The Eagle Has Landed

 

 

Well I picked this because I simply loved "The Day of Jackal" by Frederic Forsyth and another of his book and my research of this book told me that Jack Higgins if not better than Frederic is in the same league and Eagle Has Landed surpasses The Day of the Jackal.

 

Unfortunately whenever you have high expectations from something it generally disappoint, even if if it has been good if not compared.

 

The story depicts how Hitler orders his General to plan to kidnap Winston Churchil from Britain so that it will turn the tide of the World War II back in favor of Germany and how one of his Major devises the whole plan in which 16 paratroopers were to land in a small coastal village of England where Churchil was planning to spend a quite weekend. The book narates how they prepared to carry out the capture with the help of an old lady who was residing in that small town and was serving Germany as a spy since a long time with the sole hope of causing damage to Britain and an IRA soldier Liam Devlin who reached the village early and made all the arrangements. Like Day of the Jackal this too unfolds a meticulously planned plot which some how fails due to an act of bravery and sacrifice by a German soldier for the people of that village.

 

Honestly I did not like this book as much as I loved The Day of the Jackal. Yes Jack Higgins is comparable to Frederic Forsyth but the content and execution comes just short off.

 

Before I come to why so, let me first list down the pros of this book

 

Pros
1. The subject of Adolf Hitler ordering the kidnap of Winston Churchil right in the fag end of World War II is indeed quite fascinating and attractive.
2. Naratives and the charatcers are really admirable and to an extent lovable.
3. Despite it being a war / assassination themed story, there is large scale humane touch in it. It characters make you think that everything is not black and white in war. Even in the enemy ranks there are people who are good and likable.
4. Like I mentioned for The Day of the Jackal, despite you knowing that its a fictious failed attempt you crave for it to succeed.

 

Cons
1. Well the fact that the Day of the Jackal mentions to you in the second page itself that assassination attempt failed ,you still till the last page hoped for them to succeed. But in this book that feeling was not strong enough and you somehow were hoping it to fail sooner than later.
2. The books could had a few more twists and turns :) It looked too plain and simple at times.
3. For me the book failed to keep me revited to it as can be seen from the fact that it took me almost 2 months to finish.
4. Some questions were left unanswered in the end which I would have loved to know about.

 

Overall I would have give it 3 and 1/2 rating.

 

I can't say if I would like to read more from this author but as they say you never know when you might fall in love with a book ;)

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is 1925 novel by F Scott Fitzgerald

The book was recommended to me by my fellow blogger and friend Maverick and since recently a motion picture was released based on the same, so I was also eager to read it before watching the film.

The book is reminiscent of a classic with its elaborate and almost poetic rendition of nature and surroundings and is considered quite popular for creating and depicting the period before the constitution of the American Dream.

Its the story of an extremely rich guy Jay Gatsby, narrated in the words of his neighbor , Nick Carraway. Nick was a bond salesman who was trying to make his own on the East side of America and Gatsby was his next door neighbor who used to throw lavish parties, full with sea of people every day, which used to run till wee hours of next day. Nick too got invited to one of these parties , where he finds that most of the guests don't know Gatsby and have only heard unconfirmed rumors about his claim to fame and inheritance. 

Nick initially thought that Gatsby was friendly to him due to their common war background but later gets to know that his proximity was more due to the fact that Gatsby once had a small fling with Nick's cousin Daisy in past , who was now married with a kid to Tom Buchanan ; And Gatsby was still in love with her and Nick could be instrumental in getting them together.

So the book covers how their relation and past unfolds leading to intense drama and murder.

To be honest it cannot be termed as a great read but at the same time it had some uniqueness which makes one glued to reading it.

I liked the flow of the story despite the fact that the story has not much to offer. But as I said it had a classic sense of drama which narrates a simple period story at its own comfortable pace. 

The fact that its been told from the perspective of Nick Carraway instead of Gatsby gives an added punch to the book.

I will rate it as a light read and one that should be enjoyed by ardent readers.

Next up will try to see the motion picture to give visual to the imaginations that the book has created.

The Black Dahlia

I completed reading The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy.

Its a fictional take on the 1947's still unsolved brutal murder of a young lady in Los Angles. The lady was christened as Black Dahlia because of her customary black outfit seen in her file photos.

The story revolves around two detectives Lee Blanchard and Dwight Bleichert, who start as boxing rivals, then becomes best friends when they start working as partners and then get overly obsessed with the Black Dahlia case which eventually leads to destroying both their personal and police life.

Although an engrossing book that makes you read it till the end, every time you pick it up, but somehow it falls short of creating the suspense and passion that one expects with a crime mystery.

No doubt the book is full of twists and new disclosures every now and then but somehow it fails to stir any awe or shock within me.

The description of the dead body and how the murder was conducted is quite brutal and violent and the flow of the story too is well paced.

Not a highly recommended book but you can give it a try if you feel like reading crime novels.

:-( :-| :-)

Its stupidly strange that I still identify someone even from the sound of their sneeze :-(

Even after experiencing so many yekkkk moment after watching it, I still make myself watch Dil Chahta hai. And now I will have to bear the consequences :-|

BTW I am reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Story of guy who time travels. So far so good :)

Quote..

Well this one is from the latest book that I finished "1984 by George Orwell".

