Tuesday Update: Two Books Finished

I'm back, the cold is mostly gone (although I've been coughing again today, after a couple of days of not; we'll see where it goes from here), and I've finished two books in the past two days.

I finished Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol yesterday, and I'll probably have something to say about it, but not right now. It's knit night, and I need to leave in a little while and, well, we all have our priorities. Right now, I'll just say that I don't hate myself for reading it, and that there were some interesting things to think about in it, but that I was disappointed in how he wrapped the whole thing up.

Then, today, I finished The Devil's Triangle, by Mark Robson. It's apparently the first book in a series, and now I'm hanging here, wondering what's going to happen next and not knowing when the next book will come out and how I'll get hold of it, since his books are not available in the US as far as I know. I think I mentioned before that I won it in a drawing. Well, if nothing else, I have a friend in the UK who will just have to buy me a copy and send it to me when it comes out. Because it is a very good book, for all that I mostly didn't read YA books when I was a YA, and I don't read them now (although my summer project may well be to read through the Harry Potter series; I've been meaning to for some time).

In fact, for all that they are very different things, I'd say that overall, and considering each book for what it is, I would probably have to rate The Devil's Triangle as the better of the two books. Both kept me turning the pages, wanting to know what was going to happen next, but Robson's book did not disappoint me the way Brown's book did, in a number of ways.

Well, like I said, knit night awaits. No new books to report I've starated. I'm looking at a couple, but I only finished The Devil's Triangle a couple of hours ago and I haven't yet made up my mind what I want to read next.

I'm probably going to hate myself for this...

I went to the library today, and there, on the "new books" shelf, was a copy of Dan Brown's most recent effort, The Lost Symbol (Doubleday, 2009; 509 pages). So, of course, I checked it out, all the while thinking, "I'm really going to hate myself for reading this." Because Dan Brown seems to be the author everyone loves to hate.

Full disclosure: I have read both Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code. And all the way through both of them, I kept asking myself, why am I reading this? Especially with The Da Vinci Code, it was a matter of, "I've seen all of this before, why am I reading this at all?" Well, of course, I'd seen it before. I had read Holy Blood, Holy Grail long since (as we estabished early on in the life of this blog, I love a good conspiracy theory), and I guess the politic thing to say is that Brown borrowed extensively from the ideas presented there.

But, further disclosure compels me to say that both books kept me turning the pages, wanting to know what was going to happen next. The story moved right along. And that's why I picked up The Lost Symbol. I'm willing to read a book that keeps me turning the pages, since so many don't manage to do that. I've tried to read A Tale of Two Cities about twenty times, and I've never managed to get past page three; it just doesn't give me any incentive to turn to page four.

I expect that someone will try to guilt me for reading "that guy". That's their problem, because I really believe in letting a writer and his or her story stand on their own. I also beleive that very little writing is great literature, and that that's okay. Sometimes, a novel is just a good diversion. And that's okay, too.

I'll let you know how it goes.