Sewing machine and cold weekend

This weekend was I guess more full of activities then any I had spent in SF. I got the cold at the right moment, eod Friday, so Saturday I was down with that cold and remained in my rajai almost whole day, convincing myself that this is the best thing for me, and reading book. It was nice in a way. Sunday was little better, so I dared to go all the way to library and got a bunch of books. Came home and my land lady was struggling with her sewing machine. She asked me, do you know anything about sewing machines. Well, do I know anything, not really except seeing my mom making dresses for me every summer. But anyway, I wanted to help her, we looked at her machine, and I ended up spending 4 hours cleaning, trying to make it work, recleaning and retrying. We used all funds of mechanics to understand why it was not working. And what do I say, these complicated machinery of present day!! All we had to do was press a button, and boom! there you go :D

Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov

This is the 4th book in foundation series. This book is filled with even more bizzare concepts than the first three, and there are few things which are just beyond understanding or explaination. If you try to understand the book and why some things happen they way they do, you have to really stretch your imagination to the point where it can break and everything look like a hallucination. For the prople who loved the first three foundations books, I would say that if you have not read this one, you are surely missing something. If you want to start the foundation series with this book, then I would say, give it a second thought. Whatever the author says, according to me, to fully appreciate the book, you need the background. (unless ofcourse you have a out of the world imagination :))

Friday 23/7/04

End of another week in San Francisco. Nothing exciting happening this weekend, planning to sit in the public library and look at some spanish stuff. Recently I have been planning to get something new done with my hair, maybe a new style. That might also materialize this weekend, although according to me, summer is not at all the right time to change your hairstyle as you cannot hide behind a scarf. Still I think I'll give it a shot, at present there does not seem to be anything to loose ;)

The Foundation Triology - Isaac Asimov

This series of three books consists of Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. I am writing the review for all the three together as its hard to see these books separately. The official claim (which is I guess true) is that each book is complete in itself and you do not have to read the earlier ones to understand the later ones. But for me, I would say that it was hard to be satisfied with reading just one. I actually started the series with Foundation and Empire, but halfway through the book, I realized that I want to read the first book first. So I went to Foundation and then read all the three in order. These are one of the best Sci-fi books I have read. The books are written well, author gives you enough time to grasp all the concepts of space settlements, millions of world, gazillions of people, space travel, hyper-jump and what not. Though I was surprised by the absense of robots in these books, but maybe that was because I had been reading only the robot books of Asimov earlier. I would say that this is a must read for anyone interested in spreading humanity on other planets.

Mt Hood camping trip

I have written a account of our camping trip to Mt. Hood, columbia river gorge in Oregon this long weekend (july 4, 2004) at http://rahulandtulika.blogspot.com/
I still have to figurout how to upload the photos.

Tell Me Your Dreams - Sidney Sheldon

Just finished this one. An interesting reading, plot not very original, but there are definately surprises in the book. The main character suffers from multiple personality disorder, you can guess that after reading first few pages, though the author wanted it to come as a surprise at the end of first part. There is little dramatization which feels very unreal. In all a nice reading.

Long time, something new

ok, its been looong time since I posted anything, so many things are happening, that its hard to keep up. Went camping over the long weekend, it was usual fun, no surprises this time ;). Anyway, today's posting is about the new blogger that I have created where I (and hopefully Rahul also) are going to post our opinion about the books that we read. here is the URL, would be interesting!!
http://bookreviewsbyus.blogspot.com/
comments are ob welcome :)

Prelude to Foundation - Isaac Asimov

Completed this book few days back and to be frank, it was a disappointment. I have read the first three books in the series, Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. I loved all the three books, but after them, Prelude to Foundation appeared pretty boring. The book seems to spend pages on small unnecessary details. As we say 'kheencha hua hai'. The end was indeed a happy surprise (especially for those who also like Asimov's robot novels), but for length of the book, there was not much matter.