Coming in at an enormous 1,074 pages for the paperback, Under the Dome by Stephen King is one of the largest books I have read recently. Probably the last book I read that was this long was The Stand, also by King, which I read for the first time a few months ago. A lot of comparisons are made between Dome and The Stand but the only real similarities are that there is a large cast of characters who at some point in the story take sides against each other, and the just the sheer number of pages that make up the story. While not perfect, Under the Dome doesn’t seem like it is a book over a thousand pages and moves along at a brisk pace. If you are looking for an entertaining but ultimately throw-away book to read for the summer you could do worse.

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Normally when I see that a movie is two and a half hours long I am always afraid that the movie will drag on or have some unnecessary scenes. This is not the case with Inception. This movie is one of the most engaging movies I have seen in a long time. Its smart, got some really interesting concepts, a great story, and characters. Christopher Nolan continues to be one of the best, if not the best director making movies today. Working off of his own script Nolan has created a thrilling and engaging movie with his usual twists and turns that constantly keeps you guessing and amazed at what will happen next.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who seems to exclusively star in really good movies lately, plays Cobb who along with his partners can enter people’s dreams and extract information from their subconscious called in a process called “Extraction”. The dream world they use is created by a member of Cobb’s team who plays the role of architect, who creates the setting for the dream. The person they are attempting to extract the information from populates the dream world created by the architect with their “projections”, which are people and objects from their mind. Cobb and his team locate and find the thought they are tasked with retrieving. There are many rules to this dream setup and the film explains these rules in a way that makes you understand why they are in place and does it in a way that seems natural without long speeches by the characters explaining them. Once the rules are in place Ken Watanabe’s character Saito approaches Cobb and inquires about hiring him to perform an “Inception” on a target. An “Inception” is the opposite of an “Extraction” by which instead of taking away information from the target an idea is planted in their head. Once the "Inception" is planted successfully the target will perform that act as if they thought of it on their own.

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