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Sunday 25 March 2018

The Law of Moses by Amy Harmon

 My Review: 5/5 

'If I tell you right up front, right in the beginning that I lost him, it will be easier for you to bear. You will know it's coming, and it will hurt. But you'll be able to prepare.'   

I HATE IT, I HATE IT, I HATE IT! I hate the fact this story is so beautiful and I will hung up to it forever. I hate the fact that this is emotionally and brutally captivating. 

Definitely one of the most touching stories I have read. A story of before and after, of new beginnings and never-endings. A story flawed and fractured, crazy and cracked, and most of all, a love story that teaches you about love, loss and forgiveness. Not often, I read the books and I am drawn to the story and virtually attached to every emotion. Not often I feel like I should have written this story. This is the book everyone should read, acknowledge and appreciate. Existence of novels like this makes life even more beautiful. So Ladies and Gentleman, Brace yourself, keep the tissues nearby and get ready for a very emotional but worth crying story. 

''Sometimes you can choose, you know.''
''What?'' I asked
''Sometimes you can choose. Most people choose to stay. It's beautiful here.''
''Did you choose to stay?''
''Sometimes you can choose. Sometimes you can't.''
 

Georgia was warned since her early age by her parents about Moses. They say he is a troubled child who was found in the laundry basket. Just like when people want to do something they are told not to do, Georgia sees him as a challenge and soon finds herself working her way into his heart. 

'I’m a very ordinary girl, Moses. I know that I am. And I always will be. I can’t paint. I don’t know who Vermeer is, or Manet for that matter. But if you think ordinary can be beautiful, that gives me hope.' 

Moses has a special talent that nobody can understand or figure out. He paints the image that comes to his mind involuntarily. The interesting thing is, the images he paints are related to real life incidents even though he is unaware of them. Due to this, he attracts lots of unnecessary problems, which eventually messes his relationship with Georgia. 

'I slipped Georgia's letter beneath my mattress where I wouldn't have to see it, where I wouldn't have to feel it, where I wouldn't have to acknowledge it.' 

Georgia tries her best to bring him love her or acknowledge their love but at the end, she had to let him go, which as a result creates a huge void in her life. 

'But mostly I felt afraid and unequipped to tackle the days ahead, still unable to completely give up on Moses Wright. Mom had taken one look at the head and sighed. And I settled in for a long wait.   

When we told my dad, he was the one who melted my mother's heart. He stood and walked over to me and pulled me up into his arms. And my mother cried. That's when I knew it was going to be all right and that's when I gave up on Moses coming back.' 

Later on, when fate brings them back together again, I couldn't help but wondered how I might have reacted if I were her. I ached for Georgia, her love for Moses and the time she lost waiting for him. I ached for the fact it was such an emotional reunion. Even though I wanted to scream 'Why Moses Why?', I knew it was not his fault. It is a heart-breaking union, heart-breaking break up and eventually heart-breaking reunion. I loved every part of it. Moses' desire for Georgia and Georgia's love for Moses. The strength Moses needed to fight the society and the strength Georgia needed to withstand the departure of Moses. The way Georgia plays with horses and the way Moses paints. The way Georgia longs for Moses and the way Moses tries to avoid her only to get drawn back to her again. It’s absolutely beautiful. 

'If you don’t love, then nobody gets hurt. It’s easy to leave. It’s easy to lose. It’s easy to let go.' 

'THE FIRST FEW WORDS of every story are always the hardest to write. It’s almost as if pulling them out, putting them on paper, commits you to seeing it all through. As if once you start, you are required to finish. And how do you finish when some things never end?'  (PLEASE GIVE ME PART 2!!!!)

Sunday 18 March 2018

Origin by Dan Brown

My Review: 3   3.5   3/5

'The dark religions are departed and sweet science reigns' 

A great concept but a very lame plot! With the show of hands, how many people found this novel conflicting? This book, supposedly a graduation gift for me didn't turn out to be as good as I expected.
So, let's settle down for a talk in detail.

