I Am Legend

I Am Legend
Author Richard Matheson

Amazon.com
One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th century, I Am Legend regularly appears on the "10 Best" lists of numerous critical studies of the horror genre. As Richard Matheson's third novel, it was first marketed as science fiction (for although written in 1954, the story takes place in a future 1976). A terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive have been transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Except, that is, for Robert Neville. He alone appears to be immune to this disease, but the grim irony is that now he is the outsider. He is the legendary monster who must be destroyed because he is different from everyone else. Employing a stark, almost documentary style, Richard Matheson was one of the first writers to convince us that the undead can lurk in a local supermarket freezer as well as a remote Gothic castle. His influence on a generation of bestselling authors--including Stephen King and Dean Koontz--who first read him in their youth is, well, legendary. --Stanley Wiater --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Robert Neville is the lone survivor of a vampire plague which has wiped out most of earth's inhabitants. by day he single-handedly stalks the city laying undead to rest. At night he drinks himself into a stupor and listens to classical music. After 5 months alone Robert realizes that some of the legends about vampires are true and begins to seek scientific explanation. With all the time in the world, he reads books from the library and steals an expensive microscope to help him analyze the bacteria in the victims. This book reminds me a lot of Robinson Caruso. At first Neville rails against his loneliness, the vampires and the world in general... Eventually he develops a survivor mentality which allows him to deal with the situation. When Neville finds a dog things begin to look up... Can Robert survive humanity's near extinction or will he become the last survivor of earth's great plague?

I read the book in anticipation of the movie in December starring Will Smith. I can't wait to see how this is treated in film. Neville is an interesting character who I took a while to get to like. Mostly because the first 1/4 of the novel he drinks, smokes, and feels sorry for himself (who wouldn't). I really warmed to the character once the dog arrived... Overall this was a compelling audiobook well narrated and worth a listen.

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Blasphemy

Blasphemy
Author Douglas Preston

Review

Praise for Blasphemy:

"This baby roars... the pages simply fly."--Publishers Weekly

"Highly recommended... Preston joins Michael Crichton as a master of suspenseful novels that tackle controversial issues in the realm of science."--Library Journal

"An unusually alarming and thoughtful thriller... Clever and terrifying."--Kirkus

“A superb read! Blasphemy is both thoughtful and flat-out entertainment--a page-turning thriller about science and religion in which good and evil collide at the speed of light. You'll be up all night with this book.”--Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author of The Sleeping Doll

"Science versus religion--the ultimate crunch. Douglas Preston has written The Novel of the Year, an extraordinary, unique, fascinating, wildly imaginative mix of thriller, satire, Sci Fi, and every other genre in the book. Blasphemy--you're going to love it."—Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassin



"Terrifyingly realistic. An electrifying page turner. Preston at his very best."--Nancy Taylor Rosenberg, New York Times bestselling author of Revenge of Innocents

"With Blasphemy, Douglas Preston has finally gone too far. One way or another, I'm afraid he may burn for this book."—Lincoln Child, New York Times bestselling author of Deep Storm

“Blasphemy takes the latest theories of physics and pits them against the ancient religious beliefs that they now threaten, in an explosive, hell-bent and finally deeply moving book that I doubt I will ever forget. It literally made me pace as I contemplated the ideas that crackle through these pages, and it gave me pause as I realized that the physics here is so close to reality that the face of God that appears in this book may soon be, in real life, before us all.”—Whitley Strieber, New York Times bestselling author of 2012: The War For Souls

“In Blasphemy, Preston rips the toga off God, and what remains is simply the answer to the most profound question of human existence...why are we here? A stunningly great read.”—W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, USA Today bestselling authors of People of the Nightland and the novels of North America's Forgotten Past

“Blasphemy is one hell of a good book. I couldn't stop reading, and at the end I had to force myself to slow down!”—David Hagberg, winner of three American Mystery Awards and USA Today bestselling author of Dance With the Dragon



“Preston has taken a fascinating concept and implemented it brilliantly. It's one of those books you think and talk about after you've finished it. I loved the characters. Even the sleazy ones were well-done. Science meets religion with a side order of politics. The mixture is explosive!”—Larry Bond, New York Times bestselling author of Dangerous Ground

“Can science discover God? Blasphemy is a stunningly ambitious novel that lives up to its goals. The theme is nothing less than the question: Is science the new religion?”—Barbara D’Amato, Edgar Award Winner and author of Death of a Thousand Cuts

Book Description
The world's biggest supercollider, locked in an Arizona mountain, was built to reveal the secrets of the very moment of creation: the Big Bang itself.The Torus is the most expensive machine ever created by humankind, run by the world's most powerful supercomputer. It is the brainchild of Nobel Laureate William North Hazelius. Will the Torus divulge the mysteries of the creation of the universe? Or will it, as some predict, suck the earth into a mini black hole? Or is the Torus a Satanic attempt, as a powerful televangelist decries, to challenge God Almighty on the very throne of Heaven?Twelve scientists under the leadership of Hazelius are sent to the remote mountain to turn it on, and what they discover must be hidden from the world at all costs. Wyman Ford, ex-monk and CIA operative, is tapped to wrest their secret, a secret that will either destroy the world...or save it.The countdown begins...

