belovedmarthe

The Da Vinci Code Whinge, Part 2

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 05:15:42 GMT

Note: Some serious spoilers. Although I rather think you have to have suffered through the book to understand this, anyway.

Considering it is now over a month since I read it, it will be interesting to see whether any of my bookmarks still makes sense to me. Oh well, here goes…

Wait, a general comment first. Gratuitous use of French, only when it was common or close enough to English for most people to gather the meaning (ie 'précisement!'). I understood every word of it, which is not really a good sign - even in the most basic French pieces I have to take a stab at the complete meaning (despite managing to get a distinction in year 12 French - go figure). Hmph.

Pg 336 "'The word Sangreal derives from San Greal - or Holy Grail. But in its most ancient form, the word Sangreal was divided in a different spot.' Teabing wrote on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to her.
She read what he had written.
Sang Real
Instantly, Sophie recognised the translation. Sang Real literally meant Royal Blood."
Okay, two things. Firstly, 'Sang Real' is French. Sophie is French. Why, therefore, is she recognising the translation? Secondly, if in its more ancient form, the word sangreal came from sang real, how can it be derived from san greal (which by logic must be a more modern form than the word sangreal itself) ? This implies rather that someone clever derived san greal from sangreal and hence started the whole confusion over a grail.

Pg 339 "Sangreal…Sang Real…San Greal…Royal Blood…Holy Grail. It was all intertwined"
Well, yes, I had rather thought that was the point of whoever designed the terminology. Certainly not an astonishing coincidence, as Sophie seems to think.
Later on the same page: "The more pieces Langdon and Teabing laid on the table tonight, the more unpredictable this puzzle became"
But she just said it was all intertwined! If everything is so clearly linked, she can hardly claim it is unpredictable just because she didn't predict it herself. And also, she called him Langdon (albeit in her thoughts). I believe she was supposed to be calling him Robert now - or was I not the only one confused by the crazy emphasis in that earlier scene?

Pg 349 "'Once you open your eyes to the Holy Grail,' Langdon said, 'you see her everywhere. Paintings. Music. Books. Even in cartoons, theme parks, and popular movies.'"
Music: That footy song about being on the quest for the holy grail
Books: I swear there is a whole genre of arthurian legend novels
Movies: Err..Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Paintings: Well, I'm art-illiterate but I'm sure there are dozens depicting it
Yup, need your eyes wide open to see that one. Actually, to be fair, I'm pretty sure he was actually referring to Mary Magdalene - but she's not exactly well-hidden either.

Pg 377. Langdon unnecessarily explains what fog lights are. Well, unnecessarily for me: "Fog lights, Langdon realized." Perhaps he had been thinking that some magical beings had felt pity for them and hence sprinkled the forest with soft light to guide their way?

Pg 396. The first cryptex clue. I can't reproduce it here because, well, it's mirror writing. You know, one of those things Da Vinci was famed for? I realised this immediately and ran straight to my mirror to read it. (It was only 2 metres away. Any further and believe me, I wouldn't have bothered.) Yet our heroes just sit there dumbly trying to work out what strange, forgotten script it is. C'mon guys, all the stuff in the gallery was to do with Da Vinci. You've just be lecturing Sophie about all Grail stuff in Da Vinci's paintings. As if it isn't the first thing that leaps to mind. And just to remind you all, the keystone was only created a decade or so ago, right? So why on earth would it be in some undocumented ancient script? Oh, that's right. Some secret language that only the brotherhood spoke. If that was the case, there wouldn't have been much point in Saunière sending Sophie to find the cryptex in the first place.

Pg 421-2 "'Next, all we have to do is create our substitution scheme by rewriting the entire alphabet in reverse order opposite the original alphabet.'
'There's an easier way,' Sophie said, taking the pen from Teabing…Sophie wrote the first half of the alphabet from left to right, and then, beneath it, wrote the second half, right to left.
She is correct, it is quicker. Except - Teabing had already written the alphabet out once, but she didn't use that. She wrote the entire alphabet out again, meaning she did as much additional writing as Teabing had intended to. Why didn't she just use the first half of his alphabet? Because, she, or rather Dan Brown, was too busy showing off her 'skills' as a cryptanalyst, taking even longer. Stop trying to be clever, heroes. It's only making you look more stupid.

