Roya P

• Rated 0 stars

“Anna came into the world by in vitro fertilization so that she would be a genetic match for her older sister Kate, who was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia when she was 2 years old. When Anna was born, her cord blood was donated to her sister, but when the leukemia returned she then had to donate blood and bone marrow. When Kate's kidneys fail Anna is expected to donate a kidney to save her sister, but she hires a lawyer to be medically emancipated from her parents and gain the right to make the decision for herself. Her lawyer, Campbell Alexander, works for her pro bono. At the end of the book it is revealed that the reason Anna initiated the lawsuit was because her sister didn't want her to donate the kidney. After the trial she is granted medical emancipation but, just as Anna is about to reveal her decision if she wants to give Kate her kidney or not, she becomes brain dead unexpectedly of a closed-head injury suffered in a car crash. As Campbell Alexander has power of attorney over Anna's medical decisions he grants the use of Anna's kidney for her sister Kate. In the epilogue of the book we see that Kate survived the transplant, even though the doctors thought she might be too weak to survive. Kate believes that the reason she survived is because Anna took her place in heaven ”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 0 stars

“Intelligence Analyst Rachel Sexton is in her mid-thirties, is single, and works for the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). Her father, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, is a popular presidential candidate surpassing the incumbent President of the United States Zachary Herney. The President sends her to the Arctic as part of a team of experts to confirm and authenticate findings made by NASA deep within the Milne Ice Shelf. NASA's new Earth Observation System (EOS,) a collection of satellites constantly monitoring the globe for signs of large-scale change, has found an extremely dense spot in the Milne Ice Shelf. NASA discovers a very dense meteorite. In it are fossils of bugs very similar to--but not the same as--species on earth. NASA claims this as proof of extraterrestrial life. This find is something NASA needs desperately, as the agency’s success rate on other fronts has put it in a bad light. Senator Sexton uses this as an example of government overspending and failure to further his campaign. A group of four civilian scientists have already been studying the find and have confirmed NASA's claims. It is only hours before the President and NASA plan to go public with the discovery. However, one of the scientists is startled by something he sees in the icy water in the pit from which the meteorite was removed, and before he has a chance to tell the others, he is killed by Delta Force, a special forces unit of the U.S. Army. What the experts and scientists don’t realize is that their every move is monitored from a listening post just a few miles away by Delta Force members controlling a tiny flying "microbot." The other three civilian scientists and Rachel make the same discovery as their murdered comrade. They are unaware of his death. They have found evidence of seawater contamination, suggesting that the ice shelf is not pure freshwater as glaciers are supposed to be. They examine further, discovering that there is a shaft of frozen seawater directly below the extraction pit. It appears that the meteorite has been inserted from below. During Rachel's and the scientists' excursion out of NASA's temporary settlement to investigate the contamination, they are attacked by Delta Force. One of the scientists is killed, and Rachel and the other two narrowly survive, being rescued by the USS Charlotte. The three, armed with a strong suspicion of NASA deception, set off to investigate further. Their goal is to either reconfirm or deny NASA's claims before President Herney stuns the world with a possibly false announcement. They fly to the research ship of one of the scientists, investigate the chemical makeup of a meteorite sample, and look up the fossilized organism found in the meteorite. They discover that the organism does in fact exist on earth in the Mariana Trench and that the chemical makeup of the meteorite could prove it to be a terrestrial rock. The scientists come to the conclusion that the meteorite is false well after Herney has publicized the find. Suddenly, Delta Force tracks down the group and destroys the ship. The three scientists narrowly escape once again, managing to kill the Delta Force team in the meantime. Rachel learns that the NRO head is actually the Delta Force controller for that operation. They are suspicious of the entire NASA organization and the administration. Rachel faxes the information about the meteorite's makeup and the organism to her father, knowing that he will not be afraid to go public. However, she arrives in time to discover that her father is taking corrupt bribes from private space companies who wish NASA's demise. With help from Sexton's assistant, she replaces envelopes containing NASA's incriminating information meant for the press with ones containing photos of Sexton's lewd sexual encounter with his assistant. Soon after, Herney makes the announcement to the world, retracting his statement from the night before. This almost guarantees his second term in the White House ”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 0 stars

“Digital Fortress is a novel by American author Dan Brown and published in 1998 Susan Fletcher, a brilliant mathematician and head of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) cryptography division, finds herself faced with an unbreakable code named "Digital Fortress", which is resistant to brute-force attacks by the NSA's 3 million processor supercomputer dubbed "TRANSLTR". The code is written by Japanese cryptographer Ensei Tankado, a fired employee of the NSA, who is displeased with the agency's intrusion into people's privacy. Tankado auctions the algorithm on his website, threatening that his accomplice "North Dakota" will release the algorithm for free if he dies. Tankado is found dead in Seville, Spain. Fletcher, along with her fiancé, David Becker, a skilled linguist with eidetic memory, must find a solution to stop the spread of the code. ”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Caroline Myss (pronounced mace) is an American medical intuitive and mystic as well as the author of numerous books and audio tapes. Myss holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana, and a master's degree in theology from Mundelein College. She also claims to hold a Ph.D in "intuition and energy medicine",[1][2] but the degree was granted by Greenwich University, a now-defunct correspondence school that was never accredited to deliver higher education awards by any recognized government accreditation authority.[3] She has collaborated extensively with Dr. Norman Shealy, an M.D. schooled at Harvard.[1] She tours internationally as a speaker on spirituality and lives in Chicago”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“Angels and Demons is a bestselling mystery novel by Dan Brown. Published in 2000, it introduces the character Robert Langdon, who is also the principal character of Brown's subsequent, better-known novel The Da Vinci Code. It also shares many stylistic elements with the better known novel, such as conspiracies of secret societies, a single day time frame and the Roman Catholic Church. The story involves a conflict between an ancient group, the Illuminati, and the Roman Catholic Church”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 0 stars

