so... anyone else read it? i found it to be totally addictive, not terribly filling, but loads of fun.

No but do you recommend it?

hmmm... that's a hard question. i am not at all into mystery or suspense novels, so i don't know how this one would compare to other books in those genres. i read it because i knew that it had a lot of art history and religious history woven into it. a lot of people think that dan brown was too imaginative with his use of history... i took it all with grain of salt, assumed some of it was true and some was exaggerated. i think what is most fascinating is all the symbology. some of the writing and plot work is sloppy, and it certainly isn't Literature w/ a capital l. but, like i said, it's loads of fun. so, yeah, i recommend it. with a grain of salt.

This is the first book in a very, very long time I just put down 1/2 way through it. Just could not get all wrapped up in it and man, I was disappointed because I had heard from everyone what a great read it is. Hope this doesn't discourage anyone from reading it, as I have not touched a book since this one, 3 months ago.

Read on

I may just pick that up next . thanks

I read it at Chapters a few months ago. Unecessarily distracted by the average chapter length of four pages. Was this a screenplay-turned-novel, or...?

i recommed you all read it. lots of usefull info along the way.

i don't think it was a screenplay turned novel, but i wouldn't be surprised if dan brown had visions of movie deals dancing in his head while writing it. robert langdon seems modeled after a younger harrison ford. so, i guess that would be ben affleck or something now.

i havent read it yet. but anything that mixes art and religious/philos themes is worth a shot.
i really don't care about the whole history/fiction issue. it isn't a sacred text. i just hope the writing is good.

Um, useful?

For my part, it was a page turner in strict accordance with the definition. Fun.

But Troy, MY life has been irrevocably altered for the better by learning one can escape from a personal GPS tracker by inserting the button into a bar of soap and throwing it through the window to land in a moving truck. Hasn't YOURS?

The problem I have with this book is that people have decided it is histoical/factual instead of fictional. Most of the stuff it brings up is fun to think about but completely unfounded. Still, I have heard numerous people make comments about how it really makes you think about things and changed the way they view things, etc. And they truly believe that the book is fact being marketed as ficiton. Grrrrrrrr. And some of them are the same people who tell me that they won't le their kids read harry potter because impresionable youths might have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality. Arght!!!

yah. that basically sums up my opinion of the book.

anyone following the trial?

thoughts/opinions?

peace,
zayne

I've read it, and I think it's very good. I haven't done research at all, so I doubt some of the historical/religious things are true. I don't know. I think it's a good story.

Here are a couple of good articles, if you're interested:

At Salon...and an excellent piece over at Slate that looks at it from a copyright perspective. Also the marvelous history of Blackie the Talking Cat.

Personally, I couldn't get past the first few pages of the novel. Terrible writing. I still think he owes Umberto Eco an apology--it's basically a sixth-grade rewrite of Foucault's Pendulum. (In interviews, Eco is a good sport about it all.)

Totally agree with ya, Bunnygirl!

This book is actually a pretty good page turned; I couldn't disagree more with some of the ideas brought up in the book, even from a historical standpoint . . .if you know a little about this or that, he was kinda far out however, since I wasn't taking the book as a fifth gospel or something, I didn't get too uptight over it.

However, I too, just question people who are now questioning their faith as a result of this! Not that it's BAD to question your faith . .you should never blindly accept anything, however, don't lose your faith because of a fictional book. LOL

okay, that really isn't funny, but you get my point, I'm sure

The more I think about the whole issue, the more I am inclined towards a "not getting worked up" perspective. It is like all the people that think children are going to desert the faith of their fathers and become wiccans by reading Harry Potter. Sure, some people have probably decided that the Christian faith is bunk because of Mr. Danny B but if all it took was a lousy fiction book to change their mind, how much what that faith really theirs anyway.

However, from the perspective of a bookstore lackey, I am mildly annoyed that it has taken their publisher, ohhh, how many years now to get the durned thing into paperback. Really, I am surprised that they aren't pushing back tomorrow's PB release now that sales are up from the whole "Holy blood, holy grail" debate.

There are too many books in the world for me to read this one, but my wife read it and every time she asked me if something the novel claimis a historical fact is true, I had to say, no, there is no suggestions of anything like that in the sources we have at all. It bother me too that people think there is. I've heard people say things like "well, I'm sure there is [i]some[/] truth to it." Well, not really.

Patrik

Anyone watch Digging For the Truth on the History Channel? In Monday's episode, Josh Berenstein debunked the whole Jesus/Mary Magdalen bloodline theory/conspiracy through DNA testing. Something else that caught my attention is that there is no mention of MM or Jesus in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I'm going to do a bit of researching on that one. I don't know that much about the DDS, but I thought there was mention of the two in them.

