Book of the Day
May. 9th, 2004 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kellan_the_tabbyBecause reviewing one book a month would leave way too many books unreviewed.
Finished Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown, last night. For those who haven't heard of it, it's the book that comes before The Da Vinci Code, though you needn't have read either to keep up with the other one. I will try to avoid spoilers though there will be a few non-plot-related tidbits.
At least from my perspective, Angels and Demons ought to have been nearly as controversial as The Da Vinci Code, having nearly as much of ancient secret brotherhoods (the Illuminati in this one, the Priory of Sion in The Da Vinci Code), misbehaviour by religious figures (specifically _Catholic_ ones for some reason), and revelations of Deep Hidden Meaning in things. But then, I tend strongly towards a scientific perspective, so maybe that's just me.
To my surprise, the man writes to a formula. Now, he does it pretty _well_, so I don't mind so much, but it wasn't what I would have expected. But then, I read The Da Vinci Code expecting something of the level of Umberto Eco, and for me it was really a fairly light if amusing read. Angels and Demons did a better job of keeping me from figuring out who The Bad Guy was, and in fact I spent most of the book on the wrong track entirely, being vaguely surprised he'd made it so obvious. It wasn't obvious, but that's only because he gave _no_ clues until most of the way through the book...
Once again Robert Langdon is woken up in the middle of the night. Once again, he refuses to believe what has happened right away. (For my part, if I'd lived through what happened in Angels and Demons, I'd've believed the caller by the time of The Da Vinci Code...) Once again he winds up joining forces with a beautiful and highly intelligent woman who just happens to be the daughter of the murdered man, and once again he winds up in bed with her. (If you consider that a spoiler...well, _I_ saw it coming before actually opening the book.) Once again he follows a trail of clues through medieval architecture and repeatedly gets there _just_ too late.
Not a whole lot of surprises, at least for me. I had a few suspension-of-disbelief problems with the ambigrams being 'so impossible to design', as I probably know eight or ten people who could have come up with them over a long weekend. I had less fun trying to figure out the clues before the symbology expert in this than I did in The Da Vinci Code, as I know nearly nothing about either the architecture of Rome or the art of Bernini.
As an aside, I had _major_ suspension-of-disbelief issues with The Da Vinci Code, since I figured out a _lot_ of the clues and Sekrit Stuff before the symbology professor...I mean, duh, you're talking about the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, you ought to _know_ that at some point you're gonna be holding something up to a mirror... But then, that might be an artifact of the way I think, and the kind of people I hang out with. My relatives and the people I work with generally had a much harder time figuring things out than me or my friends. And Dan Brown was clearly writing for an audience who didn't know a whole lot about the Illuminati, or the Templars, or the Priory of Sion, or Mary Magdalene, or...
And I _cannot_ believe that a large group of scientists would have reacted with such _glee_ to the threat to the Vatican. A certain amount of a wry sort of 'they brought it on themselves', maybe, but massive loss of life _and_ art _and_ historical stuff _and_ everything in the Vatican Freakin' Library? Nobody _I_ know of a scientific bent would rejoice over that kind of thing...I think Dan Brown doesn't know many scientists near as well as he thinks he does, and I think he does the scientists of CERN a grave disservice in this book.
That aside, a good if fairly light read. Some amount of gratuitous grossity and abuse of old old books, but I've read much worse in that respect.
Finished Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown, last night. For those who haven't heard of it, it's the book that comes before The Da Vinci Code, though you needn't have read either to keep up with the other one. I will try to avoid spoilers though there will be a few non-plot-related tidbits.
At least from my perspective, Angels and Demons ought to have been nearly as controversial as The Da Vinci Code, having nearly as much of ancient secret brotherhoods (the Illuminati in this one, the Priory of Sion in The Da Vinci Code), misbehaviour by religious figures (specifically _Catholic_ ones for some reason), and revelations of Deep Hidden Meaning in things. But then, I tend strongly towards a scientific perspective, so maybe that's just me.
To my surprise, the man writes to a formula. Now, he does it pretty _well_, so I don't mind so much, but it wasn't what I would have expected. But then, I read The Da Vinci Code expecting something of the level of Umberto Eco, and for me it was really a fairly light if amusing read. Angels and Demons did a better job of keeping me from figuring out who The Bad Guy was, and in fact I spent most of the book on the wrong track entirely, being vaguely surprised he'd made it so obvious. It wasn't obvious, but that's only because he gave _no_ clues until most of the way through the book...
Once again Robert Langdon is woken up in the middle of the night. Once again, he refuses to believe what has happened right away. (For my part, if I'd lived through what happened in Angels and Demons, I'd've believed the caller by the time of The Da Vinci Code...) Once again he winds up joining forces with a beautiful and highly intelligent woman who just happens to be the daughter of the murdered man, and once again he winds up in bed with her. (If you consider that a spoiler...well, _I_ saw it coming before actually opening the book.) Once again he follows a trail of clues through medieval architecture and repeatedly gets there _just_ too late.
Not a whole lot of surprises, at least for me. I had a few suspension-of-disbelief problems with the ambigrams being 'so impossible to design', as I probably know eight or ten people who could have come up with them over a long weekend. I had less fun trying to figure out the clues before the symbology expert in this than I did in The Da Vinci Code, as I know nearly nothing about either the architecture of Rome or the art of Bernini.
As an aside, I had _major_ suspension-of-disbelief issues with The Da Vinci Code, since I figured out a _lot_ of the clues and Sekrit Stuff before the symbology professor...I mean, duh, you're talking about the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, you ought to _know_ that at some point you're gonna be holding something up to a mirror... But then, that might be an artifact of the way I think, and the kind of people I hang out with. My relatives and the people I work with generally had a much harder time figuring things out than me or my friends. And Dan Brown was clearly writing for an audience who didn't know a whole lot about the Illuminati, or the Templars, or the Priory of Sion, or Mary Magdalene, or...
And I _cannot_ believe that a large group of scientists would have reacted with such _glee_ to the threat to the Vatican. A certain amount of a wry sort of 'they brought it on themselves', maybe, but massive loss of life _and_ art _and_ historical stuff _and_ everything in the Vatican Freakin' Library? Nobody _I_ know of a scientific bent would rejoice over that kind of thing...I think Dan Brown doesn't know many scientists near as well as he thinks he does, and I think he does the scientists of CERN a grave disservice in this book.
That aside, a good if fairly light read. Some amount of gratuitous grossity and abuse of old old books, but I've read much worse in that respect.
