read the lightning thief by Rick Riordan yesterday...stayed up until 3:00am reading the book and then got exactly 4 hours of sleep before rushing to office...oddly enough, i feel sleepy now ;-)
anyway, the book is a good read...if i have to compare it with any of it's peers, i would say that it comes close to book 1 of the harry potter series and book 1 of the bartimaeus series...let me explain...the plot is a light, uncomplicated one like the sorcerer's stone and the writing style is slightly humourous like the amulet of samarkand...
compared to these books of course, the inheritance series seems to be an epic worthy of comparison with lord of the rings.
on to other topics...i am getting rather tired of writing about disasters and calamities...but what is happening in Paris cannot be ignored. psychologists can probably try and make sense of it, but to me it appears very simple: years of xenophobia and discrimination combined with a mutual mistrust among people are taking their toll...of course, the explanation could also have been simpler...a bunch of gangs fighting each other for turf...but that brings us to a more fundamental question...why do ghettoes exist...which takes us back to the first explanation.
Amalgamation of people from various communities is a must for mistrust to go away...that of course, is like saying...you need trust for mistrust to disappear...which needn't be said anyway.
what saddens me though...is that though the world is becoming more global than before, people do not want to live in harmony with each other. why should looks, relegion, occupation matter when you want to live peacefully with your neighbour.
whether it is judaism or christianity or islam or hinduism or buddhism or jainism or any other relegion...
i) most seem to have common origins and epics (noah, abraham, matsya avatar)
ii) all preach exactly the same thing in multiple languages.
so, why do we need to try and alienate people based on different forms of the same words?
that reminds me...there is this really wonderful site called http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm
this has the most comprehensive english translations of most ancient relegious texts that i have seen...a must see for all those who have not been there yet..
nothing more for now...off for lunch and a bunch of meetings. more later.
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