Avenger - Book Review

When I read Frederick Forsyth's "Devil's Alternative", I admired the novel and felt that I might be disappointed reading another novel of the same author as my expectations had become very high. But "Avenger" definitely lived up to my expectations. The same style of weaving the story in different layers and then linking all of them together; dealing with terrorism around the world; providing well researched information on the politics of different countries; and the impressive twist to the tale in the last page. I have admired many authors till the climax of their tales, but my admiration for Forsyth increases with his climaxes.

"Avenger" is just a normal story of revenge. It is the power of narration that makes it a good read. The story is about a young boy killed in Bosnia by a gangster and his grandfather hiring the Avenger to get the killer to the hands of the law. The stories of the avenger, the kid, the grand father, and scores of other people have been narrated well. Forsyth's style of making pieces link using the minutest of links is admirable. The story takes us through the Yugoslavian countries (Serbia, Bosnia etc.), the Gulf countries (UAE, Saudi etc.), Afghanistan, the South American jungles, and ofcourse, the US and UK.

A welcome read to get my thoughts off the daily life and into the world of action and adventure.

What's in the Name?

Whenever our dear politicians have found nothing interesting to do, they change the names of places. They do it with such rigour that we get a feeling that the places would cease to exist if their names were not changed. Let alone the big cities like Mumbai/Bombay, Chennai/Madras, Kolkata/ Calcutta etc., the names of streets and roads have changed so much so that there seem to be a expiry date associated with them. Even the names of government transport systems change, PTC (Pallavan Transport Corporation) to MTC (Metropolitan Transport Corporation) being one.
The name-changing bug seems to have bitten the likes of the astronomers now. I am not sure if classifying Pluto to be a "Dwarf planet" is going to change anything. But the International Astronomical Union (IAU) sure believes that it is important. Their reasoning seems to be that there should be some base on which planets should be called planets. Pluto does not conform to the basis that they have formed and so, should be relegated to a lower classification. Sounds good, that is, until we read the comments of other astronomers. The criterion that Pluto has missed is that a planet must have cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit i.e., there should not be any other big land mass around it. Pluto orbit overlaps with that of Neptune and thereby it has been concluded that Pluto has not cleared its orbit. Just a sec.... doesn't that also mean that Neptune hasn’t cleared its orbit? I am also not sure of what they classify as clearing the neighbourhood. Does that mean that the planet should not even have satellites? In that case wouldn't most planets (Pardon my lack of knowledge, it could as well be "all the planets") lose their 'planet' status?
Checkout the comments section here. Some really funny comments.
Samples:
"I understand that the Plutonians are to downgrade Earth as they have realised from watching the situation in Lebanon that there are no signs of intelligent life here."
"George W Bush: ...does this mean I can push the button now to destroy Pluto? Because I'm running out of Earthling sites."

Am back

It has been the longest break that I have given to my blog. I guess the main culprit has been laziness, but I do have few things to put the blame on. Firstly the work schedule over the past month has not been very kind. The good part is that I am learning a lot; the bad part is that I have been consoling myself with this "learning" part for a long time now. The second blame-taker is the blockage of blogging in office. While spending the better part of my 24 hours in office, where else can I blog from?
So what have I missed blogging? Well, may be the review of the one solitary novel that I managed to complete in this period; maybe my views on the cricketing events which are actually happening outside the cricketing grounds; may be my irritation at the office-of-profit bill and the 27% you-know-what. Whatever, it is not that anything would have changed by my blogs. The only thing that has been missed is the nice feeling that I get out of venting my thoughts and feelings. Hopefully I will be back to blogging regularly, though the frequency of the regularity might be less.