CONCEPT:   
Where do we come from?
Where are we going?
 

The answers of these two mysteries lie at the heart of the human experience. Science vs. Religion has mostly been the theme of Robert Langdon. In this story, he finds himself strangled in the maze of his dear friend, who is also a genius scientist, Edmond Kirsch. Mr Kirsch doesn't agree with Church who says human came from the God and they are going back to the God. So, he tries to find an answer himself. Finally after years of hard work, Kirsch discovers a ground-breaking theory that can change the whole world. He finds the answer to the questions; where do we come from? And where are we going? 

So, Where do we come from? 
During 1950s, scientists Miller and Urey, rejecting the idea that God invented the life, decided to do an experiment in the lab to prove that some chemicals are enough to make the earthy atmosphere to create lives. After the long experiment, they found out that their chemicals had produced several amino acids. Nothing else interesting happened during the course of their experiment and Of course, just amino acid is not a solid evidence of existing of life. 

Fast-forward, after more than 50 years, comes our genius, Edmond Kirsch who declares that Miller and Urey were not patient enough to wait for the required amount of time and even if they had waited, the changes couldn't have occurred during their life-time. Then he introduces the same test-tube Miller and Urey were working on and declares that Miller's student continued this experiment and did all the test and analysis with the sophisticated techniques to find out that the chemical fluids now contains the building blocks of RNA, which could eventually become DNA. I must say this totally blew me away and I was so excited. While I am writing this, I remember how excited I was while reading this part. So, let me change my score from 3 to 3.5 stars. After all, I was enjoying it.  

So, all that experiment was lacking, was time. It took 50 years of mark to create RNA. How long more would it need to create DNA and eventually living organism and from that to people like us? Don't you find that fascinating? Isn't it exciting? You know what? I am going to upgrade my score to 4 stars now.

Since I am also a scientist, I got even more excited to discover what exactly was happening in that little test-tube during this 50 years? The magic word we are looking for here is 'Entropy'. And what exactly is the Entropy? It is a measure of disorder in microorganism. The law of entropy states that things fall apart. Let’s think about some examples. Imagine you work really hard to make sand castle. Seconds later, a wave comes in and washes away the castle. But have you ever seen while you are just relaxing in the beach, minding your own business, all of the sudden wave comes in and deposits sand in the shape of a sand castle? No right? This is what I am talking about. Here is another example. Someone makes you a really nice cup of tea. Then you forget to drink it and after a while it becomes cold. That is entropy. It makes hot tea cold but it doesn't reheat your tea or ask your friend to do it. Ok, enough examples. But wait, I forgot what I was talking about.  

Oh yea, the thing is we live in entropic universe. Ok, everyone got it but how can lifeless chemicals magically organise themselves into complex life-forms? As it turns out, life is not the only example of the universe creating order. Non-living molecules organise themselves all the time into complex structures. Look at the examples of a tornado vortex, a snowflake, a rippled riverbed etc. etc. So that means sometimes the universe does organise matter-which seems to be the exact opposite of entropy. So which is actually true? Does universe prefer order or chaos? Nature!-in an effort to promote disorder-creates little pockets of order. Hmm. makes sense that means your friend will never reheat your tea.

So what does entropy have to do with the origin of life? As turns out, life is an exceptionally effective tool for dissipating energy. All living organisms-including humans-which consume organised matter as food, convert it to energy, and then dissipate energy back into the universe as heat. So that means, the life indeed spontaneously emerged from lifeless matter as result of nothing more than the laws of physics. Then Edmond shows the stimulated Miller-Urey's amino acids in millions of years turning into DNA. Just wow! 

and  Now let’s talk about Where are we going? 
Here just for reference, let’s imagine humans are the result of some law of entropy of non-living things. After millions of years, some living organism are formed then comes Darwinian evolutionary theory (survival of fittest), and fast-forward we are in present world. So what’s next? Are we going back to being non-living stuffs at some point? Here is the clue- have you discovered anything unusual in last decade? 

