The Witch of Portobello .. By Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is one of the few writers who keeps surprising us with his amazing stories, not to mention his absolutely wonderful writing and different styles of narration in each of his books.

The Witch of Portobello is again a very mystical and psychological story about a mysterious gypsy girl with psychic powers who frees herself from conventions of the society and is killed in an attempt to bring her ideas of God being mother into this world. The story of her life is narrated in the form of interviews with different people who has known her throughout her life.

I had my doubts when I first started reading it because it felt a bit philosophical. However, I was quite literally surprised to find this book curiously unique and one of a kind. The story was very different and the thing that I liked most about this book was the interesting blend of mysticism and storytelling. 

I would most definitely recommend this book to the readers who are looking for some fresh story and has a taste for some philosophical musings.

Happy Reading!!!

The Mayan Prophecy # 1 .. By Steve Alten

This is the first book of the Mayan Trilogy created by Steve Alten based on the well-known prophecy of Mayan Calendar that tells us that the world was supposed to end on 21 Dec 2012.

Ironically, this book was published in 2001 and I read this book last year, long after the 2012-world-ending fuss was over. However, I still found this book intriguing and entertaining because it has a well-researched plot and the author captures the interest of the reader till the end.

The story is of an archeologist, Julius Gabrial, who uncovers startling discoveries about the Mayan Calendar, that is a 2500-year-old enigma, which predicts the end of humanity off the face of the earth.

He connects the dots between the meaning of the ancient sites placed by the Mayan people in various locations around the Globe, linked to the salvation of our species. These sites include the Stone Henge, the Egyptian Pyramids etc.

Only Julius's son, Michael Gabriel, can decipher this puzzle passed along by his father in the form of a journal. However, he is incapable of any action, as he is locked in an asylum where he has been wrongly incarcerated for the past eleven years. As the calendar is ticking down to the date of the winter solstice, Michael has only a few days left to stop the strange phenomena starting to appear all around the world.

Although the concept wasn't new, the story was quite fascinating with a combination of few facts and fiction. However, there were some loose ends to the story that seemed pretty far-fetched in my opinion. The story started with a doomsday fashion but went on to places I did not expect or particularly enjoy.

Overall, the book is worth reading and captivating, if you are looking for an interesting read with ancient mysteries related to Apocalypse of 2012, this is one of the books I would suggest.

Happy Reading!!!

Foundation .. By Issac Asimov

Another popular Science Fiction novel which won the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series in 1966. This book is about the people living in a Galactic Empire and a mathematician among them, who studies psychohistory, predicts the doom of the entire Galaxy using psychoanalysis.

The novel contains several story lines starting from a planet called Trantor, the empire's capital, where Hari Seldon openly predicts that the Galactic Empire is about to crumble and requests the Foundation be established to create the Encyclopedia Galactica, which can greatly reduce the period of dark days to follow the collapse to as few as 1000 years and in turn, he and his mathematicians are sent to exile into a remote planet of the galaxy where they are allowed to document their scientific knowledge as encyclopedias.

Over the decades of its existence, the foundation, located in the Empire's periphery, enters a series of so-called Seldon crisis' and solutions. The solutions revolve around technology, religion, and trade and emphasizing the strategies not only that would be used in this far future, but also those techniques relied upon throughout human history to control lands and people.

To give you my review on this book, I would say that I did not like this book as much as I liked the concept of it. It was written in the 60s and I believe any science fiction written is bound to capture the interest of the readers during those times, however, I am not sure if this book should be read now when many such sci-fi novels have evolved during the last century or so and with much better concepts.

A bit dry for my taste, but please let me know your comments on this book below.

Happy Reading!!!