thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
from theWorld Health Organization (WHO), comes and helps them escape the soldiers. They follow the riddle to Venice, where Jonathan suddenly falls unconscious. Robert is captured by a group of black-clad soldiers while Sienna escapes.Robert is taken to Elizabeth Sinskey, the director-general of the WHO, and is given an explanation of what is going on: Zobrist, who committed suicide the week before, was a mad scientist and Dante fanatic who has supposedly developed a new biological plague that will kill off a large portion of the world's population in order to quickly solve the problem of the world's impending overpopulation. Elizabeth raided Zobrist's safe deposit box, found the cylinder, and flew Robert to Florence to follow the clues. However, Robert stopped communicating with Elizabeth after meeting with Marta and Ignazio, and the WHO feared he betrayed them and was working with Zobrist to unleash the plague. The soldiers were the WHO's emergency response team and never meant to kill Robert.Zobrist had paid a shadowy consulting group called The Consortium to protect the cylinder until a certain date. When Elizabeth took it away, they were obligated to protect whatever the bone cylinder pointed to. They kidnapped Robert after the meeting with Marta and Ignazio, but Robert hadn't yet solved the whole riddle. They gave Robert benzodiazepine drugs to erase his short-term memory, created a fake head wound, and staged every event up to this point so that Robert would be motivated to solve it. Sienna, Vayentha, and Jonathan are all actors working for The Consortium; the call to the U.S. consulate was also staged. The leader of The Consortium, having become aware of the bioterrorism plot, has agreed to cooperate with the WHO.Tomb of Enrico Dandolo, at the Hagia Sophia.Sienna goes rogue, and The Consortium realizes she was a secret supporter and lover of Zobrist. She learned where the plague is being kept after Robert solved the riddle and acquires a private jet to get to it before everyone else. Robert, the WHO, and The Consortium team up to stop her by going to the riddle's actual location: the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, where Enrico Dandolo is buried. Robert and the others find the plague is in the Cistern, but discover that Sienna is already there. The bag that held the plague had already been broken for an entire week, spreading through the outer world via visiting tourists. Sienna runs out of the Cistern yelling something in Turkish, which causes panic among the tourists who stampede out into the city.Inside Basilica Cistern, with water below and tourists above.It is discovered Sienna didn't puncture the bag; it was water soluble and had dissolved one week previously in the Cistern waters, meaning that the whole world has already been infected. It is also discovered that Sienna was trying to stop the virus herself, but didn't trust the WHO because samples of the virus would certainly find their way into the hands of governments performing weapons research. The leader of The Consortium tries to escape WHO custody with help from disguised underlings, but is caught later
by Turkish police. It is implied that The Consortium will be investigated and ruined. Sienna receives amnesty in exchange for working with the WHO to address the crisis, since she is a medical doctor and transhumanist writer.The plague that Zobrist created is revealed to be a vector virus that randomly activates to employ DNA modification to cause sterility in 1/3 of humans. Even with future generic engineering technology, changing the human genome back would be hazardous. The human race, therefore, has been forced into a new age.CharactersRobert Langdon: A professor of symbology at Harvard University and the protagonist of the novel.Bertrand Zobrist: The principle antagonist of the novel despite committing suicide in the prologue. A genius scientist and a madman who is obsessed with Dante's Inferno, he is intent on solving the world's overpopulation problem by releasing a virus.(Felicity) Sienna Brooks: A doctor and Zobrist's former lover. She also worked for The Consortium. She helps Langdon find the virus Zobrist created, but her past relationship with Zobrist makes her loyalty to Langdon suspicious until the end of the novel. She was a loyal disciple of Zobrist until she reads his last letter and decided to get his new technology before it can fall into the wrong hands. She believes the World Health Organization will cooperate with other government agencies to use Zobrist's new virus for weapons. She uses The Consortium and Robert to follow the Map of Hell and get to ground zero before everyone else, but she realizes that Zobrist had set off a futile search as he released his virus well beforehand.Elizabeth Sinskey: The head of the World Health Organization who hires Langdon to find Zobrist's virus.The Provost: The head of The Consortium and the secondary antagonist. He tries to accomplish Zobrist's wishes by securing the location of the virus from Langdon and Sinskey and to divulge a video Zobrist made