Want a Laugh?– Do it slowly!

My editor sent me the following link to get a perspective on what an editor said about Dan Brown’s “The Symbol”.  Take a look and have a laugh.

Click here for the link

New Readings: Tony Blair’s “A Journey: My Political Life”

This book looks to be a must read to get a glimpse of the British perspective on 9/11, the war in Iraq, al Qaeda, and WMDs.  I say that because of Blair’s interview with CNN’s Wolfe Blitzer a few days back.  In the interview Blair staunchly defended the decision to enter Iraq for two reasons: first, 9/11 changed the game in terms of the US/British perspective on tolerance for countries and terrorists supporting WMDs and second, that Saddam Hussein had the knowledge, people, intent, history of use of chemical weapons, and was about to restore the means (through oil sales) to be able to export the Iraqi developments in WMDs.

It’s then logical (at least to me) that if you accept that Saddam needed to be eliminated from power and Iraq’s military/industrial complex needed to be crippled, then you end up having to also commit to rebuilding the country afterwards in order to preserve stability in the region.  So, what’s debatable then is whether the cost of what unfolded in economic terms (and the US government taking its eye off the economy at home) and human terms was ever really anticipated and ever really justified.

What’s really interesting about the interview (and I hope the book) is that Blair admits the intelligence failures about Iraq’s “first strike” (my term not his) readiness to use stockpiles of WMDs that were never found after the 2003 invasion.  Yet he defends the coalition’s actions based on the factors above, regardless of Iraq’s WMD readiness.

More of a review once I’ve read the book. And if any of you want to post something about the book after you read it, let me know what you’re thinking.

Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The weight of our soul? Now that is an interesting question and the most mind flexing idea in Dan Brown’s, The Lost Symbol. I found myself holding my breath until the elaborate precise scale described, had locked in the final weight of a dead body after the soul had left it. An intriguing thought.

I am a great Dan Brown fan and I have and will read every word he writes. But The Lost Symbol was a bit of a let down. Too many words describing even the smallest movement of the characters left me unable to hate, love or empathize with their problems. And the wandering in one door, underground and then into the streets of Washington DC had me searching for a map to orient myself and I lived in the DC area for five years.

Professor Robert Langdon was the only character genuine to me. And that is probably because once you have a great actor like Tom Hanks (The Da Vinci Code) in your head, he stays.

TMF (too many facts) made me feel I would fail the final exam because I hadn’t taken notes during my reading. I love history and mingling fact with fiction certainly makes the fiction more believable but this was OTT (over the top).

In spite of all that I can’t wait to read what Dan Brown comes up with next! Perhaps he will postulate a method for transference of a soul. Wouldn’t it be great to salt everyone’s soul with a pinch of Mother Teresa, Gandhi or Martin Luther King. What an amazing world this would be?