Post 4

For my fourth post, I am reading The Wolf of Wall Street. So far, it is a very interesting book. It is very highly acclaimed also, and has a movie adaptation. So you know it's good. ( I will try to put some humor into this post).

First off is the content of the book. It is about the life of Jordan Belfort, a man who basically made a money printing machine from the way he describes his investing firm, Stratton-Oakmont. However, it is a legitimate company, even though it's owner and workers do so much illegal stuff that they could go to jail for millions of years. I mean really, at one point the guy almost crashes his helicopter because he is flying under the influence, and then he gets really high and shoots at his mailman with a shotgun!

Also, the book is based off of stock trading. Or at least all of the crazy stuff you can do once you get rich off stock trading. The book never really explains how it works, so you are left with crazy business jargon that no one understands. However, this doesn't take up the majority of the book, so I don't really mind. Overall, it's a good book so far.

Post 3

Post 3 Independent Reading

By Seth Gerus

 

 

For my third post, I'm again talking about my book Inferno by Dan Brown. This post won't be a summary of what I've read, but more of a rating of the book. So far, I have some thoughts on it.

 

 First off, after the weird start, the book proceeds in normal fashion. Langdon escapes the bad guys, he meets new female sidekick, they find convenient clues left by bad guy, so on. But Brown usually makes this all interesting with history and cool action scenes. Not this time. Brown apparently was feeling lazy, so the chase involves way too much drama, confusing ideas, and just plain boring reading.

 

 And then there's the ending. Just when everything kind of seems resolved, it turns out that the protagonists are in the wrong temple in the wrong country, that their allies are their enemies, and that the bad guy's plot wasn't even to kill anyone! Overall, Inferno was more of a shameless money grab by Brown than an actually good novel of his that was confusing, long, and frankly, boring. But hey, I got post 3 done.





Post 2 Independent Reading

Post 2 Independent Reading

By Seth Gerus

 For my second post I'm talking about my independent reading book, Inferno  by Dan Brown. I chose this book because I had read other Dan Brown novels and they were very good reads. They referenced history, had action, and had some very surprising plot twists.

In the part I'm reading right now, the main character Robert Langdon, a symbologist and historian at Harvard, wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy. The doctors say that they are treating him for a gunshot wound that grazed his skull and gave him amnesia, nearly killing him. As they talk, a woman with a pistol enters the hospital, going to Langdon's room. As she enters, she guns down one of the doctors, and almost kills Langdon. With the assistance of another doctor, Sienna Brooks, Langdon is able to escape the killer.

 Up to this point, this book has been very interesting. Inferno does not start off in typical Dan Brown fashion, with the first part of the mystery usually being presented to the reader. The book instead places Langdon in an unfamiliar situation with no explanation. So far, I like the new style Brown is trying and I hope the book continues to be surprising.