“The story begins with the assassination of two philosophically divergent Supreme Court Justices. While the public speculates about who may have killed them and why, the main character, Darby Shaw, a Tulane University Law School student, decides to research the two justices' records and cases pending before the Court, suspecting the real motive might be simple greed, not politics. She writes a legal brief speculating that the assassinations were committed on behalf of Victor Mattiece, an oil tycoon wanting to drill for oil on Louisiana swamp land which is a major habitat of an endangered breed of pelicans. A court case on appeal, filed on his behalf to gain access to the land, is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court. The two slain justices had a history of environmentalism — their only common view — and thus Darby surmises that Mattiece, who has a pre-existing business relationship with the President, hoped to turn the case in his favor by eliminating two justices, thus leaving his friend the President in a position to appoint new justices more likely to rule in his favor. Darby shows the brief, which becomes known as the 'Pelican Brief' to her law professor/mentor/lover, Thomas Callahan, who shows it to his Washington-based friend, Gavin Verheek, a lawyer working for the FBI. Both men are killed soon after. Afraid that she'll be the next target, Darby goes on the run. Eventually, she contacts Washington Herald (the Herald doesn't actually exist, but since the production were unable to get permission to use the Washington Post name, they substituted it for the Herald) reporter Gray Grantham, and the two set out to prove her brief correct. The various parties quickly take sides. The President and his Chief of Staff try to cover up his connection to Mattiece, which would be politically damaging. The FBI wants to bring in Darby to protect her and to verify her story. Allies of Mattiece try to kill her to make sure the cover-up holds. The End Eventually, every piece of the story is in place. Grantham obtains sworn testimony from an anonymous lawyer, "Garcia"; a document that points to involvement by his law firm which worked for Mattiece. With all this evidence, Grantham & Darby approach the Herald chief editor. The story appears in the next edition with front page photographs of Fletcher Coal (the aforementioned Chief of Staff), Mattiece, etc. FBI chief Denton Voyles is ecstatic and shows up at Coal's residence early in the morning to confront him. Darby enters witness protection program and leaves the country. After crisscrossing the country, she reaches an island in the Caribbean Sea, where Grantham briefly joins her. This alternate ending takes place in the novel, but was left out of the film ”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“Simin Dāneshvar [1] (Persian: سیمین دانشور) (born 1921 in Shiraz, Iran) is an Iranian academic, renowned novelist, fiction writer and translator of literary works from English, German, Italian and Russian into Persian. Daneshvar has a number of "firsts" to her credit. In 1948, her collection of Persian short stories was the first by an Iranian woman to be published. The first novel by an Iranian woman was her Savushun ("Mourners of Siyāvosh," 1969), which has become Iran's bestselling novel ever. Daneshvar's Playhouse, a collection of five stories and two autobiographical pieces, is the first volume of translated stories by an Iranian woman author ”

Roya P wrote this review Monday, January 21 2008. ( reply | permalink )

0 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in one (unnamed) city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortunes of a handful of characters who are among the first to be stricken and centers around a doctor and his wife, several of the doctor’s patients, and assorted others, thrown together by chance. This group bands together in a family-like unit to survive by their wits and by the (also unexplained) good fortune that the doctor’s wife is one of only a few individuals who have escaped the blindness. The sudden onset and unexplained origin and nature of the blindness cause widespread panic, and the social order rapidly unravels as the government attempts to contain the apparent contagion and keep order via increasingly repressive and ineffective measures. The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy, overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined. Hygiene, living conditions, and morale degrade horrifically in a very short period, mirroring the society outside, which is also disintegrating. Fights over food, rapes, and atrocities accumulate. When the army can no longer maintain the asylum (because most of the soldiers have gone blind too), the inmates escape and join the throngs of nearly helpless blind people outside who wander the devastated city and scrabble to survive. The story then follows the doctor and his wife and their impromptu “family” as they attempt to survive outside, cared for largely by the doctor’s wife, who still sees (though she must hide this fact). The breakdown of society is near total. Law and order, social services, government, schools, etc., no longer function. Families have been separated and cannot find each other. People squat in abandoned buildings and scrounge for food; violence, disease, and despair threaten to overwhelm human coping. The doctor and his wife and their new “family” eventually make a permanent home and are establishing a new order to their lives when the blindness lifts from the city en masse just as suddenly and inexplicably as it struck ”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“Love in the Time of Cholera (Spanish: ''El amor en los tiempos del cólera'', 1985) is a novel by Gabriel García Márquez about a fifty-year love triangle between Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza and Doctor Juvenal Urbino set in the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century (roughly 1880 to 1930). The novel, a tale of unrequited love, explores the idea that suffering for love is a kind of nobility. ”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad) is a novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that was first published in Spanish in 1967 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana), with an English translation by Gregory Rabassa released in 1970 (New York: Harper and Row). The book is considered García Márquez's masterpiece, metaphorically encompassing the history of Colombia or Latin America. The novel chronicles a family's struggle, and the history of their fictional town, Macondo, for one hundred years. García Márquez acknowledges in his autobiography Living to Tell the Tale that Macondo was based on the towns where he spent his childhood. Like many other novels by Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude crosses genres, combining elements of history, magical realism, and pure fiction ”

Roya P wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )