Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (78-102)

     This section of the book his littered with the monsters thoughts. The first time we see the monsters inner self is at the beginning of chapter 9. The monster is at a lack of common sense in the beginning. We come to him in the woods and he is baffled by the moon. He is awe inspired really. Not to mention the fire that he came across while strolling in the woods. He noticed that the fire needed wood in order to keep a lit and he found this very interesting.. He burned his hand upon trying to grasp the hot charcoal. Pretty much, Frankenstein highlights just about every Romantic trait of the day. Celebration of the Ordinary, beauty of nature, the primitive, and the exotic all summed up into this one character. The creature came to a village where everyone but one family ran in fear. The family invited the creature to live at their farm. The creature slept in this lean-to like structure that leaned up against the house. Here is where the monster tries to understand and learn the customs of the humans, which he so desperately wishes to be.

     Shelley's representation of the monster Frankenstein is one of intelligence and wittiness,   

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (16-77)

     Victor Frankenstein begins to spill his life into the lap of Walton. He starts with his times in Geneva, the hometown of his family. His adopted sister, Elizabeth, was adopted with the intention of a set up wife for Victor. Frankenstein comes across his friend Henry Clerval and decides to go to school with him. This is where Victor Frankenstein learns the knowledge necessary to artificially create life. After a couple years of study and a few years of complete loneliness from the loss of his mother. He wished he could some day bring his mother back from the grave. He test with a body he acquires. The body came to life and Victor was horridly discgusted by it and was not happy with the outcome of his creature at all. He, in a torrent, stormed out of the lab. He came back hours later to find the creature missing. He was terrified and spent the night in the security of the court yard. A week later, Victor learns of a death that he feels guilty about because he thinks it could of been the monster.

     I like this Frankenstein much better than the Hollywood Frankenstein.

Wisdom at a Glance

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein

Read more:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein.html#ixzz1GpMHi1Lg

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (1-16)

     Frankenstein starts with a series of letters written by Robert Walton, the captain of a north pole bound vessel, to his sister back in england documenting the the dangerous expedition. Walton's vessel is stopped do to a sea of ice ahead of him. His ship is like a stranded island among all this ice. Walton is stuck for a few days and on one of those days a dog sledder comes up to the ship. The driver horribly weak, Walton takes care of him. The drivers name, Victor Frankenstein. Walton was lonely on his vessel and longed for a companion so he gladly nursed and helped Frankenstein return to health. Walton and Frankenstein become pals and Walton decided he would like to document Victor Frankenstein's life, and so the story goes.

     Shelley is an interesting writer and uses good use of her vocabulary skills to highlight the scene and paint a picture of the plot. Although I am curious to see how Shelley introduces the image of Frankenstein.

Oh when you find that tall striped man

Sorry, my spy instincts took over.

Timeline- Micheal Crichton (274-298)

      This part of the book is the kick start to all the "epic" traits of the story. Many, close-call, situations and romantic hints here and there. This section of Timeline specifically takes the reader through the process of how Chris comes to find himself standing in front of Lady Claire. Lady Claire, as her name implies, is of noble blood and carries her head high as she uses her beauty to manipulate all the noble men in Castleguard. Chris is a character that Crichton uses for comic relief, Chris is always separated from Kate and Marek and is always finding ways to goof up.  In these pages Chris manages to trip-up and get away from Kate and Marek While in Castleguard. Chris finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, three of the castles "security guards" jump Chris and take him to the keep under claims that Chris is a spy because of his foreign tongue. At the keep the King thoroughly examines Chris and was close to calling him a spy himself when Lady Claire walks in and says release him at once. Lady Claire did this just because she could. Lady Claire claims hes a  man of the North and the king releases him and Chris and Lady Claire talk for a bit. Lady Claire after deciding Chris a good man but not worth her time chucks Chris to the way side. Chris, now feeling good about himself, meets back up with Marek and Kate in Castle Guard.

