Books: The DaVinci Code, Snow Crash

[azurelunatic]

Finished up reading whatever it was that I had been reading. Started The DaVinci Code as of Thursday; finished just now. That's one that I'm winding up buying. Left me feeling inadequate at my codebreaking skills, and also powerfully undereducated on matters of art and history. That one deserves to be shelved next to the Illuminatus! trilogy.

Also started re-reading Snow Crash again; looking at it from my perspective on this side of my religious education, I'd say that I should add it to my list of Books Every Would-Be Mage Should Read.

Comments

[easalle.livejournal.com]

Did you like the ending *wink wink* I spent the last chapter in a half forcing myself to read through to the end even though I knew I knew the punchline and needed to see if I was right. Wheee! The only code that really eluded me was the orb one, but I think that is because I read that part in a very distracted state. Can't read and watch the munchkin play video games at the same time. Mostly though I got the answers but missed some of the steps that got them there. Eeeee! I can't wait to discuss it in a couple weeks. Can you wait that long?

[azurelunatic]

I got the vast majority of her punchline, but I missed out on his utterly.

I'm not great at riddles, but I did get the weird language one (DaVinci, duh) and that Pope was Alexander Pope.

[easalle.livejournal.com]

Being that Shaun revokes my pun license daily for my bizarre and twisted pun-ness, I have no prblems with figuring out the riddles/puns of others. It isn't that I am smart it is that I am wise, wise-ass that is. Hee hee

[bibble.livejournal.com]

something i found out recently: the sumerian stuff about "me"s in snowcrash is taken directly from zecharia sitchin's work on ancient sumerian mythology. check it:

"According to Sumerian chronicles of the earlier times, it was at Eridu's temple that Enki, as guardian of the secrets of all scientific knowledge, kept the ME's - tabletlike objects on which the scientific data were inscribed. One of the Sumerian texts details how the goddess Inanna (later known as Ishtar), wishing to give status to her 'cult center' Uruk (the biblical Erech), tricked Enki into giving her some of those divine formulas. Adapa, we find, was also nicknamed NUN.ME, meaning "He who can decipher the ME's'. Even unto millennia later, in Assyrian times, the saying 'Wise as Adapa' meant that someone was exceedingly wise and knowledgeable....The 'wide knowledge' imparted by Enki to Adapa included writing, medicine, and - according to the astronomical series of tablets UD.SAR.ANUM.ENLILLA ('The Great Days of Amu and Enlil') - knowledge of astronomy and astrology."
"...It is almost certain that the biblical 'Enoch' was the equivalent of the Sumerian first priest, EN.ME.DUR.AN.KI ('High Priest of the ME's of the Bond Heaven-Earth'), the man from the city Sippar taken heavenward to be taught the secrets of Heaven and Earth, of divination, and of the calendar. It was with him that the generations of astronomer-priests, of Keepers of the Secrets, began."

sitchin is a linguist who speaks ancient hebrew, greek, latin, sumerian...i think he's one of like ten people in the world who can read cuneaform. even though he's a bit nuts - he takes the mythology literally and believes creation myths are all based on space aliens who colonized earth to mine its resources - his stuff is really fascinating because it's all primary source in the original language.

anyway you can read tons of quotes from him (and others) at these sights if you're into it:

http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/scripts/watchers.html
http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/scripts/enoch.html
http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/scripts/nephilim.html

[azurelunatic]

No shit. So that's why his (Stichin's) stuff sounded familiar when I read it!

(We've got several of his books; votania was studying the Sumerians for a while.)

[azurelunatic]

Nifty. We've got several of his books around. I remember reading one of them (the first in a rather long series) while I was working in Hell (phone research). This resulted in me dubbing shammash "Rocket-cat".