The Da Vinci Code: The Maze of Cryptology

     I have recently been immersed in Dan Brown's world famous novel: The Da Vinci Code. The book is amazing. After each turn of a page, I crave for more mystery, suspense, and thrills. The book follows a suspenseful plot line and Brown manages to keep you reading for hours at a time. He also incorporates some very interesting facts about Christianity and Catholicism that you would never imagine and he also intertwines those facts with the gripping story line.
    The book starts out with the murder of a man by the name of Jacques Sauniere at the world famous Louvre Museum. Harvard professor of cryptology and symbology Robert Langdon is on a visit to Paris for conferences and is quickly notified by the French police to come to the scene of the crime. After Langdon sees the position of Sauniere's dead body, he quickly realizes that Sauniere is trying to send a message to somebody about his murder. Sauniere's body is arranged as Da Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man.
     A French police named Sophie Neveu is also called to the scene of the crime. Neveu secretly informs Langdon that she is Sauniere's granddaughter and that Sauniere had left a message in invisible ink  around his body before the French police erased it. Sophie has cut off all ties with her grandfather for the past ten years for a reason still unclear to me. The message had told "P.S.", which was Sophie's nickname, to find Langdon. She also tells him that the message was taken differently by the French police, who think that Landon has murdered Sauniere because the end of the message reads "P.S. Find Robert Langdon". As soon as Sophie discloses this information to Langdon, they both find themselves on a chase to solve the mystery of Sauniere's murder before getting caught. Along the way, they find that Sauniere was the Grand Master of a society called the Priory of Sion, which has a precious, guarded keystone. The keystone is rumored to have the path to the sought after Holy Grail.
    Sophie and Langdon are taken on a wild journey full of secret messages, cryptology, and secret symbols. Sauniere has left an elaborate plan before his untimely death for Sophie to find out all the secrets of the Priory of Sion after staying out of touch for so long. The reader is taken on the journey with them. I find myself gasping every time Langdon and Sophie figure out a new clue, because I realize how well thought out everything is.
     Brown's writing style includes a lot of imagery, which builds up the edge-of-your-seat suspense even more. An example of a line with a lot of imagery is:
       "He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils."
This line gives a vivid image in the reader's mind and has a chilling effect.
     The reader is aware of a lot more information than Langdon and Sophie. Sauniere was murdered by a man named Silas from Opus Dei, another secret society that is after the keystone, but Sophie and Langdon don't know any of that. The chapters alternate between three perspectives. Sophie and Langdon, Silas, and Bishop Manuel Aringarosa, who is also in a high position at Opus Dei. The alternating of perspectives builds the suspense more because I, as a reader, get very anxious when all three perspectives don't know what each other is doing. That really bothers me, in a good way, and it is what keeps me reading, too. I am dying of anticipation to know what'll happen next in the book!

Krista Ramsey

    The column "Locking Into the Magic of Legos" is about the benefits of little kids playing with Legos regularly. it's also about how Legos spark creativity in young children.     
                The column can be found here: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/columnists/krista-ramsey/2014/02/15/krista-locking-into-the-magic-of-legos/5521245/    
     The best line from this column is, "Meanwhile, a narrative is being constructed along with an object. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Jungle Duel can, with a little imagination, turn into sword-training for a ninja or a backyard sleepout with giant ants."     
     This line compares a Lego masterpiece to a narrative. It gives an example of creativity that can be demonstrated by Legos to the reader. This helps Ramsey make her point more clear. She uses informal diction because she is talking about little kids and that will connect with them more. Also, the long and involved sentence helps with the "transforming" theme of the sentence, where it transforms Indiana Jones into sword-training for a ninja or a backyard sleepout. If they were two separate sentences, they wouldn't have the same effect on the reader.      
      Ramsey's writing style is casual and relatable. Her columns are mostly to inform her readers of certain facts, events, etc. She doesn't use too much elevated diction but her writing is still very well crafted. She uses a conversational tone in order to connect with her readers. An example of her conversational tone is in the column "Locking Into the Magic of Legos" where she says, "That's because kids are off the clock with Legos. They're in a world beyond learning objectives and select soccer, safely out of reach of arranged play dates and online language programs." The phrase "off the clock" comes off as conversational dialogue. An example of her casual diction is in the column "Super Bowl QBs Score Points for Great Style" when it says, "The amazing thing isn’t that two super jocks know how to dress well, but that they actually seem to want to." The phrase "super jocks" is casual diction. An example of her giving specific facts to her reader is in the column "For Better Vision, Kids Need Time Outdoors" where it says, "Meanwhile, the American Optometric Association says young users of hand-held devices should follow a 20-20-20 rule – every 20 minutes, take a 20 second break and view something at least 20 feet away – and should also increase the font size on their device rather than bringing it closer to their eyes." This line gives a fact, but the fact is also relatable and applicable to all readers.      
           Three questions I have for Ramsey are:      
             When did you develop a passion for writing?      
             Where do you get ideas for your columns?      
             What is your favorite topic/subject to write about?

