I haven't read any autobiographies so, I'm only guessing here...).

I also like the seemingly bizarre chapter titles that somehow make sense when you finish that chapter. My particular favorites are: The perforated sheet, Many-headed monsters, All-India radio, Alpha and Omega and Commander Sabarmati's baton. Saleem Sinai's serendipitous tryst with India's destiny is almost like an Indian version of of Forrest Gump (one difference being Saleem is always not as lucky). Actually, it should be the other way around chronologically because Midnight's Children was first published in 1981 and the movie was released in 1994; forgive me there I saw the movie before I read the book. In some ways its almost like Paradise Lost for the average Indian. Another interesting thing about the book was that the story telling would abruptly shoot off on irrelevant tangents based on some small thing. All the math in the book also sums up which is always a big plus :D (581 + 420 = 1001).

On the whole it is a pretty awesome book and you shouldn't pass up a chance to read it up.

Down Under

I've been trying to picking up any non-technical books that are available at our office library. And Bill Bryson's Down Under was one of them. It was the first travelogue that I have read (I stick to fiction mostly) and, I enjoyed it. It turned out to be a witty, whimsical guide to Australia.

Australia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world! mostly because there are more things in Australia that could kill you than you have time to read about. Thats something I did not know about Australia. But, wait there's lots more. A prime minister goes for a walk and decides to go for a little swim and disappears. Now, why haven't any hollywood directors exploited that plot for some conspiracy theory movie?

No book about Australia can be complete without dealing about the native aborigines. The happen to be the longest surviving culture passed down unchanged for centuries. The magic of Uluru (Ayers rock). The weird ways in which the Australian government tried to bring aborigines into mainstream society, the most shocking of which is when it abducted aboriginal children to train them to be responsible citizens of white society.

The Search

I recently finished reading John Battelle's "The Search", which chronicles the rise of search as a valuable business asset and how google helped in making it that way. For someone who has always been in awe of google for a long time I found the book a very interesting read. The rags to riches story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin and the background in which google captured the search market is wonderful.