In the AfterWord given by P K Das, he interprets this thought from the book (little improvised)

"We humans are building machines that we want should behave as humans and at the same time we are developing humans that we want to be like machines "

Quite true.....

Well as far as the book is concerned its a kind of negative utopia, which projects a world in which humans don't have any human qualities. Quite a philosophical and sociological book.

Will recommend to people who want to increase their vocabulary as the language is heavy and well articulated.

Midnight's Children

Midnight’s Children

I completed this book on April 24th but did not get time to complete this post...so finally decided its time. :)

Well every time I finish a novel (read as a non detective or non adventurous book), I feel like writing or saying “Finally I completed it”, as somehow I had stopped reading that in between or just wasn’t interested in completing but anyways had to. But this time although Midnight’s children took me almost 25-30 days to complete (In my defence :) its 645 page book with some heavy English and I also have other businesses to attend too :)) but the routine of reading it daily from 10.30 to 12 at night and then in the morning while travelling in bus till it starts giving a headache (again in my defence :) its tough to read such small characters in a shaking bus), in short the effort I had put to complete it never made me feel that I am doing it uninterested, although I was under pressure to finish it asap as I had to return it. But nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Most of the people with whom I talked, have dropped it after scrapping through the initial few pages, this gave me the further motivation to read it.

The preface has a write up from Salman Rushdie where he talks about the inspiration behind the various characters and the story, which indeed generates a lot of interest about the book.

Well alike everyone, reading through the initial pages was quite tough owing to the use of language and also the build up that he used, it was difficult to understand what he is trying to say, what relation each incident had with the previous one but once you are done through that you find the story quite intriguing.

Well Midnight’s Children is the story of a person who is born at the stroke of Midnight and that too not an ordinary midnight, it’s the midnight of August 15th, 1947 when India got its independence, a child who is as old as the Indian subcontinent. It’s a story of Saleem Sinai and his family. Its traces his journey starting from that minute of 00:00 of 15th August 1947 till the time this book is written, infact even before that, covering every significant incident that shaped the history of Indian subcontinent in those 30 odd years.

And believe me, for a guy who was not there when all this happened (I was born in the year 1984) to get to know about his country's past and that too a fictional first hand account of those incidents although in an unconventional way was really quite interesting and binding.

It touches the Jalianwala Massacre from a person's point who was not part of the procession but who was there and survived that event, thus making you think about that evil event but at the same time make you think over it from a perspective of a person who was not effected by it. (difficult for me to put in words)

It traces the journey of Saleem Sinhai from the time when he was not even conceived. It talks about the freedom movement of India from a perspective which is so different from the one told in History books, as if giving you a first hand account but at the same time giving you the impression that as if its an event associated with a small bunch of person and not the whole country, how it shaped few individuals life and how their personal events influenced the whole country.

It talks about thousand odd children who were born in that hour of midnight , all of whom had special powers. Powers like reading people's mind, changing form freely from man to woman or vice versa, making things invisible, moving from one place to another through any medium,having a face thats brighter than sun and many more.

But Saleem who had the power to read people's mind was more special as he wanted to use all these midnight's children's power for the betterment of the scoiety, who was special because he was the eldest, born at the stoke of midnight, who received a letter of congratulation from Pandit Nehru, whose photo was published in newspaper. He was the Choosen One but ironically all the prophecy was not at all meant for him.

The story is so full of turns and twists. Incidents which you want to believe and at the same time you think this can't be real.

It talks of the formation of Maharastra and Gujurat and at the same time associated Saleem, the child, with giving the slogan for that. It talks of the biggest extra maritial scandal to hit India in that time when the navy officer who was slated to be the Admiral of Indian Navy found out about his wife's adultery and how he was led to her and her lover's murder again by Saleem Sinhai.

It talks of the first military coup of Pakistan and how Saleem was again associated with that incident, gave a first hand account of all that happened on the eve and again from a very different perspective.

It talks about the war of 1971, when Bangladesh came into existence and how again Saleem was there at the time of its creation, fighting on behalf of Pakistan.

Then I guess the boldest part was the account of Emergency that hit India when Indira Gandhi goverened everything with an iron hand plunging India into emergency. OMG, wish I was there to see the reactions of Indira Gandhi when this book was published. In the preface Salman says that Mrs Gandhi only objected to one para where he talks about Sanjay Gandhi blaming Indira Gandhi for her father's death apart from that she din't object to anything else, thats pretty hard to digest. This book really showed her as a very dark character.

This book again talks about how Saleem was there when Sanjay Gandhi did all that he did i.e. the cleaning of all the slums.

In all when the book finished, it made me wish that how good it had been had Salman Rushdie continued it to the present year, covering every incident that happened from 1984 till date, so that I can also participate in them. How I should have exclaimed at knowing, Oh so this is the inside story....

Hats off to Salman Rushdie..He is indeed a bold and quite an intelligent and knowledgable writer.... Wish I could take out time to read Satanic Verses (I have many other books to read, I have already completed Love Story by Eric Segal, Godfather by Mario Puzo and Angels & Demons by Dan Brown..will write about those in other posts) which got him the fatwa..I have a pdf version which is difficult to read and the book is banned from being sold/published in Indian sub continent.

I wanted to write a lot about this book Midnight's Children but I guess it has so many twists and secrets that I don't want to give away anything..so do read it...I won't say it deserves the Best of Booker Prize or not before I happen to read all the other Booker Prize winners but its indeed a must read book.