An Abundance of Katherines: Review and Characterization

        An Abundance of Katherines by John Green was by far one of the best books I've read. It is a feel-good realistic fiction novel that can teach us all a few good lessons. John Green's writing style, however, was what intrigued me the most and made the novel so memorable. Green uses a very comedic tone in his writing and provides a very light-hearted feel. For example, he uses certain phrases that he thinks the reader should understand differently than what they actually mean and puts many footnotes at the bottom of that page for the reader to understand the message he was trying to convey. They were often very silly, but they definitely helped. Along with a comedic tone, he also offers a very "dorky" tone in the book; he incorporated some crazy trivia that nobody would really know unless they spent many hours researching fun facts.

       Now for a brief summary of the book. Colin Singleton is a teen prodigy, as he calls himself, that has been dumped by girls named Katherine 19 times. That's right, NINETEEN TIMES! It's totally insane, but true. John Green himself has been dumped 53 times, so I guess that's where he got this strange idea from. Anyways, Colin is eventually so sick and tired of breakups that him and his best friend Hassan, decide to go on a road trip for their summer break. Their road trip takes them to the smal
l town of Gutshot, Tennessee where they are initially reeled in because the town claims to be the home of the grave of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. They go there and befriend a girl named Lindsey Lee Wells, who's mom, Hollis, eventually gives them both jobs and a place to stay for the summer. 

      Meanwhile, Colin, who really wants to accomplish something brilliant in life and have a "Eureka" moment and "matter" in the world, starts to work on a theorem that predicts any couple's relationship called the "Theorem of Underlying Katherine Probability". While in Gutshot, Colin and Hassan go on many adventures with Lindsey, her jerk of a boyfriend, and some of her friends and learn a lot of new things. Even Hassan, who is very strict about his religion, gets a girlfriend named Katrina who seems to like him but Hassan later finds out that she is cheating on him with Lindsey's boyfriend. Lindsey reveals that she is actually relieved that she's not dating her boyfriend anymore and grows closer and closer to Colin. The two realize that they have a lot in common and confess their love for each other in Lindsey's private cave hideout. At the end of the book, Colin plugs himself and Lindsey into his theorem and calculates that Lindsey will dump him in four days. She doesn't, though. This leaves Colin to realize that life is very unpredictable, and that his theorem can only justify why past relationships have ended, not when new ones will end. 

      Colin is a very dynamic character--he transformed a lot throughout the course of the novel. At the beginning, as a reader, I saw him as a teen prodigy striving to achieve something and have his "Eureka" moment in life. He longed for the moment where he would accomplish something significant and put it into the world. As the story went on, he realized that he doesn't need to achieve something significant in order to matter in the world and that it's really not that important to be recognized by many people. He also comes to realize that life is unpredictable. The only thing that all his theorem could do was tell him why so many Katherines dumped him.
      Lindsey is a very dynamic character as well. It is very prominent in the book that she acts very different around her boyfriend, whose name is also Colin (or TOC as Hassan and Colin called him), than she does around Colin and Hassan. After TOC dumps her, she feels like she has more freedom and that she was restricted the entire time that she was dating TOC. After she realizes that she is only herself with Colin and Hassan, she decides to continue with them on their road trip to "nowhere", which is a symbol that she has finally found her true identity.