12/10/2003: "Reading List"
Music: Karan CaseyMood: Experimental
Sitting here on the table from my trip yesterday to Borders are the following:
* “Rosslyn, Guarding of the Secrets of the Holy Grail,” by Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins.
* Issue No. 34 of “Renaissance Magazine.”
* “The Da Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown.
* “Preludes and Nocturnes,” Neil Gaiman’s grapic novel.
The first two items are research for the trilogy of vampire books I’m thinking of writing set in the Dark Ages.
My friend Connie Richardson put me onto Rosslyn – unless I had too many glasses of wine the other night at dinner and completely misremembered the chapel she told me about visiting in Scotland, where many secrets are hidden in the architecture, crypts and statues. Connie has a thing for Masons and Templars, and Rosslyn is chok-full-o Templar and Masonic symbols. If there’s an Illuminati conspiracy trying to take over the world with its shadow government, she had it figured out long before any of it occurred to Dan Brown.
I knew I had to have Renaissance Magazine when I flipped it open and read the headline, “Rare Codex Resurfaces.” More research for the new vampire series, and, as such, tax deductible.
I don’t know what to say about Dan Brown’s mega best-seller. Last week I read “Angels & Demons.” It was a real page-turner, as hack book reviewers are wont to say, but the characterization was shallow and the twists of plot utterly improbable. Everybody’s a critic, I guess, maybe even a hack critic, including yours truly. We’ll see how “Code” measures up.
“Preludes” has to go back to Borders because, as it turns out, my wife has already gotten for me as a Christmas present. I’m interested in Gaiman in part because I’ve been thinking about turning my first vampire tale, “I, Vampire,” into a graphic novel. Gaiman started writing comic books and has ended up as a novelist. I started writing novels and may end up writing comic books. Life is filled with crazy symmetry. His website is worth a visit. Here’s the URL: http://www.neilgaiman.com/ .
Selah.