Cher

The dead see scrolls predate Jesus by some decades IIRC so it would be more surprising if he was mentioned. They consist of Old Testament manuscripts and manuscripts of texts belonging to the Qumran-society, a jewish splinter group around in the time of Jesus, that may or may not have influenced him in some way.

Patrik

Thanks, Patrik.

Cher

am i the only one who didn't like this book? i mean... really didn't like it, and not because of controversial content. i made it about three chapters before the writing style made me quit. i found it clumsy and awkward and a full notch below john grisham.

and i certainly don't pretend to be a literary scholar. i like cheap thrills as much as anyone (i'm reading the first harry potter book again, right now, and loving it). but i just really disliked this one...

maybe it's me. the rest of the free world seems to adore the thing. and for what it's worth, i do plan on seeing the movie, because i'm intrigued by the premise of the story. after all, i've been hearing about it for so stinkin' long!

I started reading this the other day because I think my students will have questions about the issues it discusses when they see the movie. Things about which I know too little. It seems that since the release of this book, and maybe before it, it has become a fad or a good way for critical Bible scholars to make money by writing books raising these types of questions. See Ehrman's Lost Christianities, etc.

I read it through, but only in order to find out what happened at the end. When that's your goal, I guess you can put up with a lot of less-than-stellar writing style.

What irked me, though, was the almost constant introduction of plot twists that just seemed to come out of left field, rather that be a necessary consequence of earlier plot twists. I mean, just when you think they're home free, some other weird thing happens.

Odd thing was that, given the politics and empire-building of the Catholic Church over the centuries, I felt that the "conspiracy to suppress the truth" bit was at least plausible.

After DVC, I read Digital Fortress. Even worse, IMHO. Same style, but being a computer tech, I could see that the premise was totally flawed - like he just took some buzzwords and threw them together to make a story. That really made me question the plausibility of the Opus Dei/Templar stuff in DVC - stuff about which I know nothing.

I thought the book sucked. It read like a movie screenplay with iffy direction -- hey, look what's coming to theaters! I hated the constant introduction of cliffhangers, the neverending plot twists which were basically there to make everything twisty, not even properly thinky and labarynthine, the pathetic vocabulary, the way everything was spun for sensationalism, and the fact that the book had all the depth of a milk puddle on my kitchen floor. And why was the average chapter length three pages? Was Mr. Brown incapable of holding two thoughts in mind for any longer? Or is that his (evidently accurate) assessment of the reading public at large? A third-grader could follow most of this.

What irritates me most about the "controversial" material in the book is that much of it is fictitious, some of it obviously so, and people who don't bother learning any better are taking this as truth at face value. This isn't so much a problem with the book as with people. I hate stupid people. Too bad I'm not smart enough to capitalize on them.

I finally read this book because I was curious about it and wanted to be able to discuss it with other people, including my wife and two sons who all liked it. I have to agree that it reads more like a screenplay (with not especially good dialogue) than a novel, but I found it pretty enjoyable as pulp fiction goes. The plot is incredibly far-fetched in parts, and no doubt the subject matter was chosen primarily for its controversy value, but I do agree with the book's central contention that all religions (including modern Christianity) are essentially fables endowed with the weight of moral authority.

I am now curious regarding which of Brown's "revelations" in the book have some plausible grounding in research and which were outright contrivances he simply made up. It would have been nice if he documented this in an appendix, because (as Libby said) many readers do assume everything his scholarly characters in the book are saying has some actual basis in history.

Keith...if you at least found it entertaining, you should read Angels & Demons...it's actually a lot better, just without the controversy to make it as famous. It's quite a fun book, actually.

But it could give you nightmares.*

~m

*I know it did for me!

Thanks -- actually that's exactly what Karen told me!

Doubtful, though -- aside from my weakness for Kay Scarpetta novels, I'm pretty picky about books given my ever-growing queue and the investment of time required to read them. DaVinci Code is the only Dan Brown book I've read, but on that basis at least I would agree he's a step down from John Grisham as a mystery writer.

I think I may read The Name of the Rose next, I've never read anything by Umberto Eco and I thought the movie was fascinating.

keith...if you do have time, though, check out _angels and demons_. i read it second, and although it was a little harder to get into, it was wonderful.

it's also a speedy read...for one of your train rides or flights all over the place!