Pg 424 Having used their reverse alphabet cipher, our heroes discover that ancient word of wisdom is Sofia, or Sophie (from ancient Greek). Sophie is astonished. I am astonished that she is astonished. I am perhaps a little more obsessed with name meanings than the average person, so accept that she may not have looked it up herself. Her grandfather, however, did know, and is depicted as delighting in word games and puns, so it surely would have come up as some kind of a nickname or joke in her childhood.

Pg 425 Dan Brown explains to us in great detail, again, what will happen if the password they have entered into the cryptex is wrong. I assume he is trying to build some kind of dramatic intensity, but instead I was just bored by the repetition. Make a point once, and move on. If you think we may have forgotten, make a passing reference to remind us. Do not take a whole page to repeat it all. Please.

Pg 429 "Lieutenant Collet helped himself to a Perrier from Teabing's refrigerator"
That's really professional, that is. Sure, you might have a search warrant, but that should hardly entitle you to raid the refrigerator. That would be theft. No class at all.

Pg 446
Teabing: 'A knight a Pope interred.' What does that mean to you?
Langdon: A knight buried by a Pope?
Teabing: (laughs) Oh, that's rich. Always the optimist, Robert.
Sophie: A knight a Pope killed?
Teabing: (pats S's knee) Well done, my dear. A knight a Pope buried.
Err…actually, Mr Teabing sir, that was what Langdon said too, and you told him he was wrong. Like, two seconds ago. WTF?

Pg 447 "Langdon had never actually visited the Temple Church, although he'd come across numerous references in his Priory research."
It seems, from this and several other mentions, that Langdon didn't visit any of the places he wrote about. It seems that all of his 'research' has consisted of reading other people's books and regurgitating it. Which is fine for a high school essay, but seems a bit off for a Harvard professor's published works.

Pg 499 "This particular search looked like it was going to return an obscenely large amount of data.
Estimated number of total hits: 2, 692"
Oh, my dear, you've obviously never been on Google. That's nothing.
And also, on the same page, the research librarian lady has taken great pains to explain how a basic keyword search works - which is unnecessary for most people but even more so when you're talking to (and know you're talking to) a successfully published research professor.

Pg 502. "London's Opus Dei Centre is a modest brick building at 5 Orme Court…"
Way to go, Dan Brown. You make a real life religious group the big-time baddies in your fictional book, and then you are considerate enough to give the real life group's precise address. I bet they loooove you.

Pg 504. "Despite the morning fog, the park afforded splendid views of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. Gazing across the sloping lawns, past the duck pond and the delicate silhouettes of the weeping willows, the Teacher could see the spires of the building that housed the knight's tomb"
This passage really disappointed me. Aside from the horrible juxtaposition of 'delicate silhouettes of weeping willows' and the much more harsh and prosaic 'duck pond', until this point I'd been entertaining the silly notion that Dan Brown might actually break a stereotype. In any book I've read, if a tomb had to be found in London, you ended up at Westminster, so I was actually quite pleased when Teabing started going on about the Templar Church. But sadly, that was just a decoy. Off we go to the Abbey after all.

Pg 510 "Langdon and Sophie had inquired unwisely if there might be some coffee brewing alongside the tea…from the sound of the microwave beeps in the next room, Langdon suspected their request was about to be rewarded with instant Nescafé"
Snob. Instant Nescafé is the only type of coffee we have at home, and my parents are addicts. Also, why a microwave? Surely one uses a kettle. How else was the water boiled for the tea? I am confused.

Pg 511 "Wrong Pope," Langdon said, disappointed."
The riddle they are trying to solve refers to 'the knight a Pope interred'. By this point, Saunière's riddles had taken on a familiar pattern (to me), so I immediately suspected that it was someone surnamed Pope rather than a literal Pope. Yet this does not occur to Langdon and Sophie, people who are trained to see links and patterns between things, so they automatically dismiss the references the computer turns up. (Fortuitously, this rather obvious possibility does occur to Langdon when the correct reference appears. But not before. Which would make them look clever, if the reader hadn't already been more clever. Instead, yet again, they look a little slow. I wash my hands of them in disgust.)

Pg 522 "He had anticipated that Langdon and Sophie would eventually decipher the poem's meaning…but this was sooner than imagined."
Yet earlier, the Teacher had thought "that the others had not figured it out was surprising" (507). Ah, for consistency.

