Commonly described as 'Eco':'Neal Stephenson'::'Neal Stephenson':'Dan Brown', Umberto Eco is an Italian writer who's written a few rather good if somewhat obscure books, especially Foucault's Pendulum and Name of the Rose. I highly recommend giving them a go.
(1) I was rereading F's P and I realised something that applied to a lot of books. I loved it because I loved the characters, who were in many ways like me (geeky, irreverent, maudlin, interested in but skeptical of various mysticisms), but in doing so had sort of missed the point that because of who they were they goofed up big time and ended up in risk of their lives. But I'd totally missed the suggestion that dabbling as they did might be a bad idea, and I seem to *normally* miss the point of books.
(2) They work in a publishing firm and are surrounded by people who believe in various mysticism, secrets, and conspiracies, who they are both fascinated and amused by. These always invent purile boring and implausible false theories, and they think they could invent a better one. About half way through, as an intellectual excersize and for their amusement, they decide to do so. (Later this turns out badly.) However, one thing they do is suppose that everything is related to the templars, and wonder how, so program a computer to spit out random phrases from existing manuscripts and other places. I can't remember the output from the first try, but the story they read into it was that Jesus and Mary M married at Cana and came to england, which is later reinterpreted in the legend of Joseph of Amarithea.
This is why I can't take Da Vinci Code seriously: when the spoof was published before the book, that's a death knell :)
(1) I was rereading F's P and I realised something that applied to a lot of books. I loved it because I loved the characters, who were in many ways like me (geeky, irreverent, maudlin, interested in but skeptical of various mysticisms), but in doing so had sort of missed the point that because of who they were they goofed up big time and ended up in risk of their lives. But I'd totally missed the suggestion that dabbling as they did might be a bad idea, and I seem to *normally* miss the point of books.
(2) They work in a publishing firm and are surrounded by people who believe in various mysticism, secrets, and conspiracies, who they are both fascinated and amused by. These always invent purile boring and implausible false theories, and they think they could invent a better one. About half way through, as an intellectual excersize and for their amusement, they decide to do so. (Later this turns out badly.) However, one thing they do is suppose that everything is related to the templars, and wonder how, so program a computer to spit out random phrases from existing manuscripts and other places. I can't remember the output from the first try, but the story they read into it was that Jesus and Mary M married at Cana and came to england, which is later reinterpreted in the legend of Joseph of Amarithea.
This is why I can't take Da Vinci Code seriously: when the spoof was published before the book, that's a death knell :)