    

Timeline- Michael Crichton (221-273)

     Marek, Kate, and Chris now stood alone in a foreign land. In fact a foreign universe. There one and only goal now was to find Professor Johnson and get out of there. Come to find out they carried these clay tiles that spawned a jumping portal. And it allowed them to communicate with the people back at ITC. ITC told the crew that they would have to wait 39 hours before the jumping room would be reconstructed because of the grenade the marine dropped earlier. So they figured they better start looking for the professor and so they did. Marek, Kate, and Chris came across a knight tourney. Marek, being the sexy stud role, knew many of the customs required to compete in the tourney so he made it his goal to try and get into one of the jousting tournaments. He strutted around the tents that housed the true knights and by some miracle he was accepted and suited by one of the tents. He made his way to the jousting arena. He got on a horse and was handed a joust. He stared down his opponent. They sprinted full bore at one another. Marek struck the man broad in the chest and to the ground. The opponent got up in a fury and challenged Marek to a sword fight. Marek agreed and jumped off his horse and made his way towards his opponent. They fought feriously for many minutes. Marek eventually knocked his opponent to the ground. When Marek did this the helment of his foe tipped back revealing his face. It was the face of Castleguards prince. He acted out as if he was to slice the throat of his opponent but then proceeded to lift the prince to his feet. Marek had made a hero of himself. For the next couple hours in the book Crichton takes us through Castleguard and its many features.

      Crichton is an exciting writer. Writing of many action scenes which i enjoy dearly.

Timeline- Michael Crichton (181-220)

      These next pages are probably some of the most exciting pages in the book. Crichton really knows how to gain your attention. Marek, Kate, and Chris finally get to "jump" back 600 years ago. Although they were pretty excited to find their professor, the crew was not happy to find that they were required to jump with too of the ITC employees: Gomez and Baretto. Gomez, a techy female required for the destination planning along the trip. Baretto, a retired marine hired by ITC as security for the treks. When the five made their jump they arrived in the woods, half way in between the french castle, La Roque and the English castle, castlegaurd. Being inbetween them they found they were in a hostile territory. Knights from La Roque were riding along the trail that the jumpers jumped near. Chris ran to the forest, as Kate and Marek followed. Gomez, jumping at the wrong time, arrived right next to a La Roque knight and the knight decapitated Gomez. She fell to the ground with a thump. Baretto jumped in just to see Gomez' head severed. Baretto was punctured with 3 arrows just like that. He pulled a grenade out of his vest, pulled the pin and then accidentally jumped back to ITC, grenade still live. ITC jump room was destroyed by the grenade. Chris, Marek, and Kate made it out of the forest.

       Crichton starts the adventure like this. I was captivated the first time I read this.

Timeline- Michael Crichton (150-180)

      Since the main premise of this book is based off the idea of parallel universes, Crichton takes his time to elaborate on how he proposes his idea of a parallel universe. Now I could sit here and boringly plot how Crichton goes about explaining this, or I could just explain Crichton's view. Crichton proposes his parallel universes not as space between spaces but space beyond spaces. Now, Crichton does explain how spaces between spaces could exist through the vacuum photon test. But he doesn't use this thought to explain the existence of his parallel world, he uses this thought to explain how the "jumpers" reach the parallel world. Now to accredit his own making of a parallel world, Crichton uses the idea of space beyond space. Now everyone knows the accepted view of how the universe was created was by some miraculous big bang. The big bang theory supports the idea that the universe is forever growing, starting with a bang at the center expanding out to the edge of the universe at light speed. Now in order to understand the space beyond space theory you have to accept the idea of anti matter. Which anti matter is just basically nothing. A void between other universes that were started by a big bang themselves. So if you took a piece of paper and drew random circles on that  paper and marked the area within the circles as universes all starting with a bang at the epicenter and marked the area with in the circles as anti matter and imagine that piece of paper never ending you have the proposed space beyond spaces parallel universe theory. Now if you have a never ending paper than then you have thousands upon millions upon trillions of universes. Earth just residing in one of those universes. With millions upon millions of universes, which we can't see do to the speed of light, it is not hard for one to say that there is "copies" of earths somewhere out there with another Colten and Mr. Hill in the a 4th period etymology class somewhere out there. Henceforth you have the proposed parallel universe Crichton proposes, he uses the idea of space between spaces as a mode of transportation to arrive in the other universes.