Giiny Comment :

It starts quietly but builds into a can't-put-down thriller that's as smart as it is fun to read. Don't worry about the physics -- those concepts make my head spin, but it didn't deter my enjoyment of this book in the least.

It's hard to imagine a thriller that is built around the science vs. religion hot bed not offending everyone, but this one manages to be though-provoking, fast-paced, and shouldn't offend anyone except the most extreme in either position.

A joy to read on so many levels. I liked Douglas Preston's books with Lincoln Child, but this one is in another category all together. It's great!

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The Road

The Road
Author Cormac McCarthy

The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith.

THE ROAD is a tremendous achievement, multi-layered, yet with enough surface story to attract mainstream readers. It resonates with classic allusions, simple parables, endearing moments, aphorisms, even some old testament language a la BLOOD MERIDIAN. In fact all of McCarthy's earlier novels are echoed here.

As with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, all of the doomsday clocks, both personal and communal, stop at 1:17, a reference to John 1:17 in the Book of Revelations. As with his previous novel, McCarthy names love as the one value worth living for in this vale of tears, the last thing to go.

Comic relief is provided in the form of Ely, the only named character in the book. Readers will have to judge for themselves whether they think that Ely is the prophet Elijah, Christ in ragged disguise, Buddha on the Road, or just a funny old man who speaks in koans.

THE ROAD will remind some of Jose Saramago's BLINDNESS, which won the Nobel Prize for that deserving author. Others will liken the beautiful writing to the very best of Ernest Hemingway--with the understatement one finds in BIG, TWO-HEARTED RIVER and THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.

Cliched? Not in this reader's eyes. Of course the great themes here have been rendered before in the classics, and books are made of books. I immediately recognized Homer's ghosts of hades in here, pointing and pleading and crying for help.

What is the quote in THE ROAD on page 110? "Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it." Which resonates to a quote from Marcus Aurielius, saying that a man ought to live his life as if borrowed, and that he ought to be prepared at any time to give it back, saying--here, I thank you for this life which I have had in my possession.

I found it uplifting. A testament to the condition of humanity and the nature of death and the riddle of existence. Universal themes, the greatest themes in our literature.

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A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
by Eckhart Tolle

Reading the other reviews of this extraordinary work, I see folks commenting on Eckhart Tolle's character, how much ego he has, how much money he makes, whether the ego is good or bad, etc. This is missing the entire point of A New Earth and The Power Of Now because these are observations of the mind.

We are clearly living in an insane world. As Eckhart says, we killed 100 million members of our own species just in the 20th century; we are busy destroying the ability of the planet we live on to support human life; murder, rape and hate blare at us every night from the TV; the government pays farmers not to grow food while children starve to death.

There is only one problem and there is only one solution for that problem and Eckhart has more lucidly presented this than any author I have ever read. The answers we crave CANNOT be found through thought. They can only be found in the stillness, in the present moment. What matters is this: will we take this message and use it in our own lives? Or not?

There is all kinds of evidence that species of animals and plants have suddenly taken a quantum leap up the evolutionary ladder. There is a 'critical mass' that is reached when enough members of a species adopt a new way of being. At that point, the rest of the biological group is brought along and the numbers required to bring this about aren't really that high. There is no doubt that we humans are on a course that will ultimately end in our extinction if there are not fundamental changes.

The solution lies in each one of us taking responsibility for our own consciousness. We have countless opportunities every day to practice living in the Now, just as Eckhart teaches. When I don't want to cook dinner, or wash the dishes, or weed the garden, or mop the floor, I can resentfully do these activities - or I can use them as opportunities to practice. My life is filled with increasing bliss and ecstasy. I constantly focus on JOY, just as he teaches. Instead of grumbling, I seek the joy in every mundane chore and, just as he says, the power of spirit flows into what I am doing.

Of the billions of people on this planet, only a relative handful of us will have the privilege of reading Eckhart Tolle's two awesome books. If you 'grok' what he is saying, then practice, practice, practice. If enough of us evolve spiritually, one of these days we will all evolve into beings that we can't even imagine right now. This is the greatest contribution we can ever make.

Personally, I have been reading spiritual books for 30+ years. I knew even as a small child that something fundamental was missing in my life, but I couldn't seek it because I didn't know what to look for. Now my heart is now full and I am at peace most of the time - and when I'm not, I know what the problem is and I know how to restore the peace. I am living in a heaven on earth! Thank you, Eckhart Tolle.

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