Pg 529-30 Sophie and Langdon have been left instructions by resident baddie the Teacher to meet him outside the Abbey via a particular route. As they run to comply, they discover that part of this route has been closed due to reservations. Do they then stop and think, 'Hey, this looks a little dodgy. Perhaps we are walking into a trap'? Of course not. They just step over the barriers and continue on their merry way. Into a trap. *headdesk*

This is also when it is revealed that Teabing is the Teacher. Or rather, we are told that Teabing is the Teacher. Reveal implies that there was something being hidden in the first place, but as far as I'm concerned, until that moment, Teabing and the Teacher were separate entities. Dan Brown probably thought he was so clever, not leaving a single clue for people to decipher it. That's not clever. That's just unconvincing. Clever authors leave dozens of clues, so that if you reread the book, you suddenly see all these 'innocent' actions in a whole new light, and feel stupid not to have noticed the first time.

Pg 538 (Teabing's big speech where he 'splains all) "However, when I saw the intricacy (*snort*) of Saunière's codes, I decided to include you both in my quest a bit longer."
So why dump them when he did? He still hadn't figured out all the clues, but they would never have figured out he was the baddie. He could have kept them with him until he actually found the Grail papers. Or better still, he could never have dumped them at all. Until he told them otherwise in this speech, Langdon and Sophie had believed that the Priory's intention was to publish the papers, so would have been more than happy to carry it out, and that's all Teabing had intended to do after all. Idiot.

Epilogue: Once again Saunière has played on multiple interpretations of words. And once again, this possibility doesn't occur to Langdon for quite some time, and astonishes him when it does. Even worse, the solution turns out to be what he'd guessed at in his book, so really should have been at the front of his mind: "Is that why Saunière needed to talk with me? Had I unknowingly guessed the truth?"(590) But Langdon's stupidity aside, I have to say that I don't really mind the ending - perhaps because I had thought he was just going to leave it with Sophie finding her family and go 'But don't you realise? There is no literal grail. She is all around us, in everything we do. It was just a metaphor blah blah blah' so it was nice to have a little closure.

And now I am done with the horrid book, and it can go back to its owner (a friend of a friend). I am purged. Cleansed and free to move on to something better. Well, it couldn't really get worse…could it? (cue ominous music and fade to black)

The Da Vinci Code Whinge Part 1 Again

Thu, 03 Feb 2005 23:31:49 GMT

I think I have this lj-cut thing figured out now. Fingers crossed...

I can't be bothered spending the time to structure this into a coherent, readable essay, so basically I will just go through the bookmarks I have made one by one and comment on them. But before I begin that, a few general comments.

Firstly, the placing of thoughts in italics. I don't know exactly why it bugs me so much, but I consider it the number one sign of a rubbish book when they are used continuously. It reads funny to me - I hear the character's voice go all echo-y, like they're thinking some really profound thought, but they're not. No one thinks profound thoughts that often. Also, there is no consistency. Not all of the thoughts are in italics. Why is this? Is there some kind of symbolic pattern that I am missing, which will suddenly make the book seem like an incredible piece of art? Sadly, I don't think so.

Then we have the overuse of flashbacks. While they can clearly be a useful way of delivering background information, it is not very subtle. And it is just plain irritating when used as much as Dan Brown did, as they significantly interrupt the flow of the real story. You know, that could be a reason he used them - without the flashbacks, it would be very noticeable that not an awful lot happens in the 600 pages. But Brown commits an even worse sin than overusing flashbacks: he tries to tell us that the characters themselves are actually experiencing them (I'll probably come to a quote when we get to the bookmarks). People do not just zone out to relive an oh-so-pertinent memory while they are involved in a mad dash to escape from the police. It's highly unsafe, and if the police in this novel weren't so stupid, these flashbacks would have signalled the heroes' downfalls.

And my final general comment is about Silas the gratuitous albino monk. Why on earth did 'the Teacher'/Dan Brown make the guy who has to sneak around murdering people and stealing things albino? Clearly you choose someone who does not stand out. People who stand out get noticed. Rather not the point. I rather suspect the choice was made for two reasons: to give Silas an angsty past to justify his current er, mental state, and to enable descriptions like this:

"Drying his wounds, he donned his ankle-length, hooded robe. It was plain, made of dark wool, accentuating the whiteness of his skin and hair. Tightening the rope-tie around his waist, he raised the hood over his head and allowed his red eyes to admire his reflection in the mirror. The wheels are in motion." (pg 54)

Cue thunder claps, sinister music etc. And that, as it happens, was the first bookmark I made, and inspired this whole project. So onto the rest…

Pg 57 "Equally breathtaking was the corridor's width, which easily could have accommodated a pair of side-by-side passenger trains"
Sounds fine, yes? Until you realise that trains are not actually that wide. I reckon it only implies about seven metres, which is wide for an ordinary corridor, but quite ordinary for a major corridor in an art gallery.

