Okay so I'm very late to Dan Brown's little party. This book has been sitting in my ever-burgeoning "To-Be-Read" pile for a while now...several people in my circles of family and friendship read it and kept encouraging me to do so as well...but I didn't feel called to it (I never force myself to read anything...every book has its own time...I started what ended being one of my all-time favorite books* twice over the course of a year or so before it was the right time and I was swept up into it the third time I picked it up.)
This book keeps cropping up in the news (various folks trying to ban and/or discredit a book will tend do that) and late Wednesday night (casting about for something to read before going to sleep) I just decided to read the bloody thing and see what all the fuss was about.
And now I have.
It's a great yarn...for all of its religious, historic, and artistic touchpoints (and affectations?), it is at its heart an almost pulpy thriller (and I don't say that in a negative way...nothing wrong with a good thriller)... and Ron Howard will hopefully make a good movie out of it (though it is densely packed with twists, turns, characters, and information and so, as is most often the case, much will have to be jettisoned in the transition from the page to the screen.)
I understand that it's provocative...purposely so I presume...but I'm not sure why so many people find it so very threatening. It's a novel...one informed with much research and filled with much speculation to be sure...and I'm not sure why anybody's faith should be threatened by a work of fiction (it kind of reminds me of the furor that cropped up around Oliver Stone's film JFK...whatever delusions of grandeur the director had it was just a movie but some people seem to take it for more than that.)
It wasn't a waste of time...it's an entertaining enough book...and now another volume is removed from my pile (of course, two more were added earlier this week...)
*Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
5 comments:
If you feel like adding another one to your "to be read pile" which by the way i have on as well so don't feel alone on that. Try "Angels and Demons" also by Dan Brown. I have not read the Da Vinci code yest so I cannot compare the two. But i highly recomend his other novel.
*Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
Now, that´s a great book. You have impeccable taste :-)
I agree with you observations Mike. It is a novel with the ussual fix of fact and fiction that get's everyone nuts!
See... in the old days we were taught to never confuse the two. Nowadays if you DON'T confuse the two you don't sell a damn thing. Cheers...
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Eh. ice writing on a hokey subject. One of the books used for research I keep in my bathroom...if I find myself short on TP, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail".
They did some great research for not knowing Church History, French History, Latin 101, Catholic Theology..oh nevermind.
The problem is that it doesn't present itself solely as a work of fiction.
The book dangerously alludes that the Catholic Church is involved in some huge 'cover up', attempting to hide the 'truth' about the Lord and further alluding that the Catholic Church will stop at nothing, not even murder to achieve it's own ends....so in that respect, yes it's fictitious...but as a Catholic myself I can say that it misrepresents Catholicism, and the Catholic Church, which can do nothing to further the course of ecumenical relations between Catholics and non Catholics.
The book itself presents ideas that are entirely contrary to Christian belief, whether protestant or Catholic, ie, that Jesus was a man, not God...that he was married to Mary magdalene..that they had a daughter together...these are just a few of the untruths presented as 'fiction' (let alone the whole secret society garbage) but with an underlying effect upon those who are impressionable, indifferent, gullable or ignorant.
just my opinion.
God Bless.
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