A Journey Beyond The Logical Mind

Salam to all.

Cecilia Ahern and Dan Brown are no stranger in MPH's Top 10 bestseller's list and not surprisingly, other bestseller's list around the globe. 'Apa yang best sangat?' sparked my interest to read and this is what I think of some of their creative work.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

Slower, is a word to describe it. To me, Angels and Demons (A&D) gave more chills and thrills. It's not fair to judge this novel based on its sister novel, but well, people tend to make their first encounter as a benchmark for everything else. Yes, I would recommend reading A&D first because it's the prequel to Da Vinci but I kinda feel a lil bit disappointed because Da Vinci has less 'action' that I anticipated out of Brown's novel. Da Vinci explores more deeply into historical information *Call me a skeptic~* but I find some of them quite interesting, like the secret messages behind Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Da Vinci shares one major similarity with A&D, though and *Spoiler Alert!!* it involves the word trust. I have to admit that I'm more interested in following the trail of clues and finding the location of the treasure than to read about the Knight's Templar and all the stuff in between. *Spoiler Alert!!* At first I thought that the location would not be revealed, but regardless whether it's true or not, I felt relieved knowing that the mystery is solved. The title.. yes, definitely there's a connection to the story but the cover.. hmmm.. I don't know, too monotonous? But then again, like the moral of the story, Don't judge a book by its Cover!
Language: 3 out of 5.
Overall rating : 3.5 out of 5.


Where Rainbows End by Cecilia Ahern.

'One-of-a-kind' definitely describes this novel. I'm amazed that a 'flowing' story can actually be told in a series of letters, emails, chatroom messages, etc, etc.. The first person point of view actually gives an extra emotional feeling to some of the stuff, particularly the letter from Alex to Rosie. The characters are funny and they really showed the true meaning of love. This novel doesn't constrict love to just the two-person relationship but also highlighted family love, friendship love, employer-employee love and teacher-student love (okay, just a lil bit la). As lovely as how the story ends however, I DO NOT want this as my story, thank you very much. Why? *Spoiler Alert* It took them SO LONG to be happy and before that is achieved, her life is so.. so.. so full of unfortunate events! The message is quite similar to that of P.S. I Love You; you MUST get up after every fall.
Language : 2 out of 5.
Overall rating: 4 out of 5.


The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

This is my third experience reading Brown's novel and somehow I sensed that the writing style is a little bit different. This one has more monologue (and I admit to skip the ones I find boring) and there are more female characters (Ironically, there's no trace of sparks whatsoever. Not that I'm disappointed or anything..). Anyway, perhaps due to my lack of background knowledge about the Masons and buildings of Washington D.C. that I find it harder to maintain interest in the the main storyline. I loved reading about the Noetic Science, though. To me it's just WOW although I have to keep reminding myself that I'm reading a novel and not a science text to 100% believe what was mentioned. In the novel it says that when yogis are in deep meditation, a waxlike substance can be produced from the pineal gland. The substance has incredible healing effect and can regenerate cells.. One thing keeps popping in my mind is the relationship between the quality of concentration in solat (khusyu') and the effect on our body. That is why we have to khusyu' in solat... Reading this book in a certain way does help to increase our imaan. But then again, in my frank opinion, a certain precaution needs to be taken so that there won't be any slightest thought in our mind that is against the teachings of Islam as this novel deals with a human wanting to become god and stuff like that.
Language : 3 out of 5.
Overall rating: 3 out of 5.

P/s: From now on, this will be my criteria for rating a book;

Language: 1 (very easy, easier than language used in daily conversation and reading); 2 (easy, like the language used daily); 3 (so-so, can survive without dictionary) ; 4 (hard, a dictionary is helpful in understanding the storyline) ; 5 (very hard, either it is too scientific or too linguistic or maybe it's a totally different language)

Overall rating : 1 (not recommended at all, don't waste your time on this book); 2 (not so recommended, you can read it if you want but it's definitely not worth to spend your money on it. Just download the pdf format if you really want to read it) ; 3 (acceptable, but I've read better books) ; 4 (recommended, well-developed storyline, enjoyable, makes me realise something I haven't ); 5 (highly recommended, worth every cent! )

Oh by the way, I'm looking forward to Bee Tea End!!! Mwahahaha!!