before his death to the media. When he learns that he was helping Zobrist in a bioterrorist attack, he helps the World Health Organization to find the weapon. He is eventually arrested for his hand in the events.Vayentha: Secondary antagonist and The Consortium's agent in Florence who has orders to follow Langdon, she is later disavowed by The Consortium. She falls to her death following a confrontation with Robert and Sienna in the Palazzo Vecchio.Christoph Bruder: Head of the SRS team (part of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) who is ordered by Sinskey to find Langdon after she lost contact with him.Marta Alvarez: An employee in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence who assists Langdon with Dante's death mask. She is pregnant with her first child.Ignazio Busoni/il Dumino: The director of Il Duomo in Florence who assists Langdon with Dante's death mask. He succumbs to a heart attack prior to the events of the novel.Jonathan Ferris: An agent of The Consortium who pretends to be in league with the World Health Organization. He used fake eyebrows and a mustache to pretend to be Dr. Marconi at the beginning of the novel.Ettore Vio: The curator of St. Mark's basilica
A great action book. Good story with an addicting beginning, ongoing middle and a very clever (and good) end. At the beginning of the book most everything is a big mystery and loads of question marks are all over your head as you try to find out what's going on. Other than knowing who is the good guy you aren't really sure about all the rest - the story takes its twists and turns at times making you believe you figured it out and at other times just confusing you even more. In my opinion, just the fact that such an intriguing book was written by a woman makes me like this book a few notches even more - and so despite it all it's a fantastic story which was very well thought out and written. If you are hoping to read something to just "chill" and get a good plot running in your head (and you trying to piece all the puzzle of this story as well) then this a good book as any!Book Review: When Detective Sergeant Duncan Hatcher is summoned to the home of Judge Cato Laird in the middle of the night to investigate a fatal shooting, he knows that discretion and kid-glove treatment are the keys to staying in the judge's good graces and keeping his job.At first glance, the case appears open-and-shut: Elise, the judge's trophy wife, interrupted a burglary in progress and killed the intruder in self-defense. But Duncan is immediately suspicious of Elise's innocent act. His gut feeling is that her account of the shooting is only partially true -- and it's the parts she's leaving out that bother him.Determined to learn the dead man's connection to the Lairds and get at the truth, Duncan investigates further and quickly finds his career, as well as his integrity, in jeopardy -- because he can't deny his increasing attraction to Elise Laird, even if she is a married woman, a proven liar, and a murder suspect.When Elise seeks Duncan out privately and makes an incredible allegation, he initially dismisses it as the manipulative lie of a guilty woman. But what if she's telling the truth? Then that single fatal gunshot at her home takes on even more sinister significance, possibly involving Duncan's nemesis, the brutal crime lord Robert Savich.And then Elise goes missing . . .Ricochet's plot twists -- as only Sandra Brown can write them -- and palpable suspense combine to create this gripping thriller, in which a decent cop's worst enemy may be his own conscience, and trusting the wrong person could mean the difference between life and death. "The Choice" is another beautiful book written by Nicholas Sparks but which has quite a different twist in the end differing it from many of his other books. The story starts with a young man called Travis who meets his neighbor, Gabby and from there on their relationship grows and progresses from a friendship to dating and finally marriage. What seems like a perfect happy family all of a sudden changes and goes haywire in
a car accident leaving Gabby in a coma and Travis in a state of guilt and with the hardest decision ever in his life to make. It has a happy ending and altogether it's another one of Nicholas Sparks books which just makes you want to believe in true love and fate. Book Review:Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good lifeboating, swimming, and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddieshe holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door. Despite his attempts to be neighborly, the appealing redhead seems to have a chip on her shoulder about him...and the presence of her longtime boyfriend doesnt help. Despite himself, Travis cant stop trying to ingratiate himself with his new neighbor, and his persistent efforts lead them both to the doorstep of a journey that neither could have foreseen. Spanning the eventful years of young love, marriage and family, The Choice ultimately confronts us with the most heart wrenching question of all: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?
