Da Vinci Code? Check!

So I fell pray to the marketing machine and went to "The Da Vinci Code" on opening day. How was it? I'll say it was as good as the book, which, for me, says it was mildly entertaining without being great, melodramatic without being controversial. Since I'm not Catholic, I guess, I have a hard time understanding how a work of FICTION can cause a crisis of faith. Faith is faith, and it seems like it would take a lot more than a mediocre author, no matter how well researched, to shake that bedrock.

I also checked out "Capote" from the library. Now that I've seen all best picture nominees, I'm going to label this my favorite. I read "In Cold Blood" in high school, and the story has always sort of haunted me. Watching how it was researched unfold on the screen had that same affect. I think being a journalist for seven years informed by reading of the film, too. Reporting -- and the resulting stories -- are always personal.

And one more review: I just finished Isabel Allende's "Zorro" and I'm going have to say I was sometimes a little bored. Definitely not my favorite book. I've been reading the three parts of Banana Yoshimoto's "Asleep" in between, which is surreal and depressing and affecting while "Zorro" was all about adventure with a narrator who wouldn't ever let you forget she was the narrator. Next on the nightstand: "Dragonfly in Amber" by Diana Gabaldon. And, of course, the second half of "Bleak House" which I haven't managed to crack open since I spilled green tea all over it in Kyoto.