The Lost Symbol. . . It Should Stay Lost

Okay, this is my first ever Blog Book Review and I'm doing it because I feel so strongly about the book. . . and not in a good way.  I don't know how many of you have read Dan Brown's books, but I've read all but one (Digital Fortress, something about computers.  It made me not as interested, although I'm sure I'd still like it) and have loved every single one of them.  I got so into Angels & Demons that I read it in one day.  True, I was up very late that night, but I finished it and it was better because the story took place in 1 day, it was like I was reading it in real time, 24-style.

 

Anyhoo, I read his most recent book in the Robert Langdon series, The Lost Symbol.  Ever hear the expression, know when to stop?  Yeah, it should have been prior to this book.  What, you ask, was so bad about it?  Well for once, I have specific critiques of something, so here goes.  I first want to start out by saying: Buy a thesaurus!!!  I have never seen the word "esoteric" so much in my entire life.  I would actually like to do a word count in the book.  It would be worth it to me to sit down and scan each page to find how many times he uses the word.  My friend read the book after me, with my strong warning in hand, so she actually paid attention.  She counted it over 30 times in the first chunk that she read.  She noted that sometimes it was used 2x in one sentence.  Just like many other things in this book, I say "Okay, I get it already!  Move on!"

 

Which leads me to my next issue.  I think I actually read several facts at least three times throughout the book.  Individual facts and larger themes were constantly repeated like the reader is in kindergarten and just can't be trusted to learn the first time.  I'm a big girl now.  You tell me something is important, I get it.  Next fact.

 

Now the facts.  Like all of his books, this one was chock full of little known trivia items.  Fascinating to be sure, but this is a novel, not a lesson in the architectural subliminal messages created throughout the rise of our great nation.  I readily admit that Dan Brown seems to know a lot about these topics and does an amazing amount of research for his books.  I'm sure he could teach some of the classes that his fictitious scholar teaches at Harvard, and I would actually be very interested in those classes if he offered them.  However, this is not a classroom, it's a novel. 

 

Which leads me into my main problem with the book: Most of his other books are fascinating stories that teach you interesting things along the way.  This one is the reverse.  It's almost like he decided that he knew a lot about the topic and wanted to write a book about it, so he set out to and squeezed a story around the multitude of facts.  Basically, the story comes second to the lesson, and it's very obvious.

 

If you've never read a Dan Brown book, please do not let this book be your first, for it may come to represent your future opinion of his works, which would be a mistake.  I swear, the rest of his books are really good!!!  If you've read his other books, you will be disappointed.  Let's just hope that his next work gets back to his story telling as a priority and interesting tidbits as an added bonus.

Avatar = Amazing!!

Theatre, theatre, theatre!!!!!  Wow.  This movie was so visually amazing that I'm going back to see it in theatres while I still can.  Please don't even waste your time asking if I saw in 3-D or not. . . why would anyone go see that movie not in 3-D when it's offered??  3-D.  Always 3-D.  I know that it cost an exorbitant amount of money to make this movie (even more than the Waterworld flop), but great googily-moogily, it was worth it!  Now, I don't generally rave about movies. . . yes I get obsessed with certain things occasionally and talk incessantly about them, but this isn't one of those situations.  I'm not obsessed with the movie, I'm just that impressed. 

 

Every single creature in the world that Cameron created was obviously thought through in its entirety.  At a certain point in the beginning of the movie, the main character is being chased by pantheresque creatures.  The movie showed them close-up and slowly to give you the opportunity to see the tiny details given to the animal.  And everything was like that.  From the trees to the flying pinwheel-type things.  The other part that amazed me was the colors.  There were such brilliant and beautiful colors throughout the world of Pandora.  The first scene with the flying dragon things, I couldn't even take notice of the scenery they flew by because I was so captivated by the colors of the dragony creatures.  My basic point here is that they did such an amazing job creating this world, I think everyone should go see their technological achievement. 

 

Now that I've gone off a bit on the visual stimuli, I can now tell you that the storyline was also pretty interesting.  Now, I get that this comment doesn't seem nearly as exhuberant as my description of the technological aspects, and I don't mean to downplay it.  It really was an interesting storyline, it's just that the visuals leave such an impression that everything else seems secondary, although in this case secondary is not a bad place to be either.  At a certain point you realize that something has to happen to merge the aspects of the main character and you can't really see how that can happen, until they attempt the feat on another character first.  Then you think "oh, so that's how they're going to do that." 

 

I don't want to give too much away, so I'll leave it at that.  Go.  See this movie.  In the theatre, in 3-D.  I promise you it will be worth it.  I want to hope that even non-sci-fi fans will like it, if they can appreciate what this movie has to offer beyond its genre.

My So Called Change In Perspective

(For those who don't know what "My So Called Life" is, it will be useful info for you to know that it was a semi-popular show from the 90's about teen life, centered around the main female character, that only had one season, but became popular via MTV after it was cancelled from network tv due to a horribly chosen time slot)

 

Have you ever gone back and watched one of your favorite shows from your teenage years after enough time has passed to put you in a different stage of life?  Well, I guess growing up during the creation of Nick at Nite and the resurgence of classic tv has allowed everyone to get to experience this with something.  I recently had my first, "Wow, it means something completely different to me now" moment. 

 

This past New Year's Even my friend and I did our normal plans of gorging ourselves with food and beer in the comfort of one our homes while watching tv, but this year we had a My So Called Life marathon (yeah, yeah, my friend already called me dork, but let's remember that I embrace my inner-dork and willingly admit to being one. . . of course this claim of my dorkiness came in the same minute as him telling me his main concern about losing his hard drive is based heavily on all of the episodes of Battlestar Galactica that he would lose.  Yeah, that's right, then he called me a dork!!!) 

 

Anyhoo, not to make myself sound worse, but I used to have every episode on VHS, minus the one pivotal episode of the entire show (yes, that's right, the one where Rayanne slept with Jordan. . . Catalano), and each tape was set to our favorite episode on that particular tape.  My friend and I would obviously watch these quite often, and each time, we always fast-forwarded the scenes that related only to the parental drama.  They were boring, their drama was uninteresting and frankly, the mom was a bit much, and annoying.  However, we were always very understanding of the horrific dramas that the teens went through and could relate to many of their experiences. . . although even we didn't understand some of the stupid things they did (okay Angela, we get that you're not ready to sleep with Jordan, but does that really mean that you have to break up????).

 

After not watching for several years (I recently got them on DVD, thanks again to our beloved blog creator that allows me to house them at my house so that she's forced to be social in order to watch them), we were super excited to start back from the beginning.  When we did, something strange happened.  We didn't fast-forward through the parental story lines.  The mom wasn't as annoying (still annoying, just not as much and I even felt bad for the mom several times) and the parental story lines weren't as boring.  The dad's potential affair, the mom's hurt and dismay at not knowing her daughter anymore, the crying apology to the mom after getting a dose of reality in her teenager world. . . it all had a different spin to it now.  And the kids, of course we could still remember the things they went through and understand their reactions (to an extent), they seemed different, more absurd at times.

 

Then there were the other things that I noticed before, but it meant more now.  Like when the girl bought a fake ID that said she was born yesterday.  Irony received fully this time.  I also noticed that no one had a clue what they were doing.  Not just the kids, but the adults too.  I guess as a kid I never noticed it because I didn't care about the parents enough to bother, but they were walking around in the dark just like the parents.

 

We watched these episodes with a small sense of awe at how different it seemed to us.  Of course we still loved it, we just loved more of it now.  Huh. . . I guess I am sort of growing up. . . but don't worry, not too much!!!