Hurrah! Ma is going off to Shimla for a month this evening. Expectedly my glee knows no bounds. i can now whole heartedly pretend she doesn't exist. No one will be around to wake me up half an hour early. No more listening to early morning tantrums. Unfortunately, she is off to IIAS Shimla, where she will be going into decline as i like to call it. To put it simply, she will be hobnobbing with intellectuals and aatels, if they actually hobnob. Not from what i've heard.

Only joking, intellectuals are humans as well, however much they pretend to be different. As for, ma, it can't do her any worse than it already has- namely, some orbs have been knocked out of their orbits. Oops! Did I just say worse? I meant good.

Having said that, i simply must start preparing for the SAT. Only eight days to go.....

Just finished reading Eldest. It was seven hundred pages, but took me only a day and a half. And i'm not bragging. Anyways, i must say that after reading it, i must acknowledge that Paolini is to be atleast compared with Tolkien. No one will deny that Inheritance is a ripoff of LOTR. But it takes LOTR to the next level. It does something, Tolkien never achieved. Too busy to construct a dark brooding storyline, Tolkien decied to make his tale as mordant as possible, forgetting to add a few pointers. Case in point- he did not add to the cultural side of the races he created. Dwarves had an affinity to stone- Full stop. Elves were the fair race. Full stop.

This is exactly here Paolini succeeded. For once, i did not mind all the superfluous addons to the main plot. The elven culture, Dwarf culuture etc is all intricately constructed. And Oromis, Eragon's master reminds me of Yoda. And the climax was scintillating. No experienced bibliophile could have guessed who Eragon's father is. But his friendship with Murtagh has been portrayed with sheer stupidity, which did not make it astounding that he turns evil in the end. otherwise, full marks to Paolini. His language has matured phenomenally. No more broken expressions, like the fifteen year old we had read earlier. But i still think Samit Basu is the best. and i'm not very patriotic.

That said, writers these days think it's their divine right to make epics out of thin air. Can't blame them, Rowling started the trend. Eldest could have been atleast two hundred pages shorter. there should be a new censorship law passed, or at least a moral one against writers stating that not everyone should try to emulate Tolkien via sheer magnitude.