Monday, July 3

The Devil and Da Vinci

Now that I've finished my class (thanks to all of you who have prayed and asked about it - I did well on my last test, and the final grade hasn't been released yet), I've been reading a bit of fiction.

First, I picked up the DaVinci Code. The beginning of it, I wasn't that surprised at (you saw all the shots in the movie ads) the middle was good, and actually intriguing. The End, well. hmmm. See, the problem- as I see it - for Brown was that he needed to 'end' it, but he obviously couldn't write a book that overthrew the Catholic Church (or the evangelical church, though he didn't really ever talk about the evangelical church.) Doing so would border on fantasy, and his entire diatribe sections of the book ("Jesus and Mary Magdalene were lovers, and Peter the apostle was jealous, and the Catholic Church organized the best smear campaign EVER") would have had to been disregarded in the real world. Something Dan Brown doesn't want, because he's professed that he believes that those ideas are actually facts and should be believed.

So, he pulled the story lines together and put a personal feel to it. The ending deserves a "duuuhhh. Knew that was going to happen." Really, his foreshadowing wasn't very nuanced. But all in all, it was an ok read, except for the parts where I had to put the book down I was so mad at what he was saying about Jesus. But outside of that...

Oh, and you can read the last 3 chapters by skimming the first sentence of every paragraph and completely understand the entire conclusion.

Now I'm reading "The Devil wears Prada." I saw the movie clips one night and thought, "Now there's a movie I'd like to see Meryl Streep in." So when we were in Barnes and Noble we picked it up for 20% off. Lots of "New York" swearing, but overall a really fun read. The author, Lauren Weisberger, is a pretty decent author. The book is a narrative of the personal assistant to the most important woman in fashion publishing - the Devil, Miranda Priestly. Andrea, the main character, is actually an English/writing graduate and wants to work for New Yorker Magazine. To get where she wants, she takes a job as the personal assistant to 'Miranda' and endures - with much sarcasm and rolling of the eyes - the world of fashion and Miranda's unreasonable, endless demands.

And really, Weisberger does a magnificent job of having the reader feel the same feelings of bewilderment and dread Andrea feels every time she encounters the devil.

I'm only in the middle of it, but it's a good romp, if you're not offended by swearing and the frequent gay characters (she's working in the fashion industry, "after all." The homosexual agenda is missing, though, and the gay characters are primarily for humor). I'm looking forward (kind of) to seeing the movie. Looking forward to it, except they can't possibly make it as good as the book, but they definitely cast Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep perfectly, so maybe they won't butcher the entire story.

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