English Club Chatter

Hello, testing weblog 1

hey, this is great trisha way to set up a great weblog.

Hey corwin, how you doin?Read any good books lately? :)

Thanks for the compliment Jesi!

Definitely a great job, Trish! Jesi, have you read any good books lately? I think this should be our recommendations page, too. Where we can start a thread about books, and if a bunch of us like it/read it we can move onto another thread and start a discussion about it. :-)

All thanks goes to Susan Delagrange. She's the one who set up the whole blog; she just showed me how to use it.

Good books? Try Servant of the Bones, by Ann Rice. And, no, it's not a vampire book.

I want to start a thread about "The Da Vinci Code." It's my secret shame.

I’ll admit the book was well written, but I hope you haven’t fallen for the assertion that it is even remotely accurate. It would take to much space to debunk it here, and I don’t really care what anyone believes (as long as they don’t want to behead me or anything) I just object to author’s using discredited sources and depending on the general laziness of the American public knowing that we (myself included) will usually not bother to check the source of a claim.

Just one small fact before I quit, brown has a website where he “shows his sources” here is an example of how he is getting rich by intentionally fooling people: Brown’s site states that this cryptic message “hints at a shocking historical secret which allegedly has been guarded since 1099 by a European secret society known as the Priory of Sion.” Nevermind that the Priory of Sion was founded in the 1950s in France by a political radical, that its mysterious history is an admitted fabrication, and that it has been proven more than once to be a complete hoax. And yet the Priory of Sion is a central element in the plot and logic (so to speak) of The Da Vinci Code (excerpt from the Da Vinchi Fraud) It is a shame he couldn’t use his talent without feeling the need to hype his work.

I am well aware of the discrepancies of Brown's work (hence my shame). It has been discussed before about making a thread about the responsibility of fiction authors of being historically correct; after all, it is fiction (and did he explicitly present it otherwise?) I was going to save it for later, but we can start one now if you would like...

Is it hot in here? or is it just the blog?

It's all you, Jesi (ask me how I knew)
That's what I don't like about blogs. I wrote that last bit with a smile on my face, but you can't tell, it kind of sounds terse. I will use emoticons form now on to express my tone of voice. (Happy! Joy!) ;)

Trish and I have briefly spoken offline about the ethical responsibility (or lack thereof) of fiction writers who rely on (pseudo-)history in creating their texts. Either way, it might be an interesting thread to pursue, though perhaps it should wait until the figurative language thread more fully plays out. Brown's use of allegory, symbolism, and the like will surely benefit from whatever we uncover in the other thread.

gee trish why do you think thats JeSi?

Because I am the all knowing, all powerful, Queen of the Blog!! (cue maniacal laughing) But... I think you figured out my trick, didn't you?

Ok, what's an emoticon? Is it those strange little symbols that you see in chatrooms? I guess I need to pay more attention to this eletronic thing-a-ma-jig.

HAh...you'll never find my true identity....

oh and yes j that that is an emoticon...

:) = smile

;) = smile wink...

anonomyous.

Oh yeah??!!? I have eyes all over this campus, missy... Don't think you're so clever ;)

Good books lately? Try Freakonomics (excellent, if a little extreme), or Moneyball (brought to my attention by Dr. Shaffer, and I liked it, even though I hate baseball (is that grounds for political imprisonment?), and I give high praise to Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.
How's that Jesi?

If anyone is an Anne Rice fan, please let us know how her new Jesus book fits into this conversation.

Also, I enjoyed the book Grendel, but haven't been keen on reading other books that conjur up alternative points of view and back stories from classic tales. I wonder why that is, particularly when I have considered writing a couple of them myself. Can someone recommend one from this genre that is genuinely worth perusing?

If you're looking for spins on old tales, Jim, I would suggest 'Wicked.' I haven't read it as yet, but some people around the writing center absolutely love it, and it seems interesting. It's the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, before Oz.