Tammi has just finished reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. You can go over and read her review of it. I never read it so I have no idea of its quality. OTOH I did read the Da Vinci Code.... oh it was sometime about 6 months after it came out.

A friend of mine had the book and offered to give it to me once she finished with it - so I accepted and read it. I offer no spoilers here. Just a few thoughts... it's only so-so as a story. The thing I noted by the time I had gotten through the first chapter, he wrote this book as either a television or movie manuscript. The focus and action change about every page or every other page - something I dislike intensely in a book. (I know some people with short attention spans might find this appealing) Otherwise, I thought that there was too much "filler" trying to keep the story going longer. By the time I got to the end I was thinking - well - it's about time! Sheesh!

The thing that called this to mind, other than the fact that Tammi is about to read the book herself, was the recent "order from on high" in the Catholic Church for it's members NOT to read the book. All in all a pretty silly announcement since the book has been out about 2 years or so and has been a best seller all that time. Well, it's not the first time that the Catholic Church has said some pretty silly stuff and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Then I heard that they are going to make the book into a movie... suddenly the pronouncement by the Church made sense. Books are one thing - movies are quite another. For some idiotic reason, people not only tend to believe what they read... but they really tend to believe what they see. So, the Church sees a movie coming along and the pictures will reinforce the thoughts from the book. Oh, did I mention that the book tends to be anti-Catholic? Not over the top outrageously so, still the slant is there - especially with the ending...

Next I heard an interview on the radio with a man from a Catholic group of some kind. Unfortunately I wasn't paying too much attention at the beginning of the interview, so I missed his affiliation (and I'm terrible with names). Unlike most people from religious groups who want to argue their point... he actually made some sense! I was really amazed. I've never heard Dan Brown interviewed (so I can't vouch for the veracity of this man's reporting) but it seems that although the Da Vinci Code is a fictional work, Mr. Brown is apparently trying to fudge the line between fiction and reality. The man being interviewed stated that he was a Sociologist and therefore he often had to write non-fiction, scientific type papers. His point was, that with non-fiction writing, you must footnote and give sources for your work. Good research and documentation give people a chance to investigate what you've written. But outside of a "fact page" in the book - there is no way to tell what is supposed to be "real" and what is supposed to be "fiction".

Unfortunately, with this book, it looks as though they are trying to have it both ways, to make people conclude that it's "true fiction" - kinda like the old Dragnet series... the stories are true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent. And if this holds, people will watch the movie and hear the interviews and decide... well, it sounds true to me. So far Oliver Stone and Michael Moore have shown us, without a doubt, people will believe all kinds of tripe if it's packaged and sold right.

And thus a pretty much mediocre mystery story becomes a huge sensation. Pretty good marketing on the part of Dan Brown and the publisher.

Posted by: Teresa in Books at 05:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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