Oooh. I started reading that last summer, and LOVED it, but never got past the fourth chapter or so due to the arrival of the school year. It's still sitting on my bookshelf, looking quite sad with its plumage of post-it notes poking above the pages I found particularly interesting, vocabulary list sprouting inside its front cover, waiting for me to return. I am STILL pissed my required course next semester got rescheduled and forced me to drop Latin. I want to take Latin.

Haven't seen the movie. I'm limited to 1000 titles in the dispenser, split between actual movies, video games, porn, and TV series on DVD. I doubt this film will ever make that list.

I uh, third that...Angels & Demons is actually a much better book as far as pure entertainment and mystery writing. I think the subject matter of DaVinci is more interesting, but I think it actually gets in teh way of the story at times...there's some of that in Angels, but it's more low-key and a more enjoyable book, methinks.

if enjoyable, you mean "grusome beyond all belief" then i concur.

So much blah, blah, blah here about faith and all that crap, but I'm in Italy for work and all I see is that there are lots of other books coming out poking fun at the original and people are REALLY beginning to QUESTION their faith esp here in Catholic Italy.....and I can ONLY SMILE, SMILE; SMILE at that!!!!
I'm going to read the original book prob next week so I'll have A VERY UNBIASED start. Oh I don't need to QUESTION faith.....I did that already EONS ago, hehehehhehehheheh

Robert.

Robert - do you think that people don't question their faith (whatever that faith is) daily? It's a pretty normal occurrence from what this pagan sees. A huge part of life. I'm not speaking of their strength of faith - just questioning it from time to time.

Cher

On the contrary Cher, I know that more and more people are questioning faith by the minute (and I'm talking about ALL religions!!), but what these GOOD PEOPLE are NOT doing though is to have the COURAGE (or 'guts'!) to say it out loud.


Robert.

Why does that make you smile, smile, smile?

WELL, IT'S CERTAINLY NOT 'LIL 'OL ME that's making people ALL OVER THE GLOBE question thier faith. Evidently people are WAKING up to what's REALLY happening out there in "neat" RELIGION-LAND!!!

Robert.

And you still didn't answer my question.

I suspect Robert is the Anti-HappyScout foretold of in the book of Revelations.

Or the land of excitable CAPITAL LETTERS or exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hm. No. I didn't find those.

So. Robert. You still haven't answered my question.

Hate to say this, but I think he's an internet troll. I have yet to see a construstive post from him on this board.

Don't feed the trolls.

What does "internet troll" mean?
the boy's posted hundreds of times here, and though he may be a little off-center (he IS from Australia after all - Crocodile hunter /Men at Work / Dundee home of the Funnel Web Spider and millions of other evil creatures and all that), I don't think he's really said anything worth ignoring the guy over. I suspect he takes hallucinogenic drugs, and Australians shouldn't do that. but aside from that, he seems ok to me.
What does "constructive" mean?

TROLL

CONSTRUCTIVE

oh, yeah, I meant to say don't give me a dictionary definition because I know what the words mean, I just don't know what you mean when you talk about "constructive" posts.

1. I think I am a troll then because I find myself agreeing at least to some degree with the way a troll thinks (we've had this "hurting people you've never met" discussion here before. I seem to be in the minority opinion on that).
2. I think that word is awful harsh to use on Timewarp. if you'd read through even just his last 10 or 20 posts I think you'd find that he's not doing this just to cause harm or dirision. I think he's just being himself. just because you don't agree with or like something he says doesn't mean he's up to no good.
3. I don't really have a 3, but it seems stupid to number one's points without having at least 3 of them.

I would like a "real" *ahem* answer from Robert himself.

His silliness, hehehehes, and crazy (let alone irritating) way of responding does nothing but dodge the initial question itself.

And with all due respect, if you are willing to read his last ten posts, it takes far less effort to scroll back on this same page and discover *gasp!*, he has yet to answer my simple and direct question.

As far as "constructive" goes, a direct answer to a direct question would be a nice start.

If I want to play dodgeball, I'll ask Ben Stiller.

there's no rule that says a person has to answer another's question.
plus, the answer seems somewhat obvious given his feelings about god and religion. misery loves company, or something like that...

Who said anything about rules? You asked what constructive would be.

I answered that a direct answer to a direct question would be a good start.

Since ROBERT!!!! LIKES TO TYPE!! SO ENTHUSIASTICALLY!!!, I "assumed" he wouldn't mind answering a simple question.

So. Robert. How about it?

You are going to probably have to wait for a little while. I believe Australia is about 12 hours ahead/behind us. So unless timewarp is a night owl you aren't going to get a response.