Dan Brown's Inferno

[bayonetbrant]

I'm no big fan of Brown's, but the conspiracy sourcing he ripped off for DaVinci Code - Baigent, Bacon & Leigh ...

Wasn't that Baigent, Lincoln & Leigh? 

you're right.  I was working from memory at work and didn't look it up

and I've got some of Lincoln's other stuff he did w/o the others.

That he most definitly did. I read Holy Blood  Holy Grail, the Messianic Legacy, and the Temple and the Lodge almost a decade before reading the DaVinci Code.

you ever read Starbird's stuff?  or Picknett & Prince?  Knight & Lomas?
if you want a really entertaining one, you should check out Laurence Gardner's Bloodline of the Holy Grail
There's a ton of fun reading out there if you go looking for it :)

[Bismarck]

Thanks for the link Bismarck. The kind of conspiracy material that Brown bases his books on I know nothing about...what are some of the better non-fiction books? My aunt gave me one for Christmas called The Temple Mount Code by Charles Brokaw but I have not read it. My aunt is a little crazy.

If you want to get serious, check out

Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. Oxford University Press, USA. 2004. ISBN 0-19-518140-9. by Bart Ehrman.

Ehrman is a fine scholar of early Christianity bit, like so many underpaid historians, he jumped on the Brown-bashing wagon when DaVinci[/i caught fire. I keep yelling "Come on guys, it's just a novel, not scholarship" but everybody deserves a bit of the gravy train.]

[MetalDog]

I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail about ten years before DaVinci Code.  The thing I liked best about Brown's novels was a feeling of reading a movie.  The short chapters seemed like scenes and the pacing was fast.  Although, I have to say I saw Tom Cruise as the Doctor, not Tom Hanks.

[Staggerwing]

Thanks Bis. I'll put the Ehrman book on my list. I've been meaning to pick up something written by him.

[Gusington]

Yes thanks Bismarck. What do you think of Holy Blood, Holy Grail? I know that one.

[MetalDog]

Been so long since I read it, I can't say anything more than a better than neutral, "You should try it."

[Longdan]

I read Brown's Angels and Demons first.  I could not believe it had been written by an English Professor.
What and incredibly stupid POS that was.  I used to do a 5 minute stand up routine based on it which was very popular.
There were so many plot twists and turns in the end that I got whiplash and had to keep going back and forth to
determine who were the good guys and the bad guys as they changed every couple of pages.  The prose was awkward
and there were gaps of logic that you could drive a Mack truck full of better writing through.  Maguffins, red herrings and
many utter stupidities together with totally inexplicable flashes of insight.  Two things I remember in particular..
1) The hero sees a symbol which he "knows" no one has ever seen before.
2) The head of the Swiss Guard stood up so straight he looked like he was bending over backwards
and bonus: the mysterious Assassin with the "icy middle eastern accent" brands all his victims with a red hot brand he carries
with him wherever he goes...presumably keeping it red hot between his buttock or something

[Bismarck]

Inferno is just one long red herring.

[JasonPratt]

Thanks for the link Bismarck. The kind of conspiracy material that Brown bases his books on I know nothing about...what are some of the better non-fiction books? My aunt gave me one for Christmas called The Temple Mount Code by Charles Brokaw but I have not read it. My aunt is a little crazy.

If you want to get serious, check out

Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. Oxford University Press, USA. 2004. ISBN 0-19-518140-9. by Bart Ehrman.

Ehrman is a fine scholar of early Christianity bit, like so many underpaid historians, he jumped on the Brown-bashing wagon when DaVinci caught fire. I keep yelling "Come on guys, it's just a novel, not scholarship" but everybody deserves a bit of the gravy train.

Or for much less (i.e. zero) money, this nifty little project that I ran across last year (compiled by an atheist, so no worries about pro-religious bias): History vs. The Da Vinci Code.

That being said, the most meticulous and balanced criticisms of TDV I've read over the years (although this guy comes close to being as meticulous and is certainly as balanced) have come from moderate to conservative Christian scholars. We do some of us make a point of professional pride in knowing the history and theological details of our own religion (and its variations) after all. ;)

(I should note that Dr. E is neither carefully conservative nor moderate, but rather more radically liberal on the ideological scale. And even he thinks Dan Brown didn't do the research, or just intentionally decided to misrepresent things for the sake of drawing ire and thus interest and thus sales copy.  ::) )

[Bismarck]

It's all about $$$ for Brown- and I get that. Being a bit of a writer myself, I can understand keep one's belly full.

[JasonPratt]

I would rather not leverage the faith of billions of people worldwide into keeping my belly full, certainly not with such shoddy and overtly insulting work.

(To be fair that goes the other way, too. Leveraging is as leveraging does.  ::) )

Having said that, I have nothing but praise and even admiration for the way DB designed the narrative to keep pages effectively turning, from a purely functional point of view. Chapters are short, to the point (poisoned though the points may be ;) ), move along briskly, and bridge strongly into the following chapters. (Or I found TDVC that way; I haven't read his other work.) I'm nowhere near as talented as that.

[Bismarck]

>I would rather not leverage the faith of billions of people worldwide into keeping my belly full, certainly not with such shoddy and overtly insulting work."

If their faith was bothered by a novel, it wasn't much of a faith.