Tuesday, May 16, 2006

I've found myself in the interesting position of having to read a book by Friday (or by very soon after). It's interesting because it's not a work book, and I rarely have deadlines for non-school-related reading.

I made the (possible) mistake of telling a friend I'd read Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code before I saw the movie.

Note that I've had zero interest in reading the book. I read Angels and Demons in a single night my senior year of college (I had a paper due and, well, I really like procrastinating). I even read about the first fifty pages of The DaVinci Code back in the days when I was fairly serious about working out, and it was the perfect size to fit in the bookholder on my favorite exercise bike. Then I put down the book I was told repeatedly people couldn't put down. In the years since its publication, I've never been able to get up sufficient interest to pick it back up.

I'm not really up on all the controversy surrounding it -- but I thought this article in The New Yorker was quite interesting. For lack of anything more interesting to write about until my orals lists are constructed (and I have a deadline of tomorrow) -- here's the link.

I wish I could come up with some nice scholarly thing to say about it, but those (as well as many non-scholarly responses) abound on the net and elsewhere. So my single contribution to the DaVinci Code discussion may seem slightly mundane and superficial, but I assure you it is no laughing matter:

What on earth did they do to Tom Hanks' hair?!?!?

*****

And for those in the NE who are getting pounded by the storms out there (this is starting to remind me of the particularly soggy October we had this past year) -- good luck keeping dry. I think we'll probably all need it.

4 comments:

Tiruncula said...

Yyeccgh. I'm embarrassed to say I read the DVC when I needed an airplane book, and it's just dumb. Sloppy. Sloppy sloppy sloppy. Not edited. Not interesting. *makes gagging noise*

Derek the Ænglican said...

It's a very quick read. I found the number of factual errors down right amusing. Except that a lot of people don't know any better and are always happy to suspect a plot... *sigh*

Karl Steel said...

Blogwhoring my Intended's words: you may want to see this complaint.

(nice work on this blog btw...)

MKH said...

Karl -- That's a great post. The last paragraph, particularly, is dead-on. For some reason, it also reminded me that it's been a long time since I watched "Dogma", and I should fix that.

And thanks, glad you like it!

Derek -- I refer all to Eco on the "suspecting a plot" scenario -- Foucault's Pendulum is aggravatingly complicated but worth it for the last chapter.

Tiruncula -- The things we read on planes. Yeesh. I've read more than my share of bad books on planes.