On this same page is a reference to some woman named Vittoria Vetra, who I presume was the heroine from Angel and Demons. She is brought up here as someone quite significant to Langdon (the protagonist). He expresses a severe longing to see her. And then she is not mentioned again for the whole book, and Langdon ends up with this book's heroine. Did Dan Brown put this in simply to make it seem more like a sequel? Because that part, a few other vague references to 'what happened in the Vatican', aside, this book completely stands alone. And those parts has no place in the plot.

Pg 60 Dan Brown spends half a page explaining to the reader that he or she is wrong in thinking that 'pagan' is synonymous with 'devil worship', complete with etymologies to show how smart he is. He claims this is a common misconception. It's not one I've ever come across before. Is he perhaps just trying to find away to insert all the nifty stuff he knows into the book to make himself look smart? This is certainly the case in some of his flashbacks to Langdon's lectures.

Pg 84 In the chapters just prior to this, Langdon has been explaining the concept of the sacred feminine, complete with symbols such as the moon, to the police chief. We then switch to a flashback to Silas' oh-so-traumatic-and-horrifying childhood, including such Gary-Stu things as teaching himself to read from scraps of newspaper because he didn't want to stay a bum in the street. Which is a great aim and all, but given our glimpses of Silas' current intelligence, I just don't think he could manage it himself. But the point of this bookmark was, when Silas escapes from prison, the first thing he looks to and is really happy about when he gets outside is the moon. Now, if I had thought that Dan Brown paid anywhere near as much attention to symbolism as his symbology-studying protagonist, I would have taken this as foreshadowing the Silas will eventually become a goody. But I didn't think that. And not surprisingly, Silas didn't turn to goddess worship. Although I do think we were supposed to pity him.

Pg 114 Sophie, a native parisienne, stops what she is doing to stare at the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Sacré-Coeur, places she sees every day, despite the fact that her and Langdon are really quite pressed for time, a fact she remembers on the next page when she acts 'hurriedly'. Perhaps she would not be quite so rushed if she hadn't stopped to look at the scenery.

Pg 128 "Langdon knew she was right. The symbolism of the clues meshed too perfectly…A coherent symbolic set"
Pg 130 "He was starting to realize that Saunière's clues were even more consistent than he had first imagined"
Yet when he was first shown the symbols, 50 or so pages ago, his sole reaction was that the symbols didn't have any links. This is the first of several occasions on which characters later claim to have thought the complete opposite of what they originally had thought. Perhaps Brown was going for some interesting unreliable third-person narrator thing. Or perhaps it is sloppy editing.

Pg 130 "He felt himself suddenly reeling back to Harvard, standing in front of his 'Symbolism in Art' class…"
One of those dodgy flashback occasions, concluded by Sophie going 'come on, what's wrong, we're almost there, why have you stopped in the middle of the stairs with a faraway look in your eye'. The whole lecture on magic number PHI is replayed for the reader's education. And purely for our education. The concept, not that essential to the plot, could have been explained sufficiently in a paragraph. Also, I have certainly never attended a lecture in which all the students participate so volubly, and consider the lecturer a really great guy. Perhaps I just have sucky lecturers. Or perhaps this is supposed to show us what a fantastic, well-loved person Langdon is, despite the fact he has no personality whatsoever.

Pg 139 Langdon realises that Saunière's message is an anagram, and Sophie feels foolish for not working it out. So she should. And so should the rest of the cryptology department for not figuring it out. The idea of codebreakers missing something that simple - the second thing I would try after checking the first letters of each word (you never know) - is entirely ridiculous and implausible. Stupid police. Stupid heroes. And not the last instance of either.

Pg 144 Langdon says: "…on one condition. That you stop calling me Mr Langdon"
Is it just me, or does that imply Sophie should call him Langdon, not Robert?

Pg 190 "So dark the con of man. Sophie's quick thinking had been impressive. Madonna of the Rocks."
Not really that impressive. It was the same kind of comment as before. Any sensible person would immediately have tried for another anagram. Plus Sophie had extra knowledge about her grandfather.

