All I Hope Ever to Have to Say on "The Da Vinci Code"

[quasigeostrophy]

I liked the book. Not a literary breakthrough and a bit telegraphed, but an entertaining and quick read. Even though I've heard the movie (understandably, considering the book is a lot of exposition) drags, I may go see it for the heck of it.

Currently, I've been half paying attention to a documentary on The History Channel called Beyond the Da Vinci Code which is uncovering the truth behind many of the so-called claims in the novel. I like the approach of this documentary. The facts are being presented neutrally. I've read so many similar debunkings that annoy me with a tone, explicit or implicit, of "Dan Brown got it wrong!"

Give me a break. He wrote a work of fiction!!

Many years ago, I fell in love with a novel called The Eight, the first book by Katherine Neville. It's still one of my favorite books. It's a creative placing of historical characters from around and after the time of the French Revolution linked to another story thread set in the 1970s. They're all where they were, doing for the most part what they did that is recorded historically, when they did it. But Neville changed their motivations, often extremely. To me, whatever his actual intent, Brown's The Da Vinci code is the same sort of thing, except only with present day protagonists.

People having cow puppies about things Brown claims in the novel about the Catholic church and so forth, IMHO, just need to get over it.

Comments

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

I was annoyed at some of the story changes they make in the movie, in my mind unneccessarily.

But both are fine entertainment. Not to be taken as anything more.

I pretty much grew up reading things like Chariots of the Gods, so this sort of genre is great brain candy to me. And I've loved how, over the years, the things that were 'explained' in Chariots have since been actually explained by further exploration... and reading about them as the scientific story unfolds (a) decade(s) after I read the book is highly entertaining...

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I remember Chariots of the Gods. Now I feel old. :-) I never read it, but I do recall a similar cosnpiracy-theory peak around the same time it came out.