Book Review:Phantoms by Dean Koontz

Googy rating: 4.5/5

Gist:

150 dead and 350 are missing. what is the cause of this disaster in Snowfield. Is it due to biological weapons or something else. Lets find out.

Review:

Dean koontz is a master in understanding and expressing people’s mind during very difficult times. The novel is a first class novel which makes you feel the fear he has layed in the path of the book. Though the adapted movied “Phantoms(1998)” did not turn out to be a big hit the book is sure a master peace of Dean koontz. The only thing I felt little off the book was that the author has taken a lot of time getting into the story by explaining each and every story. But he has more than equalised the explanations by the terror he has seeded in our hearts. It makes people feel through the scary environment if they are very well able to imagine themselves in the situation which sure Dean Koontz was able to do with ease. The books keep you guessing till the first half of the book but still the author has maintained the mystery, action and the feeling of terror until the end of the book. This book surely goes into my favourite collection.

Bottom line: You can feel the terror inside the pages.

Googy

Review: From the corner of his eye- Dean Koontz

Googy Rating: 3/5

Gist:

Intervening story of two families and their friends with a murderous psychopath on the run to kill an innocent prodigal child.

Review:

Initial pages of the novel was very good. The murderous intent of any lame person cannot be described more apt than that of the authors expression. It was a mind blowing novel till the end. The author makes you await the developements in each character’s life especially that of Junior and Bartholomew. The best character is Junior Enoch Cain. Such a marvellous character you can indulge in. There are a lot of loose ends in the story but it was finished aptly. The author has made a very good attempt in explaining the concepts of quantum physics and the intervining space of worlds such that even a lame person can understand in an interesting manner. As of to say the readers must have expected a lot from Cain in the end but the author has made it simple to end the book but unbelievingly true if you understand the concepts of what he is trying to explain in the whole book. Dean Koontz  has amazed the readers with the explanation of interlocked spaces which makes the readers believe in it till the end. But the novel must have ended in a much more good way than presented by the author. The pie lady is a loving, romantic character wishing you to have her a lot in your own neighborhood (not for the free pies!!!). Kudos for the author to keep up his good work. Want to read more of his novels.

Bottom line:  Locked to the intervening characters of the novel.

Googy

Re surface

Finally I found how “vetti” I am in my college.Final semester sucks with no touch up with friends daily. Cant see a lot of college nowadays. So i thought of doing something for my blog which was inactive for a verryyyyyyyyyyy long time. I hope to get some new ideas to post about. Will be posting soon enough with my life experiences.

Student pictures..

These are some more pictures depicting the innocence of the little students which i came through in some other blog..

Googy.

Picture language…

These are some amazing picture i found on-line. The website was really cool with a lot of amazing images. I give you some of my favorite here…

The Devil’s Handshake: Book Review

THE DEVIL’S HANDSHAKE

Author: Murray Davies

Googy rating: 3/5

Gist:

The compelling drama of one man abandoned in a hostile land, with an impossible mission. The task of finding a trained person to assassinate Adolf Hitler becomes increasingly impossible given the short time. A junior officer volunteers himself for the mission without any regret. He is trained and dropped in the hostile land where the situation becomes even more complex and he finds himself the love of his life amidst his mission. There is no one to help him from his country. Will he succeed in his mission?

Review:

The story is too good and the events make the scenes even more interesting to read. The only part of the book which I didn’t like is the use of too many unwanted characters and their names which are very hard to remember. There are many German names and places which are very difficult to remember through the course of the novel. But the story is good to pursue reading. The plots to abandon the mission of great importance creates a very dangerous situation to the people in charge of the mission. The half trained agent sent for the mission finds that the plan with which he came is not possible and tries to get near Hitler in unexpected manners. The strictness of the Gestapo in Germany and the day to day life of the people who faced the war have been explained in a very good manner. The climax of the story though good leaves many questions unanswered.

Bottom line: Nice war time story.

