"Brain" By Dr Robin Cook

On a recent sunday while dusting my closet(often on sundays I do it..now thats a revelation) I found an old book of mine "Brain" by Robin Cook. Interestingly I did'nt read this book as a serious reader but it was to just kill time while travelling in local trains in Mumbai. My dad being a doctor I was quite familiar to medical terms and Brain itself sounded so intriguing for a topic to read on. Brain has been quite a fascination with scientists since ages and till date we have not been able to decode it. Robin Cook is famous for his medical thrillers which have futuristic element to it and this book is no different. Completely engrossing and cant-be-put-down-for-a-moment kind of book.

The story is mostly about Katherine Collins who goes to a hospital called GYN where she undergoes treament for some gynac problems. Simaltaneously she starts having seizeures where in she smells a repulsive and oddly familiar smell and then loses consciousness. The story revolves around the protagonist Dr. Martin Philips from then on, who is a doctor in neurophysiology at the NYC medical center. Dr. Martin Philips, a 41 year old is involved in creating a self-diagonstic x-ray machine, along with Michael, who is a researcher at MIT and also head of the department of artificial intelligence. His girlfriend and colleague Dr.Denise Sanger (28 years old) is also involved in the same hospital.

The story proceeds with the hospital working being shown where Dr. Mannerheim is to operate on a girl named Lisa Marino who is a seizure patient. She is set to undergo a brain operation to get rid of a part of her brain cells which her doctors say is causing her seizures. The symptoms are described same as like Kathereine Collins only stronger.

However, when Dr. Philips starts to discover a conspiracy involving usage of human test subjects, he is drawn into a world that is deceiving and dangerous.

It still amazes me that such an extraordinary masterpiece was written in 1981 when people would have hardly known anything about artificial intelligence. Also Dr Cook with his varied imagination peeps into the future to find out how Super Computers of tomorrow would work, his hypothesis is that they would be a computer wired to a human brain (Phew!!!). Very interesting and rivetting novel with great intensity and thrill at every moment, especially the description of Katherine being unconcious on return home in the elevators and when she gains consciousness finds herself being visited by her parents and police as she has been missing since some days gives you goose bumps.

The book is available for free download on Google books, so that means you dont have to clean the dirty closets on sundays to grab your copy of the book as I did. Nevertheless the effort was worth it!!!

Eleven Minutes By Paulo Coelho

I was deeply impressed by "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho and hence I picked up this book from the stands (needless to say a paperback edition). The book eleven minutes is a translation of a book written by Paulo Coelho in Portuguese named "Onze Minutos".
Maria, from the interior of Brazil, goes to seek her fortune in Switzerland, only to find that reality is harsher than she expected and she ends up working in a brothel on Rue de Berne, the heart of Geneva's red-light district.

The book deals with the quest for real love of the central character Maria. She enters a life that leads her down the path of sexual awakenings and almost leads to her self-destruction when she is introduced to all sides of sexual experience. When she has given up hope to find true love she meets a painter with whom she falls in love. And she must now choose where she is to take her life. Either to let it lead her or finally take control of her life and end this subtle self-destructive life she is leading. Just like many of Coelho's books, this book is also about a journey of self-discovery that leads the reader into understanding the issues of sex (in prostitution), sacred sex, and sex in the context of love.

The book is pretty graphic in its descriptions and can be termed as erotic meant for matured audiences. The only thing I liked about is the no nonsense way of putting intricacies of sex for a purpose of self-discovery. Just imagine any Indian author doing it!!! But on the other hand, there is hardly any story telling in the book and makes you feel like you are watching a much chewed script of an old hindi movie. Girl comes out of a small town, falls into prostitution racket and the finally finds a perfect match.

All in all, this book is not in the ranks of other books by Paulo "The Alchemist" or "Winner Stands Alone" because of its dull story telling, which has been a strong point for all Paulo books. But we all know what a wonderful writer he is and he has put such a difficult subject on paper with such ease.