Pg 197 The end of another flashback. This time almost causing a car crash:
"'Sophie!' Langdon's voice intruded. 'Stop! Stop!' Emerging from memory, Sophie slammed on the breaks, skidding to a halt. 'What? What happened?!'
Yes, she was actually supposed to have drifted off to the past while driving very quickly in an attempt to escape from the police. As a result, she nearly drove straight into said police. Very clever, that girl.

Pg 205 "pulled up in a small, unimpressive black Fiat sedan"
Is the sentence really that incomplete without Fiat? And would the Bishop really have recognised the car make as it was driving towards him? Unless Fiat implies some sort of status level (presumably low) that I'm not familiar with, it is an unnecessary detail. There are a lot of those. No wonder it is 600 pages long.

Pg 207 The Bishop (who is a very strong believer) thinks "Unbiased science could not possibly be performed by a man who possessed faith in God." Surely this comment implies that 'unbiased science' would reveal things inconsistent with 'faith in God'. Why would the Bishop think that? His faith is strong, so he shouldn't have any fear of science, as I see it.

Pg 211 "Langdon examined the cruciform key again…in any effort to find any markings on it"
On the next page he notices it smells of alcohol, so brings out the UV light and finds some text on it. But surely, Saunière was found holding a UV pen, and all the other messages had been in UV pen, this was the most logical thing to try first? Saunière was dying, so he didn't exactly have many resources to hand. Stupid heroes.

Pg 215 The police chief thinks: "Even a trained field agent would be lucky to withstand the pressure that Interpol was about to apply. A female cryptologist and a schoolteacher? They wouldn't last till dawn" And in any normal circumstances he would be entirely right. But the divine goddess is on their side, and guides them through…or at least, that must be what happened, since they couldn't possibly have got through with their own meagre wits.

Pg 217 "The brotherhood's history spanned more than a millennium…(It) was founded in 1099"
1099 1000 = 2099. This book is set in the present day. Enough said?

Pg 241 "Sophie rolled down the window and surveyed the electronic podium on the driver's side. An LCD screen provided direction in seven languages. Topping the list was English."
Okay. They're in Paris, right, so if French isn't top, it'll at least be second top. And despite speaking flawless English, Sophie is native French. There is no way she would notice the English instead of the French, not if they're next to each other. I think Dan Brown tended to forget she was French, since she certainly doesn't give that impression.

Pg 255 Sophie suddenly realised that the numbers at the top of Saunière's last message were actually quite significant. She was amazed. I was not. The man was dying; he was hardly going to waste time writing down something unessential. She shouldn't have need a code to the anagrams, so it was hardly there to serve that purpose. Clearly, her grandfather gave her too much credit.

Pg 276 Langdon says something in French, and Sophie translates it into English. Did they just decide to switch nationalities or something? Also on this page, Sophie suddenly becomes extremely dense and literal (but ceilings do not have keys; but that is a cryptex, not a keystone) - perhaps so that Langdon would have to explain things for the reader's benefit?

Pg 278 "The map to the Holy Grail was incorporated high in an archway of some forgotten church… (it) is believed to have been created…sometime in the past couple of decades"
Forgotten implies old, right?

Pg 309 "'Robert, you've brought me a virgin?' Langdon winced, glancing at Sophie. 'Virgin is the term Grail enthusiasts use to describe anyone who has never heard the true Grail story.'"
There was absolutely no need to explain this. Virgin is regularly used in all sorts of contexts to mean someone who hasn't done something yet. The meaning was evident. And why does Langdon wince? He keeps wincing. I find it very annoying. He must imagine that everyone around him is ultra sensitive, and is continually embarrassed for them.

And now I am going to stop for today, as I am about halfway through the book and this is taking far too long. Part two to come - featuring more not-so-difficult puzzles, inconsistent thoughts and a few dramatic revelations. IIRC.

Well will you look at that...

Thu, 27 Jan 2005 11:47:21 GMT

It seems I've neglected to update again. Although this time I have a vague excuse - I became quite caught up in a little project tentatively titled "The Da Vinci Code Whinge" (because I cannot of think of a pun, lame or otherwise, at the moment). Basically, I had been given very very bad reviews of the book from two close friends and book buddies, along with numerous other people whose opinions I respect, so there wasn't a chance on earth I was going to like this book. So, lacking the ability to skim/speed read as my friends did, I decided to go to the other extreme - a close, detailed read in which I noted absolutely everything I dislikeed about the piece of trash. Which I will soon proceed to type up and post. Probably tomorrow.

