holabendez blog

Robert Langdon as the main protagonist? Check. A beautiful intelligent woman as the sidekick? Check. A mysterious organisation with a creepy antogonist trying to stop Langdon from uncovering a major secret? Check.

This is essentially “The Da Vinci Code” but with the Freemasons replacing the Catholic Church. It suffers from the relative lack of interest Freemasonry has over Catholicism, and the ending and the uncovered “secret” is incredibly bad. However, that aside, Dan Brown knows how to write a page turner with his trademark 2 page chapters. I actually quite enjoyed reading it, even if I was disappointed with the ending.

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I can’t believe they wrote another Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book. With all due respect to Eoin Colfer, who seems like a perfectly competent author – this book is completely and utterly unnecessary and appears nothing more than a money grabbing exercise. I would not expect anyone to be able to emulate Adams unique wit and style, and Colfer is no exception. This is a book I wish had never happened.

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This John Grisham novel is effectively about nothing. To boil it down simply, the book sets up an interesting, but not particularly original premise and continues for a few hundred pages and then ends quite unsatisfactorily. Almost felt like Grisham hit his page number target and thought “Okay, that’s it then, time to wrap it up, send it to the publisher and then cash in my ridiculously large check”.

I’ve heard that Shia LaBeouf is in talks to star in the movie adaptation. I can’t imagine what sort of film this would actually turn out to be.

Two stars.

I recently finished reading "The Road" which is the most recent book by Cormac McCarthy, the guy who wrote "No Country For Old Men". I can kind of see why he’s the "it" writer at the moment. He writes in a kind of "arty" style that makes you feel like you’re reading something more sophisticated and high brow than the usual commercial paperback.

It’s the story of a man and his boy walking along the road in a post-apocalyptic future, and just trying to survive. It was okay. They’re making it into a movie with Viggo Mortensen. I’ll be curious to see how that turns out.

I finished reading the first of the Dune Chronicle books, and can definitely say I’m a fan. Dune is as epic as a book can be. Not in weightiness like “The Lord of the Rings” but in it’s scope as an enormous all encompassing story on a grand scale that plays itself out over a great many books.

Frank Herbert’s style is easy to read and not overly elaborate which make what has the potential to be extremely confusing subject matter, very accessible and tells an interesting tale.

I remember playing the video game when I was a kid, and not understanding the context behind any of it, now it all makes sense. I hear they’re making a movie of it, to be directed by Peter Berg. I look forward to it.