The Da Vinci Code Talk...

[Neo52285]

i read it before it got over rated. i read it when it first came out. my dad has read all of dan brown's books.

[maddog107]

i liked the da vinci code, it ties in well with alot of art history and science, it was also just plain fun to read

reading and fun in the same sentance is an oxymoron in my opinion

[Guest quasicartes]

I liked it but i think the book is so overrated... And also Opus Dai has much more power than just an old rich man and a fanatic.

Angels & Demons is much better in my opinion.

although countless critics have praised this book, some critics have given this book the big thumbs down...

the most common reason being the lame plot.

anyway, most of the art and historical claims in the da vinci code is fraud.

i knew this after reading the rough guide to da vinci code.

for example, contrary to what dan brown claims,

mona lisa is not amon l'isa.

the painting of the smiling woman, is unnamed when it was painted and was later on named in frech which means 'the playful lady'. the english name mona lisa was given much later. da vinci most probably didnt name his creation.

dan brown is just good at tying loose ends together, to form a great story.

pointless ends combined together to form a story.

[avadakedavra]

Opus Dei has much more power than just an old rich man and a fanatic.

Opus Dei, if I remember the book correctly ( I haven't read it for a while ) was an extremely large group in the book. Spanning continents and so forth. The thing you have to consider though is that every religion has it's fanatics. It doesn't really matter what sect their in, what god or gods they follow. Someone is always going to take it to far.

What the "old man" was in, was the Illuminati. Which conspiracy theorists have been throwing around for years. No one really knows if they're still around. What Dan Brown was assuming is that they really weren't, the doctor scientist dude was just claiming that he was.

anyway, most of the art and historical claims in the da vinci code is fraud.

Do you have evidence of this? I'd love to read it I found the book rather interesting, both from a catholic point of view and a pagan one. Some ( i'm not going to say many or all ) of the facts in that book were true. I couldn't dispute or prove the Mona Lisa comment quasicartes made, but many of the references in the book are based on fact. For instance, Jesus was Jewish, and it is believed by some that what he was preaching was Jewish gospel, that modern day Christianity is based upon what the priests and church came up with later ( Satan, for instance, was made up by the church, and not Jesus ). So the theory that he was married isn't that far fetched. And considering that the Virgin Mary was named Mary, do you really think they'd name a prostitute after the mother of the son of God? o.O

[Guest quasicartes]

long time ago, a pope called mary magdelene a prostitute, then many years later, the vatican withdrew his statement.

[avadakedavra]

Many people still believe it.

[Guest quasicartes]

Just finished reading what I though was the best book I have ever read,

Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. It is so damn good that it makes Da Vinci Code looks so damn bad. Da Vinci Code has a lame plot (What? Opus Dei only relies on 2 members? Further, after discovering the ancient secret that Robert Langdon and Sophie

believed must be released to the world for fear it will be lost forever, turns out that in the end, the secret is not lost at all.) and is bogged down by many historical inaccuracies. Further, the storyline gets quite predictable, after a while. Most importantly, Sophie Neveu isn't that attractive, hehehehe :evil:

Besides having a much better plot, Angels and Demons carries a far more important religious messages than Da Vinci Code. Also, the story is full of twists.

Angles and Demons is sooo fine. Especially with Vittoria Vetra in it... :evil: :evil: :evil:

[fmg00]

What? Opus Dei only relies on 2 members?

Exactly my point.

Is there any other Brown's book thats worth reading?

[Guest quasicartes]

so far only 'angels & demons' and 'da vinci code' has religious storylines.

'digital fortresst' , is mostly millitary-intelligence and computer-science... about some NSA secret...

the other one 'deception point' has an almost similar thread theme as 'digital fortress'.

But, I only think that 'angels& demons'' is the best. Because of the good storyline, many tiwists and Vittoria Vetra... :evil: :evil: :evil:

dan brown's writing style is not the best, though.

his writing style is at times lame, his humour at times childish.

Of all writers, I think Phillip Pullman has the grandest writing style, while Roald Dahl has the best sense of humour.

[Guest quasicartes]

Digital Fortress is horrible, I think it's Dan Brown's worst book.

Plot is quite predictable. Plus, I can't seem to identify with the main characters.

[Guest quasicartes]

The Da Vinci Con

By LAURA MILLER

Published: February 22, 2004

The ever-rising tide of sales of ''The Da Vinci Code'' has lifted some pretty odd boats, and none odder than the dodgy yet magisterial ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. A best seller in the 1980's, ''Grail'' is climbing the paperback charts again on the strength of its relationship to Dan Brown's thriller (which has, in turn, inspired a crop of new nonfiction books coming out this spring, from ''Breaking the Da Vinci Code'' to ''Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code''). ''The Da Vinci Code'' is one long chase scene in which the main characters flee a sinister Parisian policeman and an albino monk assassin, but its rudimentary suspense alone couldn't have made it a hit. At regular intervals, the book brings its pell-mell plot to a screeching halt and emits a pellet of information concerning a centuries-old conspiracy that purports to have preserved a tremendous secret about the roots of Christianity itself. This ''nonfiction'' material gives ''The Da Vinci Code'' its frisson of authenticity, and it's lifted from ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' one of the all-time great works of pop pseudohistory. But what seems increasingly clear (to cop a favorite phrase from the authors of ''Grail'') is that ''The Da Vinci Code,'' like ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' is based on a notorious hoax..

