Place-Holding, Plus Reviews

[handful_ofdust]

Treating Cal for his pneumonia/strep-ear has turned out to be somewhat easier than I thought it might overall, if only because the Amoxil tastes like strawberries rather than...Amoxil, one assumes. It also makes him sleepy, which I appreciate.

Last night agincourtgirl came over to spend time alone with Cal, which apparently went well (and that in itself bodes very well for the future). Steve and I went to Chapters on Adelaide, bought books and read them in the store, while making notes on our various projects; we didn't end up going to a movie or anything, but we did later have a very good (and relatively cheap) sushi dinner before adjourning back to the land of standy, shrieky boyo(s). But I wasn't able to make it to moon_custafer's bridal shower, which I regret, and that means we will have to arrange to throw her and green_trilobite a dinner sometime soon. Maybe we can talk about this "sad gay world", and all that.;)

In the meantime, I bought Steve Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, mainly because I knew he'd never do it himself and thought it would be useful for him to really understand what he's up against, in terms of anti-Catholic blockbuster mojo. Reading Da Vinci has turned out to be both frustrating yet surprisingly amusing: Brown's "facts" I can't really speak to, though I must admit I've heard most of his mish-mash of conspiracy-theory "secrets" before (albeit from different sources instead of all thrown together in a big, indigesible lump)...but man, the guy's a bad writer. No ear for dialogue (everything is Basil Exposition times one hundred), characters flatter than pancakes (accents to tell them apart, maybe crutches, or albinism), "suspense" that mainly consists of people throwing money around to get themselves past really inefficient European cops. Almost every conversation--and there's almost nothing but conversation in both books--goes like this:

"Well, as you know, world-famous American symbologist Robert Langdon, blah blah blah blah. But did you also know la la la la la?"

"Excuse me? I thought you said la la la la la!"

"Yes, that's right, I did!"

"But I thought dah dah dah dah dah! How could information this crucial have possibly been kept from everybody for all this time?"

"Hmmm, hard to say. But I bet the Catholic church had something to do with it!"

Luckily, I was able to wash the taste of this bland "50 Fun Facts About The Templars (And Much, Much More)!"-type crapola--so unconvincing it only amnages to be vaguely annoying--from my literary palate by renewing my acquaintance with one of the best authors writing today: Jeff Long. His newest book, The Reckoning, works equally well as a creepily physical ghost story and a gloriously-researched, utterly tactile tour through Cambodia with the men and women who spend each pre-monsoon summer trying to track down American bones lost since the end of the Vietnam war; Longw rites like some unholy splicing of a poet and a journalist, his fact threaded with fiction so organic it's impossible to parse out while the story's still in full swing. And now that he's been picked up by PocketStar, all his books will finally be available in paperback. So do yourself a favor--start with The Descent, a literal re-imagining of Dante vs. Hell set at the bottom of the Marinaras Trench, then keep on working your way (heh heh heh) even further down. It's well worth the trip.

Huh, after 11:00 PM, and I still haven't mentioned finding a pristine Asian dub of Kung Fu Hustle at BMV. But that'll wait. 'Night, all.

Comments

[rustler.livejournal.com]

Dude, DaVinci Code is the most hilariously bad thing I've read in a dog's age. I remember at a certain point, about 1/4 way in, starting to leaf through the rest of the book, shaking my head and thinking, "Dear God, does this whole freaking book really go on in 3 page, mini-cliffhangered chapters?"

And yeah, it did. LOL. Just, you know, on top of the Breathless!Infodump "dialogue" and half-baked conspiracy. Hahaha. And to think that book caused such a sensation. I guess when you're willing to poke at the good ol' Catholic Church, you're going to get some attention regardless of literary merit.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Re the cliffhangers: Maybe it's his "tribute" to Charles Dickens, or something. But yeah, stuff like this is almost enough to make me as paranoid as Steve when it comes to the anti-Catholic bias thang...almost. Because when you're gonna end up in Limbo either way, you can't take too much of any of it personally.;)