Technology has overcome people. This is the age of Industry 4.0. People talk about digitalisation, personalisation. They are hugely dependent on their laptops and smartphones. Even my 7 months old niece gets really excited when she sees a phone :0. The point here is, human has become machine dependent. There will be a time (in less than a century) when human will be entirely swallowed up by machine. This doesn't sound too vague when people are talking so much about artificial intelligence (AI) now. People are even talking about in-coupling AI into human brain. Who we kidding right? So, Edmond says that if it runs like this at some point, there will be only machines in this world and extinction of human, just like a fate of dinosaurs (scary enough!). 

STORY: 
The good thing about Dan Brown's book is, you cannot rest until you finish it. I was so hooked up in the book that I was happy that I was finishing this 500 pages book fast but also sad thinking it will be finished soon. If you are familiar with Brown's book, you know by now that he takes you to different cities, goes deep into the meaning of some churches or buildings, there will be codes and puzzles Langdon has to break to solve the mystery that will eventually save the world or himself. These codes are always fun and interesting. Every time new series of Robert Langdon comes, I am more looking forward to new codes and countries he takes us.

BUT...... Let’s talk about 'but' now.

A very famous scientist Edmond Kirsch is about to make a world-changing announcement of Where do we come from? and Where are we going? 
The announcement is assisted by soon to be Queen of Spain, Ambra Vidal (but she is completely unaware about the content of his announcement). I guess it is about time that I should announce Edmond Kirsch is so genius that he has programmed a virtual artificial assistant, Winston. He is programmed to behave like human and understand their emotions. As a matter of fact, Winston knows everything about Kirsch apart from the discovery itself and a password that can access to the discovery Kirsch made. 

On the night of the discovery, while Kirsch was about to announce his discovery, he gets killed. Now the whole world watching and more curious about his discovery, Robert Langdon and Ambra Vidal with the assistance of Winston has to track down the password of Edmond Kirsch's discovery so that they can make it public. It’s a huge suspense but you know what I guessed the ending miles away (I guess I am reading too much of Robert Langdon). 

Take home message? 
For me, so many things didn't make sense. 

1. Winston declared that he killed his own creator Edmond Kirsch in public to enhance the public interest of his discovery. Winston thought that it was for his own good but you know what? It totally didn't make sense. Winston killed Kirsch before the discovery was announced and without Langdon to track down the codes to find his password, there was no way discovery was getting public. The discovery would have been lost if Langdon was not there. 

2. I don't understand the role of Ambra Vidal and her connection with Edmond Kirsch. The world renowned genius scientist Kirsch secretly creates Winston using supercomputer and keeps it secret from everyone and even programmes it in a way that it permanently shuts down the day after he dies. He makes this world-changing discovery that he doesn’t tell anyone and is very sceptical about. Still, he tells Ambra how to unlock his home's door and that the password to his discovery is the 47 characters line of one of the poems of his favourite poet, which happened to be in his home library. This doesn't make sense. 

3. I still didn't get who killed Saed al-Fadl and Rabi Yehuda Köves. Was it again Winston? But Why?

4. At the end, it shows Bishop Valdespino and the king of Spain are gay couple. This totally doesn’t fit into the story and Love is a private thing. The world doesn't need to know every detail. 

As I said, the concept is good. Dan Brown talks about the AI, the recent control of human life by new technology and how fake news are weighing as much as real news in today's generation but I strongly feel that Robert Langdon didn't come that powerful this season because in previous seasons, I was so used to Langdon being the main focus in everywhere. He solving all the mysteries and it was like, without him nothing else happened. There were no loopholes and loose ends. The funny thing is, you know I was like damn! he forgot to mention his Mickey Mouse watch this time. I was like noooooo..... but it was there towards the end.  While I am thinking about that, I realised the role of Ambra Vidal is even more dreadful. She didn't come across as smart and active as other females in previous series. You know what I am going to change my score back to 3 stars. 

Oh well, The Da Vinci Code, and Angels and Demons are still my favourite Robert Langdon series.