The Da Vinci Code
(I actually posted this on a message board first, and it's not well-written, but I wanted to write it as a show of good faith. I swear I'm reading! Just um, none of the books in the list, because I forgot to take it to the library, so they've been mostly from another list (Southern writers) and recommended by friends. Bastard Out of Carolina was quite good!
I also asked my stepfather the math teacher if I could borrow one of his Calc textbooks, so I could relearn/learn some of the math I've ignored. It's anyone's guess on if I'll follow through on it for long.)
Well, I finally saw this book physically in the library for once, so I decided to see what the hype was all about.
It reads very quickly; only took me about 4 or 5 hours in a couple sittings. I'm probably one of the last adults to read the darn thing in America. ><
It's a book that poses an interesting (if somewhat fictitious) thesis about how the patriarchical values of the Christian Church have corrupted the ancient balance between masculine and feminine. It becomes very involved with symbology, etymology, code-breaking, and revisionist history, and balances these elements fairly adeptly as long as it's understood that 75% of it is bogus.
Where the book fails is mainly in the plotting and dialogue. The dialogue itself is stilted and often repetitious. The protagonists are underdeveloped, while pages are devoted to the thoughts and habits of various fringe characters. The villain is created in a melodramatic twist rather than by any developed rationale. For a book about a "lost" aspect of mankind, there are very few insights into human nature in it. A psychological thriller it is not!
Also--one of my pet peeves in thrillers/mysteries--Dan Brown does not give enough intellectual credit to his main characters. Twice I was able to solve their dilemmas at a glance while they were momentarily "stumped"...and I'm not exactly Einstein (those were the obvious ones).
I think half my problem was that I reread Thomas Harris's Red Dragon just before I got to this book, so The Da Vinci Code seemed lacking in comparison. It's really not as bad as I'm making it sound! As a breezy summer read, it's fun with an intriguing historical reinterpretation that will stay with you long after you've read it. It's easy to see why this book has spawned a tourism fad and a lot of intellectual dissection.
Since The Da Vinci Code is a quasi-historical book that made the bestseller list and stirred up the religious/art scholars, I'm seriously considering Worlds In Collision soon...a quasi-scientific book from the 1950's that made the bestseller list, outraged the scientific community, and was actually banned from certain academic institutions (it proposes that since all religions seem to share a basic mythos, the terrestrial catastrophism found in the Bible, etc. must have actually occured at a certain point).
I also asked my stepfather the math teacher if I could borrow one of his Calc textbooks, so I could relearn/learn some of the math I've ignored. It's anyone's guess on if I'll follow through on it for long.)
Well, I finally saw this book physically in the library for once, so I decided to see what the hype was all about.
It reads very quickly; only took me about 4 or 5 hours in a couple sittings. I'm probably one of the last adults to read the darn thing in America. ><
It's a book that poses an interesting (if somewhat fictitious) thesis about how the patriarchical values of the Christian Church have corrupted the ancient balance between masculine and feminine. It becomes very involved with symbology, etymology, code-breaking, and revisionist history, and balances these elements fairly adeptly as long as it's understood that 75% of it is bogus.
Where the book fails is mainly in the plotting and dialogue. The dialogue itself is stilted and often repetitious. The protagonists are underdeveloped, while pages are devoted to the thoughts and habits of various fringe characters. The villain is created in a melodramatic twist rather than by any developed rationale. For a book about a "lost" aspect of mankind, there are very few insights into human nature in it. A psychological thriller it is not!
Also--one of my pet peeves in thrillers/mysteries--Dan Brown does not give enough intellectual credit to his main characters. Twice I was able to solve their dilemmas at a glance while they were momentarily "stumped"...and I'm not exactly Einstein (those were the obvious ones).
I think half my problem was that I reread Thomas Harris's Red Dragon just before I got to this book, so The Da Vinci Code seemed lacking in comparison. It's really not as bad as I'm making it sound! As a breezy summer read, it's fun with an intriguing historical reinterpretation that will stay with you long after you've read it. It's easy to see why this book has spawned a tourism fad and a lot of intellectual dissection.
Since The Da Vinci Code is a quasi-historical book that made the bestseller list and stirred up the religious/art scholars, I'm seriously considering Worlds In Collision soon...a quasi-scientific book from the 1950's that made the bestseller list, outraged the scientific community, and was actually banned from certain academic institutions (it proposes that since all religions seem to share a basic mythos, the terrestrial catastrophism found in the Bible, etc. must have actually occured at a certain point).