[Bananafish] Book Brokers

[James Rovira]

Yeah, if the book gets people reading -real- books about the subject,
that's great.  Problem is, it doesn't direct readers to real books,
and readers who get interested because of Brown's book probably don't
know the difference between a real book on the subject and hooey and,
in fact, they'll probably start off biased against real sources
because of Brown's book.

I decided once and for all that the book was utterly idiotic when I
read the top Biblical Scholar in the novel claim that the Dead Sea
Scrolls were collected by an early Christian community.

That's almost like saying Chaucer wrote Hamlet, since the earliest DSS
texts (to my knowledge) date to the late 2nd cent. BC.

If you're really interested in this stuff, begin with a survey of the
Hebrew Scriptures at your local college and then read a good church
history or two.

DVC was badly written in a number of ways.  Sentence structure was
bad, descriptions were unimaginative, the cliffhanger at the end of
every chapter got repetitious (seems like Dave Barry made fun of
this), but I read it to the end because I found myself caring a little
bit about the characters and interested in what was going to
happen...plus, it was a very quick and easy read.

Jim R