Please do comment people.

With thoughts,

Googy.

The Hour Game: Book Review

THE HOUR GAME

Author: David Baldacci

Googy rating: 3/5

Gist:

Two ex-secret service agents Sean king and his partner Michelle Maxwell are in search of one of the dangerous serial killers of their town who has a unique style of his own. Both the agents get into a lot of trouble even endangering their lives to capture one of the most important criminal of the country.

Review:

This is the first book of David Baldacci I have read. The story is good with all the plots and killings. The attributes of our detective heroes are well described and utilized to a great extent in the story. Sean king is a very brilliant person with a lot more qualities and he is the main person in the story. Though his partner Maxwell is equally good the author has not used her except for the action stuff. It is always King who has to figure out things mostly and Maxwell is always left in the dark but she is the one who gets to save her partner in most of the situations. The reasons for killing though I feel is not strong enough I kind of liked the way the author had presented it. The author has done a good work in the medical part when it comes to the autopsy. But the bad part is I kind of guessed the killer while I was halfway through the book. It wasn’t a shock to me but I didn’t have my reasons for my guess that time. The part of the book after the capture of the killer is exceptionally good. It was very interesting I should say. The murders of the killers were in a unique style as he mentioned. I liked the concept of “one tick off” very much. It was the greatest clue to the mystery. I hope to read more of Baldacci’s works.

Bottom line: The story is one tick off

Free ebook download link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/78485531/Baldacci__David_-_6_ebooks__LRF_.rar

Please do comment people..

With love

Googy.

Pics…

These are some of the interesting pics i came through in a website.. Have a look at them .

More of them on the way…

with love

Googy.

Shantaram

Author: Gregory David Roberts

Googy Rating: 2.5 / 5

Gist:

A tattered soul imprisoned in Australia without any real reason escapes the years of imprisonment in the jail and wanders around the world as a wanted fugitive in search of peace, in search of freedom and finds that India is the birthplace of his longings. The author falls in love with the life in Bombay and a resident foreigner like him Karla.

He gets to know the day to day habits of the drug dealings and other black market business. He joins with Bombay don Abdul kader khan who treats him like his son. He understands many aspects of life under the guidance of the great don and becomes trained in many illegal activities. Then he goes along with his mentor to the war front in Afghanistan to know about the true incidents that made him what he is, a member of the greatest mafia gang in Bombay still the most wanted one in the world.

Review:

The book is full of philosophical thoughts which are really interesting but slows down the pace of the story to a great extent. The author’s description of Bombay as a place for any person who can do any kind of job is simply great. The characters are well dealt with. My favorite character in the novel is Prabakar, a great and loyal friend of the author who greets everyone with a big smile. The most impressive nature about Prabakar is that he is very loyal to everyone and makes everyone happy around him with his warm welcome and his love and affection. Author’s visit to Prabakar’s village is an enjoyable part. It’s really difficult for a foreigner to adapt to the customs of the village and live among the villagers for nearly 6 months. The slums in Bombay are well explained and the conditions of the people are expressed in an apt manner. Author learns to believe and care for people during his life in slum. The little medical centre done by the author is really touching. Quasim Ali, the leader of the slum though comes in the novel less has impressed me with the way he handles the things in the slum. The author has made great effort in explaining the procedures of black market trading in Bombay. The novel is very informative in many ways. The chats between kader khan and the author is more of philosophical thoughts where the author writes about the importance of freedom, the way of doing wrong things for right reasons and many more which are really good to read but some may feel it very boring. Karla is described as a very beautiful, brilliant and a very mysterious girl who has been regretting her child hood. But I don’t think her child hood is so bad. I did not like her character very much. According to me she has betrayed herself with the wrong and lame reasons. The author’s travel to Afghanistan during the war is really boring and very long. The author’s experience in the jail of Arthur Road is really hard to read with those tortures and beatings. The author dislikes the thought that he had lost his freedom again for unmentioned reasons and waits for his revenge. The concept of ‘sapna’ killings was really nice. It had good motive in the start which went out of control. The words of the author as such ‘” You can change your life completely with a single thought or single act of love”. I think these lines contains lot more meaning that it really specifies.

