:: darcysbooks ::

:: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 ::

snake hips: belly dancing and how i found true love
anne thomas soffee

In this biographical work, Anne Thomas Soffee tells how she healed a broken heart, and enriched her life, by learning to bellydance.

I enjoyed this book--but then, since I'm a bellydance enthusiast as well, I can fully relate to the way this "hobby" seems to take over your life and your mind :) I must admit, though, that after a while, I found the way Soffee conducted her love life to be exasperating. On the one hand, it makes her more human. On the other hand, it makes her more like one of those annoying friends that you want to shake some sense into. Readers unfamiliar with the terminology of the bellydance world will need to refer to the glossary in the back often, as many words and phrases are not explaned in-text.
:: darcy 9:25 AM [+] ::
...

the da vinci code
dan brown

A symbologist writing a book on the "divine feminine" and a cryptologist stumble into a conspiracy to hide the truth about the origins of Christianity.

I must admit that after initial high expectations, I was very disappointed by this book. The story was good, but the writing doesn't live up to its potential. Characters are undeveloped and cardboard-flat--the little quirks given to them in order to try to create personality just don't succeed. Action routinely grinds to a halt for pedantic expository lectures that scream, "look at me! I've done my research!" Though apparently that research was not as thorough, nor as accurate, as claimed, leading to embarassingly simple mistakes, misattributions, and omissions. Plot information is related only a little at a time, which means we need 5 or 10 flashbacks to reveal what one could have easily, and between all the artificial revelations and the short chapters that invariably end with manufactured cliffhangers, the reader can't help feeling a little bit manipulated. Add to this that the "master codes" are so easy to dicipher that I figured out many of them as I read them. A group of trained symbologists and da Vinci experts not being able to recognize mirror writing in English when it's the native language 2 out of 3 of them being one glaring example. Overall, this book reads like it was written to order for a movie deal, and therefore doesn't suceed any better than your average action flick. Read The Magic Circle instead, despite it's mixed reviews.
:: darcy 1:55 PM [+] ::
...

woman's inhumanity to woman
:: darcy 11:37 AM [+] ::
...