Yes, even silence has an end for a woman held captive for almost seven years by the Colombian Guerrilla.Ingrid Betancourt was one of the many political prisoners which the FARC captured and kept in the Colombian jungle so they could use as a means of exchange for FARC prisoners.After many years of loneliness, solitude, humiliations, sickness, chains and pain she was finally freed by the Colombian army in the "Jaque Operation" (Jaque meaning checkmate in French).I have read many many good books throughout my young and short 23 years of age, but once you discover yourself to be an avid book reader - reading at least one book per week - you can easily see the difference between a mediocre, good and excellent book. This book is easily rated as excellent. Ingrid enters her inner being and uncovers her soul to the reader. She makes you understand her suffering, inhuman living conditions and the tortures of her soul. Yet despite through it all she never looses contact with the human soul, the desire to live, the audacity to escape, the love to help her fellow prisoner and the courage to defy those whom no one else had the courage to stand up to. I am adding bellow a great book review I found which explains this book even better and more thoroughly.Book Review:Ingrid Betancourt was held in the jungle for six years. This picture was released in 2007. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesBefore I read Ingrid Betancourt's harrowing memoir, I wrongly assumed many things about the Franco-Colombian politician who endured six gruesome years in captivity in the Amazon jungle at the hands of Farc guerrillas.I thought, pre-capture by the Marxist-Leninist insurgents, that Betancourt was a spoilt product of the bourgeoisie. I believed her capture was the result of bad judgment. I assumed she had ventured with a team from her political party, Oxygen Green, into a dangerous area known for ambushes, because she was seeking publicity for her presidential campaign.In France, where I live, Betancourt became a cause celebre. I often wondered why less attractive hostages were left to rot while the photogenic Ingrid was paraded with abandon. In fact, Betancourt is a product of privilege. She had grown up in Paris the daughter of a diplomat and a former beauty queen-turned-senator. She was used to ordering around her staff and having her breakfast brought to her on a tray. In Colombia, where the divisions between rich and poor are so vast, it is no secret she used her elite status to rise in politics.But I had many things wrong. First off, Betancourt was not kidnapped out of naivete. She took the trip to San Vicente the centre of the demilitarised zone that was created as a safe haven for the Farc with a wary heart. She travelled there two days after peace talks, believing she would have heavy security and that she and her team would be safe. But at the last moment, her detail was taken away from her. Despite her intuition telling her otherwise, she decided to press on with her
trip to the Farc area in an old pickup truck with limited protection. She was soon ambushed. The minute she saw their rubber boots a sign of the guerrillas who spend most of their time marching deep in the jungle she knew she was done for.What Betancourt experiences in the jungle is soul-destroying. She lives under the most painful conditions physically shackled in chains; starved; beaten; attacked by armies of red ants, bees, not to mention the tarantulas, "shiny-backed beetles", anacondas, bears, jaguars and wild boar that lurk outside the various camps where she was held. She was moved often, leaving behind the few precious items to which she had grown attached.She witnesses the sexism and the promiscuity of the Farc; but also how they tried to strip away her own dignity because she was a prisoner, and a female one at that. When she goes to bathe in the river, she is watched by the guerrillas who taunt her, calling her an old hag. Early on, she decides: "I had just lost my freedom, but I was not willing to surrender my identity."Spiritually it is even more gruelling. "The days seemed endless," she writes. "Stretching cruelly and slowly between anguish and boredom." She yearns for her children, Melanie and Lorenzo, who grow older without her with each day she spends in the jungle.She struggles not to lose hope and keeps up her concentration by learning to weave, giving French lessons, reading her Bible and dictionary, and exercising. But she sees that she is Sisyphus pushing a sliding boulder uphill. When the realisation comes that she might never be released, she slumps into a dark and isolated place.Her greatest fear is that she will lose her faith that she will be released. At first, she believes it is a matter of weeks. At first, it is inconceivable to her that she will be in the jungle more than a month. Than she starts counting Christmases. Six pass before she will be free.By the time Ingrid gets out, her children, whom she last saw as teenagers, are now adults. Her mother is an old woman. Her father, whom she promised to come back to, is dead. Her teeth have rotted. But she has survived.The most interesting part of Betancourt's book is her relationship with her fellow captives, and the transformation of her own character. She learns that by being stubborn she repeatedly tries to escape, despite the severe beatings and shackling afterwards she keeps her identity.She befriends some of her jailers, though she jokes that she is certainly not suffering from Stockholm syndrome. The interaction between her fellow prisoners is also interesting. The strangest is the tale of Clara, one of her aides who spends her time in captivity freaking out about her biological clock and succeeds in getting pregnant by one of the commanders (the baby a boy is born in the jungle but his arm is broken when he is pulled roughly out of her).Betancourt weaves the book in and out of her six years, concentrating on the cast of characters.