Bottom line: Just philosophical.

With love

Googy.

CTS Interview..

Hi ppl.. I would like to share my experience in interview among you guys so that it may be useful to you.

First there was the aptitude test. The aptitude test was somewhat easy to crack if you are good in reasoning skills.

The aptitude test contained three parts

1. Quantitative(20 questions- 25 minutes)

This part had the usual sums but you don’t have to do any calculations. All the problems can be easily solved without the use of pen and paper. But there was no time. Dont waste your time in solving the questions which would take time. Just finish the problems you could solve it easily in the first 15 minutes.
Then go to the toughest questions.There was a Venn diagram questions involving 4 Venn diagrams and it was very very difficult.

2. Attention to detail( Analytical reasoning)(25 questions-25minutes)
This part was really very very easy. I was confident in answering the questions. It had 10 questions from syllogism and other 10 from reverse syllogism. It had finding the odd figure out of the given figures and finding the next figure from the next figure.
Be strong in this part guys. It is the part which could boost up your marks.

3. Verbal (25 questions-20 minutes)
Finding the incorrect part from a given sentence was difficult. It took most of my time.
There were two reading comprehensions. My advise is not to touch the reading comprehension till the end. It would eat up all your time.
Jumbled sentences were very easy.

Interview

This was really fun. All the people waiting to go inside were all tensed. Be cool always. Think of a nice comedy. Be relaxed.
The students who came outside finishing their interview were really making me tensed. I started asking others the answers for those unknown questions.
I was the last person in my college to be interviewed.
There were two hr’s. Both were strong in technical which i learnt from other students belonging to my panel.

It was the usual start with tell me about yourself.
I answered it but they started giving me the silent treatment.
So I started with my strengths.I mentioned one of my strengths as not getting distracted easily. You will know later why i specifically mentioned this to you.
They still stared at me. I finished with “That’s it sir. Is there anything more I could tell?”.

They started going through my marks and asked me why i have scored less in my fourth and fifth semester.
I told them some reasonable answer. They seemed to be satisfied with my answer.

One of the hr asked my what is the difference between the flip flop and latch.
I was glad that I knew the answer very well and started telling him while the other person was
distracting me by nodding a ‘no’ with his head. He was checking whether I was giving him any attention to him. But i looked at him first and started to have a concentrated eye contact with the hr who asked me the question and answered confidently. This was the part i feel they were impressed about me.

Then one of them asked me to write the truth table of jk flip flop. I told him correctly. He asked me to draw the circuit of the jk flip flop.
While i was drawing the other hr asked me some general questions like who is the chief minister of karnataka and which party does he belong to.
I answered them correctly but to my surprise the guy asked me ” You told that you will not be easily be distracted but i distracted you very easily”
I answered him ” Whatever the distraction is I am still doing my job right. Then what is the problem”
He didnt speak for the rest of the interview.

Then I answered a few questions from data structures. Those were basics like what are the different types of data structures and I had to explain some of them.

He asked me a puzzle. I told all types of solution to the puzzle but he kept on saying that your approach is very simple and they asked for a complex approach.
I got stressed out and said ” That was what i could think of sir. Can you give me the answer to this ?”. He mentioned that he would say it at last but did not tell till the end.

He asked me another puzzle. It was bit difficult and i was not able to get an approach for that. He itself gave me the answer. The answer was very logical and I had to get away with a smile.

Then finally he asked me for any questions.
I asked whether it was necessary to learn java before entering the company but he replied with a careless no and said Thank You for spending your time with us.

I thought I won’t be selected till the results came. I am happy to get in CTS. This is my first step towards the greater part of life.

Lets wait and see what happens next.

With love

Googy.