dan Brown, the one about the 'unbreakable system' fascinated me. There is NO such thing as an unbreakable system. With the worm virus doing a loop seem like a bit of fun I do on a day off. Only kidding
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My brother gave my mum a bag of old books to give to the charity shop, mostly his wife's, when they were clearing a spare room for their 2nd child. She asked me if I wanted any so I took one flew over the cuckoo's nest and the da Vinci code. I will read cuckoo's nest, eventually, but I can't see myself ever reading the da Vinci code.
Mr Nobody I am none religious too, but I am fascinated by the concept. If you ask me am I catholic I will ask you who created god and who was behind him. People have the right to believe in whatever they want. we are supposed to be living in a democracy. As for dan brown, The female protagonist intellectually her mind interests me, she purportedly has iq of 208. Do you realise how bored she gets without being challengend with her mind.It's annoying. I really should have hated The Da Vinci Code because, frankly, it's not the best-written thing in the world and the 'big reveal' wasn't that big because I'd already figured it all out (for a 'labyrinthine' plot it certainly seemed a bit A -> B -> C, at least to me), but...I didn't, and don't, hate it. I'm not going to pretend it had some kind of life-changing (or affirming) effect, as some books can, but purely as a story...it was pretty good.
(Angels and Demons is better, though.)
(Note: Unlike some around here, I'm not at all religious, and never did have much time for organised religion. A lot of the basics in the books are true, re: the 'sacred feminine', the Church's historic attempts to tell their own story and silence the past, etc. But there's also respect for the Church, so you generally get to see both sides. It gives the story/ies strength, IMO.)
Mr Nobody I am none religious too, but I am fascinated by the concept. If you ask me am I catholic I will ask you who created god and who was behind him. People have the right to believe in whatever they want. we are supposed to be living in a democracy. As for dan brown, The female protagonist intellectually her mind interests me, she purportedly has iq of 208. Do you realise how bored she gets without being challengend with her mind.
Has anyone else heard of this author? My dad got me this book called Inferno and i'm on page 278. Not going to give anything away but so far i have not been able to put it down lol.
I think Dan Brown is a bit of a plagarist. He states so called facts that nobody can find evidence of,also. Do I like his books....gawd YES! Digital Fortress is my favorite. I have read them all.
You're a better person than I am, Kurben. Historical fiction that gets a lot of the history wrong drives me CRAZY. I couldn't get past I think the 4th chapter of Da Vinci--too silly and overwrought for me.What Brown really is good at is cliffhangers. Each chapter ends in one. His writing isn't very good i think and in my opinion he usually spins the plotthread a few times to many so it breaks. They are very alike according to me. The best one is probably Deception point that doesn't feature Robert Langdon. I may be biased because i know quite a bit of history as it is my profession so therefore sees the enormous gaps in the plots. Just happen to be of the opinion that if you use history as a major part of your plot you should have some foundation for it. Most often he doesn't but his cliffhanger ability saves the books.
Didn't like it either but since he used a "factbook" (The holy blood, holy grail - book) as a basis i feel more inclined to be angry at them then at Brown when it comes to the Davinci code. Deception point is not history based therefore i think it is Ok. I think it is ok to toy a little with history in fiction. To fill the gaps so to say. Or to put a non-historical person as your main character and use the real historical persons as people he or she interact with. But Brown rarely toys just a little. He breaks the back of credibility because he spins his historybased plotthread to manytimes. You and I might see it but those who doesn't doesn't even seem to care that it is way away from real history. But he is good at cliffhangers but that is also all he is good at. The sad thing is that he inspired a lot of others to write similar completely way away from anything to do with history thrillers. From my point of view it would have been better if the Da Vinci code never had been written. So many silly questions it has given rise to!You're a better person than I am, Kurben. Historical fiction that gets a lot of the history wrong drives me CRAZY. I couldn't get past I think the 4th chapter of Da Vinci--too silly and overwrought for me.
