Now reading: The Rule of Four

A few days ago, I spent about 2 hours online, at amazon.com. Looked through their lists of best books of 2004, critics' list and customers' list. Made my OWN list of 'to reads' from that. Then went to the library and proceeded to see if they were available : all except one.

Whoohooo! I have lots of fodder to keep me going now :D

I have already made my way through Magical Thinking: True Stories by Augusten Burroughs: a collection of short stories about what's happened in the author's life, the author being a gay advertising person who's made enough to freelance it, comes from a screwed up family, etc etc etc. An easy read, relatively amusing. The conservatives will find the contents shocking, I bet :p

So now I'm currently reading: The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason.

It's something like Dan Brown 's Da Vinci Code... but for the moment I find it slow going, tho I can see hints of why it's said to be 'better written' than DVC (for the moment I'd describe it as a simpler yet pale copy of Umberto Eco). At the same time, I bet Princeton alumni would be devouring what I've read so far just cos it's set on that campus, perhaps it's even more real for them?

It's fascinating... I understand that the ancient text at the center of this tale, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a real text, so I suppose after this I'll be looking it up to see what else has been written on this subject. btw a translation of the text is actually commercially available! Cool!

And just like the Da Vinci Code. which made such an impact because it essentially undermined the very foundation of the institution of Christianity as propagated by the Vatican, thus spawning many books published just to refute the claims in the original book, I notice there is already a book entitiled The Real Rule of Four : The Unauthorized Guide to The New York Times Bestseller. However, this does not seem to refute so much as complement the 'original'.

Anyways: so I am currently at pg 165 of ~370. Oh my, almost halfway and I still find it slow-moving?! Perhaps (it BETTER) pick up soon! :p Either way, should be done with it today. *grin!*

Next blog: counting down to Harry Potter 6!