Gulliver’s Travels - A book review
February 25, 2008Posted by mmarvs in : Books
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By Sara García Ruisánchez
I am sure that you have heard about Lilliputians but do you know where do they come from? They live in Lilliput, the island where Lemuel Gulliver arrived after a shipwreck. Gulliver’s Travels is a book written by Jonathan Swift in 1726 and tells us the story of the different adventures that the main character Lemuel Gulliver, an intelligent and well-educated man, lives in his travels.
The book is divided in four parts that correspond to the main worlds he visits. In each island he finds very different and outstanding things. That is the case of Lilliput, a place inhabited by dwarf individuals, or Brobdingnag the opposite extreme where inhabitants were giants. No less surprising were the island of Laputa or the land populated by Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses who had the power.
The Rising Sun - A book review
February 25, 2008Posted by mmarvs in : Books
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by Raquel González
During the 80´s all mass media talked about the economic Japanese invasion. This happened, specially, in USA where a number of companies were forced to sell their shares to Japanese firms since they couldn´t compete against its pressure. As a result of this situation, writers as Michael Crichton used their “pens” to denounce the lack of state barriers to fight against the Japanese threat.
Bearing in mind this background, all of these intrigues are described in “Rising Sun”, a story set in Los Angeles – California – during the 80´s where two detectives get involved in the investigation of a murder. The lifeless body of a young beautiful woman is found inside a building whose owner turns out to be a powerful Japanese company which has just established in USA with the aim of taking over “Microcon”, a famous computer company.
Throughout the investigation the two detectives will have to deal with plenty of intrigues, forging of evidence, blackmails etc. But thanks to the skills of an I.T. student the detectives manage to unmask the identity of the murderer and the motive of the crime.
The Book of Illusions - A book review
February 25, 2008Posted by mmarvs in : Books
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A book review by Verónica Díaz Suárez.
“… now I understood why they had chosen to call their place the Blue Stone Ranch. He had already seen that stone, and he knew that it didn’t exist, that the life they were about to build for themselves was founded on an illusion”.
Illusion, this is the most important word that we can learn in that psychological novel. It shows us how a man’s obsession with a silent-film star sends him on a journey into a shadow world of lies, illusions and unexpected love. The author gives us the opportunity of thinking about if a man lives a life that nobody else notices, did he really live?
The plot centres on David Zimmer’s life, a literature professor, who has lost his wife and his two little sons in a plane crash. That horrible day is the beginning of the end. He starts to be a depressed bitter person and he doesn’t find any sense in taking his own life again breaking off all contact with the people in his former life. One day, in which he has drunk a lot in front of the television, he watches a short clip of a Hector Mann movie, one of the latest actors of silent films who has disappeared in the forties without a trace. Mann makes Zimmer burst into laughter after too many months without any hope and with the awful idea of committing suicide on his mind. That moment of laughter makes him realize that there is still something inside him that wants to live, and he realizes he needs a purpose, something to occupy his mind and to get him through every day. David decides to write a book about Hector Mann’s life: his movies and his briefly but intense career on silent films.