Also, I was sick.

Anyways, before I embarked on those two endeavours, I finished reading Freedom & Necessity, by Stephen Brust and Emma Bull (excuse any name errors as I've returned the book to the library and sacrificed the docket in the cause of marking Dan Brown's atrocities), and Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. I quite enjoyed both of them, although not so much that I'd bother to read them again. F&N started out as a real laugh, because the characters and their relationships were so strongly reminiscent of the Lymond characters that it could not be coincidence. By the time James addressed Susan as "mo chridh", it was beyond doubt. I must say that was very well excused though, as the authors made James babble in Gaelic quite regularly after that - apparently he was channelling his dead friend. I got over the Dunnetisms after about 100 pages though, and started appreciating the characters for themselves. The story was told through letters, which is not a style I particularly like as it leads to contrivances such as Susan's super-duper video camera memory (as the other characters continually referred to, just in case the reader had forgotten about it and thought the authors were just getting carried away. Really, Mr Brust and Ms Bull, us readers are more attentive than you think). The ending was unfortunately a tad weak. The final letter was sentimental sop that did not need to be there, as the one before had really wrapped up all we needed to know about the future. Also, the climax didn't quite seem to tie all the elements together properly. For example, a prophecy was mentioned early in the piece and was never gone into. Neither was James' ability to 'dream while awake'. Most disappointing. But as I said, still enjoyable.

Rebecca, OTOH, I don't really have any complaints about. It's just that gothic novels are not my favourite genre. I found the heroine a really interesting choice because she wasn't interesting at all, if that makes sense. She was not beautiful. Nor was she intelligent, charming, witty, kind or any particular person. And that is unusual. However, it also meant that the story dragged a bit as it entirely consisted of her angst, until her husband made a shocking confession (!!1one!) which I will not detail so as not to spoil, at which point it picked up considerably. Then, of course, the dodgy morals which make the gothics so interesting came in to play and I was gripped.

In other news, my new bookshelf arrived this week (no more piles on the floor), and I bought Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, two books I love dearly.

The Da Vinci Code Whinge, coming soon...

About time, eh?

Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:50:25 GMT

So... I haven't actually posted anything because I can never be bothered to sit down and write a good-length review for books I've read. Plus, I have a complete inability to do anything but gush around books I adore (ie Dunnett), and I haven't been reading much else recently, with a few notable exceptions.

One of those would be my attempt at reading David Eddings' Elder Gods. Utter piece of trash. I gave up on it after three chapters, and I used to love Eddings. Admittedly that was when I was a lot younger, but at least he normally does banter well. Not, unfortunately, in this case. The blurb informs me that this is a very characterful work. Unless what said blurb writer really meant was that lots of names are tossed around, I really don't know how that could be claimed. And I honestly don't feel that I am being the bitch reader I know I can be about this. I would cite references, but strangely I seem to have sent it back to the library rather rapidly...

Anyways, back to the point I had meant to make in this post. Which was: I had a sudden realisation last night. There is absolutely no need to make lengthy posts (quite a concept for me to grasp, you must understand, as I am an awful babbler).

Ach, I am explaining myself backwards. You see, I'm part of www.bookcrossing.com, and a few months ago I decided, for a number of reasons which basically boiled down to having far too much time on my hands, to register every book I own over there - despite having no intention of releasing them into the wild. In the registration process, you get to write a journal entry for the book. Most people just give a very brief plot summary, but I tend to comment on what I think about the book, and why I own it. So, last night, I found myself wanting to do that about books I had just read, as well as those I buy. Which is when I remembered this journal.

In other words, what I was doing over there, I will now be doing over here. If anyone should actually read this and be curious, 'over there' is www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/sevigny (Why yes, my username is another Dunnett reference. I hardly deny the fact I am obsessed). I may randomly post about other stuff too. But I may not. I promise nothing.

Hello world

Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:45:13 GMT

Have to be honest, the only reason I've got myself a livejournal is to facilitate my lurking at a couple of people's/group's ljs. Got fed up with visiting each site separately, so now can merrily use benefit of friends page :).

But I feel like I am mildly abusing the system if I don't actually use this, so am thinking I might use it as a sort of book journal, recording my thoughts on what I'm reading and that sort of thing. Not that I expect anyone to actually read this, but it will be good to jot them down. I come up with all these theories and stuff while travelling on the bus, but then promptly forget them. Perhaps this will help me.

So, yes, greetings all.