And apparently they also have just discovered many hundreds of millions of dollars in their 'vaults' today, if the ticker-tape at the bottom of the TV this morning is to be believed!!The only truth I could find in the end was 'The Vatican has secrets and knows more than anyone lets on'.
Yep, and they should have won. I have read both authors and the similarities are more than amazing...they are suspect.Yeah the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail took him to court for plagiarism. I think he won eventually, even more so as it gave more publicity for the book (The DaVinci Code). I got tattoos of the Illuminati palindrome and Illuminati diamond from Angels and Demons
Yep, and they should have won. I have read both authors and the similarities are more than amazing...they are suspect.
Of course Brown had read the book. Both his book is fiction and he says so while the other is a fact book (they say). But to build a fictitious story from a historical theory (if rather bad theory) can't be called plagiarism. Then many historical novels would be unwritten because of fear of ending up in court.Yep, and they should have won. I have read both authors and the similarities are more than amazing...they are suspect.
Eco is the anti-Dan Brown (lol). Tight writing, strong storylines, excellent historical scholarship, logical plotting. Iain Pears has some very good books in this genre (historical fiction), as wellI read Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the mid 90's. When Brown's book came out I knew the plot instantly because of that. I know his books are popular but I found them poorly written. I agree with Kurban about the plagiarism idea. I didn't know the HB,HG authors had sued him. Seems like sour grapes. They propose an odd, and factually unsound historical theory, and some writer takes the underlying idea and writes a thriller out of it. That's not plagiarism. No one gets to own historical facts. They're hoisted by their own petard. If they believe their theory is fact, it's not plagiarism: if they think it's fiction, then they deny their own book. That's a non-starter of a law-suit.
But if you like that genre of book, I'll throw the best I've read of that type out there: Umberto Eco's "Foucoult's Pendulum." The writing is tight, the characters vivid. The plot excellent.
As for religion and its role in the world, well, it's like everything else in this world. It's made up of human beings with all that human beings bring to the party. That means that hypocrisy, power, wealth, control and all kinds of wickedness will show itself under the name religion. It does not follow that there is therefore no Truth, simply because there are many Falsehoods. In fact, given our ancient enemy, one would expect exactly that, no? Scripture explicitly says that. It should be no surprise.
Kelly
Liked The Name of the Rose" even more. But after those two i think Eco, as a storyteller, has been too caught up in his immense learning. so that the storyline kind of ran into a wall. But if you like Eco you should try Hilary Mantel. Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies about Sir Thomas Cromwell, advisor to Henry VIII when he had all those problems with Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. Good writing and great scholarship about that part of Tudor-england. But it is not a mystery of course. If you like historical mysteries i can recommend Steven Saylor. Takes place in Rome when Cicero, Pompey and a young Ceasar is stalking the streets of Rome. Roman Blood is the first in the series.I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the mid 90's. When Brown's book came out I knew the plot instantly because of that. I know his books are popular but I found them poorly written. I agree with Kurban about the plagiarism idea. I didn't know the HB,HG authors had sued him. Seems like sour grapes. They propose an odd, and factually unsound historical theory, and some writer takes the underlying idea and writes a thriller out of it. That's not plagiarism. No one gets to own historical facts. They're hoisted by their own petard. If they believe their theory is fact, it's not plagiarism: if they think it's fiction, then they deny their own book. That's a non-starter of a law-suit.
But if you like that genre of book, I'll throw the best I've read of that type out there: Umberto Eco's "Foucoult's Pendulum." The writing is tight, the characters vivid. The plot excellent.
As for religion and its role in the world, well, it's like everything else in this world. It's made up of human beings with all that human beings bring to the party. That means that hypocrisy, power, wealth, control and all kinds of wickedness will show itself under the name religion. It does not follow that there is therefore no Truth, simply because there are many Falsehoods. In fact, given our ancient enemy, one would expect exactly that, no? Scripture explicitly says that. It should be no surprise.
Kelly