First, there are the prisoners: her beloved Lucho who suffers from diabetes and has no insulin in the jungle; Gloria who was captured with her two sons, but then brutally separated from them; three colourful Americans who arrive and squash into their camp causing havoc; and various Colombians. And she herself is hardly popular: her fellow prisoners are constantly voting to drive her out of their huts.She describes how she learns to "trust no one" and how they fight viciously over talcum powder, chickens' heads and stolen radios to listen to messages that their families may or may not send to them. She describes the fear, the jealousy, the basic instinct to survive and the lengths one will go to in order to do that.Then there are the guerrillas. She befriends some of the commanders and sub-commanders, trying to understand their logic, trying to tell them that they will never bring peace to Colombia through violence. At times, the Farc almost seem like teenagers, these agrarian Marxists who bash her over the head with their AK-47s if she gets out of line, then playfully jump one another in the bushes and grow jealous over girlfriends (or "associates" in Farc jargon). Then, she exposes the inconsistency and hypocrisy of their beliefs.Even Silence Has an End a line from a Pablo Neruda poem has a triumphant ending, because we know from those television images that Ingrid is finally released from her torment in 2008. She finds on the other side of the jungle her mother, her sister, her children "my sun, my moon and my stars".Throughout her ordeal, she is tormented by what she might feel when she finally is released. But she falls to her knees (there are lots of religious overtones here) and realises that after all that she had endured, she was still intact. The guerrillas had not gotten the best of her. "There was nothing left in me," she writes, "but love."Janine di Giovanni is contributing editor of Vanity Fair and author of the forthcoming Ghosts by Daylight (Bloomsbury)
So someone tells youabout this insaneeee profession of a sex therapist that actually has sex with her patients and you are like "wtf?!!!" A month or two later the book stares you at your face and you just know you gotta have it, read it and find out what the hell goes on in a person's head that has such a out of the box profession. And I read the book in one day, and I was totally won over, and I now honestly say I admire this woman and her work which helped many people despite it being so unorthodox and practicably unheard of. The book is written in a very honest and straightforward way - including scientifically proven methods and answering critical questions so that the reader can understand and see it upon a new light.This woman (and many others of her same profession) had sex with thousands of men - totally lust free and unselfishly, wanting to cure and help the patient in need.I still haven't watched the movie (which goes by the same "The Surrogate") but after reading the book I know that it's one more to add to my list. I hope it is at least half as good as the book, because if it is so, then I already am sure it's great! Book Review:For the past forty years, Cheryl Cohen Greene has worked as a surrogate partner, helping clients to confront, consider, and ultimately accept their sexuality. In this riveting memoir, Cohen Greene shares some of her most moving cases, and also reveals her own sexual coming-of-age. Beginning with a rigid Catholic upbringing in the 1950s, where she was taught to think sex and sexual desires were unnatural and wrong, Cohen Greene struggled to reconcile her sexual identity.An Intimate Life offers a candid look into the personal and professional life of a surrogate partner, examining the cultural and emotional ramifications of pursuing something most people do not immediately understand.The memoir opens with Cohen Greene's work with Berkeley-based poet and journalist Mark O'Brien, whose essay "On Seeing A Sex Surrogate" was adapted into a major motion picture titled "The Sessions," which was released nationwide in October 2012. Impacting, impressive, overwhelming. That is what the story inside the pages of this book can be described as. Once you get your hands on it you are not surprised that it became a New York Times best seller - it's really THAT good!The story is told in a somewhat flashback manner, starting by the end and ending with the start...or something along those lines. Danny and Rachel (aka. Beverley Highland) are the two main characters whose story intertwine all along the book's five-hundred and so pages. Carmelita, Maggie, Anne, Bonnie and a few other characters are added and diminished along the way but each one leaving its mark on the pages of this enrapturing book. So I don't spoil the fun I will let you buy the book and find out the story for yourself. I am sure you will be hooked in seconds...the same way I was.Book Review:It
is written by Barbara Wood who is writing under the name Kathryn Harvey. The cover is intriguing - although there are different copies, I received the one which had the same cover as above - a lady in a lace masquerade mask with deep red lips, looking mysterious. I already knew from the blurb that one of the main themes based within this book was fantasy so the cover went hand in hand with this but also drew me in more because I was eager to discover what fantasy exactly it represented.Being that Butterfly is also a New York Times Bestseller, I also knew it would be an amazing book. The copy I received was 511 pages long as well, which I thought was ideal as I knew it would be a long book. Being a fast reader, I often find that I read some shorter stories over a few days and I regret reading them so fast - whereas with Butterfly, I really indulged myself and loved that it lasted longer.But onto the story - the story of Butterfly was amazing. It's been a long time since I haven't been able to put a book down but Butterfly did this. The story was so mysterious and gripping - every time I told myself I'd finish a chapter then put the book down, the chapter would end on a cliffhanger or just draw me in more and before I knew it I was reading the next chapter! The blurb reads -Above an exclusive men's store on Rodeo Drive there is a private club called Butterfly, where women are free to act out their secret erotic fantasies. Only the most beautiful and powerful women in Beverly Hills are invited to join: Jessica, a lawyer who longs for the days when men were men, and women dressed to please them; Trudie, a builder who wants a man who will challenge her - all of her - with no holds barred; and Linda, a surgeon, who uses masks to unmask the desires she hides even from herself.But the most mysterious of them all is the woman who created Butterfly. She has changed her name, her accent, even her face to hide her true identity. And now she is about to reveal everything to realize the dream that has driven her since childhood - the secret obsession that will carry her beyond ecstasy, or destroy her and everyone around her.I loved how many different issues the story drew upon - revenge, fantasy, abandonment, courage and more. It definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things - such as the way prostitution, paying for sex or just sex alone is viewed differently between men and women. Each different character have their own issues to deal with - some that are so common that you may find yourself relating to them - and others that may just open your eyes like they did to me.Each character was so different as well with different qualities, dreams and fantasies, which refrained from getting confused between each character as there