I haven't written a book review in ages.
And I don't know why I want to do this now.
Most likely cos I blabbered about the importance of books.
So, *tada* I am reading books now.

: The Da Vinci Code : Dan Brown :

I read this book cos of all the hype about it. Basically it can be considered a good book cos it keeps the reader flipping through the pages and it drops all sorts of clues here and there for the reader to follow.

It's actually a book that kinda debunks the modern Christian religion in general. It's story is about the journey of a young lady together with a expert symbologist on their quest to decode a message that was left behind for them by a man who was murdered. This man happens to be the Grand Master of an ancient brotherhood which is protecting an ancient secret about the origins of Jesus. Read up about it here.

For non-Christians, you will be as baffled as me cos I had no previous knowledge about the origins of Christianity anyway. Even so, it still is a good read cos I loved all those clues left for me to decode. It's like reading a Sherlock Holmes case and trying to solve it. For Christians, I guess they will have loads to say about how the book is so untrue. Well, I don't really care about how true those stuff are, but I enjoyed learning about his alternative theories on Christianity and the modern Church.

Overall, I recommend it to all readers who do not hate reading about stuff they don't understand. If you are too young, maybe not. It requires a certain amount of maturity to understand the big picture of what it is trying to say.

Sidenote: I heard that they are going to make a movie out of this and Tom Hanks is starring as the lead, Robert Langdon. Yay, I will watch it :)

: 26th Mar 2005 : 1849hrs :

: The Joy Luck Club : Amy Tan :

I started reading this cos at the back of my mind, I've always wanted to source out all the 'famous' books and really read them for myself. So there, one day, I found this book in a friend's house. And he didn't want it anymore, so now the book is mine. HA.

Anywayz, this is actually a literature book. A friend enlightened me on that fact. It's about 4 Chinese mothers and their American-Chinese daughters. It's writing style is somewhat different. Not a continuous story but anecdotes in each person's point of view. So the rough story is that one of these 4 women started the idea of having this Joy Luck Club which is supposed to bring joy and luck to the lives of those who are in the club. And they meet regularly to discuss things in their life, play some mahjong and relax.

So, okay, this book was not too bad for me. Partly because I could relate to the chinese situation that the author was in. [FYI: she's a chinese born in America] I could understand the chinese words that the author was trying to write out, although it was in horribly atrocious hanyu pinyin. It was probably for the sake of the un-Chinese-educated people's convenience. Try reading this: waigoren, shemma, jrdaule, gwan deng shweijyau. If you can understand them at first look, ok you're good. Anyway, they respectively mean: foreigner, what?, i know, off the lights and go to sleep. There's a lot of these chinese words in not-so-correct hanyu pinyin all around the book. Adds a touch of our chinese culture into it. Makes it more familiar for us.

I would dare say guys wouldn't want to read this book. Haha, dunno why, just a personal feeling. Even so, I recommend it for a boring day when you really have nothing better to do =)

: 14th Jan 2005 : 0100hrs :