[Guest quasicartes]

The back story to both books, like most conspiracy theories, is devilishly hard to summarize. Both narratives begin with a mystery that leads sleuths to vaster and more sinister intrigues. In Brown's novel, it's the murder of a curator at the Louvre; in ''Grail,'' it's the unusual affluence of a priest in a village in the south of France. In the late 1960's, Henry Lincoln, a British TV writer, became interested in Rennes-le-Chateau, a town that had become the French equivalent of Roswell or Loch Ness as a result of popular books by Gerard de Sède. De Sède promulgated a story about parchments supposedly found in a hollowed-out pillar by the town priest in the 1890’s, parchments containing coded messages that the priest somehow parlayed into oodles of cash. Lincoln worked on several ''Unsolved Mysteries''-style documentaries about Rennes-le-Château, then enlisted Baigent and Leigh for a more in-depth investigation.

[Guest quasicartes]

What eventually emerges from the welter of names, dates, maps and genealogical tables crammed into ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' is a yarn about a secret and hugely influential society called the Priory of Sion, founded in Jerusalem in 1099. This cabal is said to have guarded documents and other proof that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus (who may or may not have died on the Cross) and that she carried his child with her when she fled to what is now France after the Crucifixion, becoming, figuratively, the Holy Grail in whom Jesus' blood was preserved. Their progeny intermarried with the locals, eventually founding the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish monarchs. Although deposed in the eighth century, the Merovingian lineage has not been lost; the Priory has kept watch over its descendants, awaiting an auspicious moment when it will reveal the astonishing truth and return the rightful monarch to the throne of France, or perhaps even a restored Holy Roman Empire.

[Guest quasicartes]

All the usual suspects and accouterments of paranoid history get caught up in this 1,000-year jaunt: the Cathar heretics, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Vatican, the Freemasons, Nazis, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Order of the Golden Dawn -- everyone but the Abominable Snowman seems to be in on the game. ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' is a masterpiece of insinuation and supposition, employing all the techniques of pseudohistory to symphonic effect, justifying this sleight of hand as an innovative scholarly technique called ''synthesis,'' previously considered too ''speculative'' by those whose thinking has been unduly shaped by the ''so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century.'' Comparing themselves to the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal, the authors maintain that ''only by such synthesis can one discern the underlying continuity, the unified and coherent fabric, which lies at the core of any historical problem.'' To do so, one must realize that ''it is not sufficient to confine oneself exclusively to facts.''

[Guest quasicartes]

Thus liberated, Lincoln et al. concoct an argument that is not so much factual as fact-ish. Dozens of credible details are heaped up in order to provide a legitimizing cushion for rank nonsense. Unremarkable legends (that Merovingian kings were thought to have a healing touch, for example) are characterized as suggestive clues or puzzles demanding solution. Highly contested interpretations (that, say, an early Grail romance depicts the sacred object as being guarded by Templars) are presented as established truth. Sources -- such as the New Testament -- are qualified as ''questionable'' and derivative when they contradict the conspiracy theory, then microscopically scrutinized for inconsistencies that might support it. The authors spin one gossamer strand of conjecture over another, forming a web dense enough to create the illusion of solidity. Though bogus, it's an impressive piece of work.

[Guest quasicartes]

Finally, though, the legitimacy of the Priory of Sion history rests on a cache of clippings and pseudonymous documents that even the authors of ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' suggest were planted in the Bibliotheque Nationale by a man named Pierre Plantard. As early as the 1970's, one of Plantard's confederates had admitted to helping him fabricate the materials, including genealogical tables portraying Plantard as a descendant of the Merovingians (and, presumably, of Jesus Christ) and a list of the Priory's past ''grand masters.'' This patently silly catalog of intellectual celebrities stars Botticelli, Isaac Newton, Jean Cocteau and, of course, Leonardo da Vinci -- and it's the same list Dan Brown trumpets, along with the alleged nine-century pedigree of the Priory, in the front matter for ''The Da Vinci Code,'' under the heading of ''Fact.'' Plantard, it eventually came out, was an inveterate rascal with a criminal record for fraud and affiliations with wartime anti-Semitic and right-wing groups. The actual Priory of Sion was a tiny, harmless group of like-minded friends formed in 1956.

Plantard's hoax was debunked by a series of (as yet untranslated) French books and a 1996 BBC documentary, but curiously enough, this set of shocking revelations hasn't proved as popular as the fantasia of ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' or, for that matter, as ''The Da Vinci Code.'' The only thing more powerful than a worldwide conspiracy, it seems, is our desire to believe in one.

[moiselles]

I bought it for my boyfriend for his birthday. He loved it.

[CaLiSuRfEr81]

good read

[Guest]

I just got Angels and Demons & The Da Vinci Code, hopefully I'll get to read them soon. From what I understand they are making the The Da Vinci Code into a movie, anyone heard anything about it?

[Neo52285]

both are being made into a movie