Big idea, little space to expand on thoughts.

Timeline- Micheal Crichton (103-149)

      For about the next 15 pages Crichton continues his boring character foundation. But this all changes when Kate comes across something in the dig that frightens her. Kate had just found a new church that had been buried. She went down in and found a piece of parchment papers and a surprisingly modern lens from modern glasses. On the piece of parchment paper was, written in professor Johnson's handwriting, the word HELP dated 1361. Now, how could this be they thought. So obviously there original thought is that Johnson had left this as a joke. They used carbon-14 half-lives to date the ink and came to found out that it was exactly in the range that the professor had wrote it. They called back to ITC for the next 3 days and every time they received the answer, sorry Professor Johnson is not available right now. By the 4th day they had already packed and left for ITC. When they arrived they were immediately escorted to Donniger. Donniger sent them to there scientist. The scientist began. Imagine not just studying history but living it. They continued, now because time just IS, it is constant and matter always changes and it is impossible to "time" travel we could not have possibly sent him back to France right? Wrong?.... Test have been completed. Scientist can now prove the existence of parallel universes. How! your asking. In a room where absolute zero was achieved, scientist shot one photon across the room onto a bullseye. Now in absolute zero is should hit the same spot every time. Well in countless test the photon has bounced off some invisible matter and hit randomly every time. This invisible matter is the light photons of parallel universes we as humans cannot see..... and blah blah blah. Long story short, because this is a book, they can time travel, well, universe jump. 

This concludes this section. This is the build up to such an exciting spot that I shall reserve for next blog. 

Timeline- Micheal Crichton (42-102)

     With Prof. Johnson gone, the rest of the crew (main charachters are Chris, Kate, Marek, and David) got back to work. Just for the record, this is my least favorite section of the book. Like if we had to rate this in excitement using dragons, it would be like a mere 5 dragons. Crichton just uses this as character foundation time, describing all the main characters at the dig. He goes into Chris's lust mind. Stating how Chris would always chase the sporty Kate at the horse barns and would always ask to ride with her. Kate didn't appreciate it that much and always opted out to go mountain climbing (her favorite activity). Marek is the sexy stud of the bunch. He study's intensley in the dead languages of the dark ages and practices the "martial arts" of the time extensively. Basically you could imagine Russel Crow in the movie Gladiator, or Mel Gibson in the movie the Patriot. Both, if I do say so myself, looked pretty dang good in those movies and they both played the hardened warrior but their characters themselves were very witty and intelligent. And david is the geek. Thats about it.

Timeline- Michael Crichton (1-41)

Having read this book already I must state that the start to this book is rather confusing. It starts with some add in named Dan Baker and his wife Liz Baker streaming down a highway in the middle of the Arizona dessert. They hit a pot hole and stop to see if any damage was done. They got a flat tire. In a search for cell phone signal, Dan Baker comes across a delirious old, white bearded, man with a white lab coat on. Now, where the Baker's received there flat was 50 miles from the nearest anything. All they found on the man was a small clay triangle in his pocket. The old man couldn't speak. The bakers changed their wheel and took the old man with them. After an hour or so the Bakers took the old man to the hospital. The old man died 24 hrs later from internal bleeding. No doctor could explain this phenomenon. The old man was identified randomly by a big corporate company called ITC led by a cranky old man named Bob Donniger. The old man was swiftly cremated and wiped from existence by his only known colleagues at ITC. After all this, Crichton takes the reader half way around the world to a archeological dig site in France. They were digging and restoring the remains of two adjacent castles. Kramer, Donnigers right hand woman was on a business survey of the dig. See, ITC, a technology company, was funding an archeological dig. As crazy as this seems it will all make sense in a bit. Kramer lands and talks to the guys and specifically urges professor johnson, the leading archeologist, to come back to ITC for a "look around". This is the start of a journey.

      I absolutely love this book. And just a heads up, when I don't have a new book to read. I will be re reading this in the overlap time.