Turgid

by Posted on

Swollen

I’ve been read­ing the insane­ly-pop­u­lar *Da Vin­ci Code*. I sort of sus­pect­ed that no book so pop­u­lar could be any good, but I rec­og­nized that that was just me being an éli­tist and so when a cou­ple of peo­ple whose opin­ion I respect said nice things about it I went for­ward and bought it on the Palm.

What I want my more-lit­er­ate friends to explain to me is this: how can the waters of the Seine be *turgid*? Is it high tide? Maybe I missed an ear­li­er ref­er­ence to record rain­fall imme­di­ate­ly pri­or to the begin­ning of the narrative?

Seems like dumb word choice to me.

[Haunt­ed By When The Min­utes Drag — Love and Rockets](http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=7dA09vV2Adk&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=https%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Falbum%252Fhaunted-when-the-minutes-drag%252Fid3025214%253Fi%253D3025196%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30)

Published by splicer

4 Replies to “Turgid”

  1. read­er’s note: every­thing
    read­er’s note: every­thing i’ve heard about this book is that it is extreme­ly poor­ly writ­ten. it’s fun­ny, peo­ple will tell me that and still say they loved it, and that i should read it too. i think the les­son here is that the sto­ry is inter­est­ing enough that one can ignore the crap writ­ing? i find this hard to imag­ine, but look for­ward to hear­ing what you think once you’ve fin­ished it.

    1. “Extreme­ly” poor­ly-writ­ten
      “Extreme­ly” poor­ly-writ­ten might be over­stat­ing it, but it does seem to be aimed at the bare­ly literate.

      The plot is pre­dictable. The back­sto­ry is inter­est­ing, but a lot of time is spent explain­ing his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion that any­one that paid atten­tion in junior high should know. It’s kind of fun that there’s a mur­der mys­tery all wrapped around cryp­tog­ra­phy and the secret knowl­edge of the Knights Tem­plar and all that. 

      BUT, if that’s the sort of thing that tick­les your imag­i­na­tion, why aren’t you read­ing Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum? If you’ve already read the Eco, I would­n’t both­er with Dan Brown. If you don’t know if reli­gious his­to­ry and cryp­tog­ra­phy can inter­est you, read The Da Vin­ci Code to find out. If you like The Da Vin­ci Code, you’ll LOVE Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum, but the con­verse is not nec­es­sar­i­ly true.

      The Da Vin­ci Code is like Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum with­out the pesky big words and mul­ti­di­men­sion­al char­ac­ters. I’m about halfway through now; I’ll report back when I’m finished.

  2. I have heard of rivers
    I have heard of rivers “swollen with rain” so I guess it is pos­si­ble that is what was meant. I sus­pect he meant turbid…

    The book has had noth­ing but high praise from ALL the crit­ics, so I fig­ured it sucked big­time anyway. 

    What eBook for­mats can you play on the Palm? Plain­text? MSFT?

    Dad

    1. I was guess­ing that he was
      I was guess­ing that he was con­flat­ing “tur­bu­lent” with “frigid” but I don’t know that the Siene is either of those things. “Tur­bid” cer­tain­ly makes more sense.

      Don’t edi­tors get paid to read books before they hit the press anymore?

      Usu­al­ly I read the Palm­DOC files that are sold by Palm Dig­i­tal Media (oh, you knew that already!) with Palm Read­er Pro, which I bought so that I could use dic­tio­nar­ies. I have the desk­top ver­sion on the Mac, too, so the Web­ster’s 3rd ed unabridged is avail­able on the desk­top and the Palm. I nev­er read long doc­u­ments at the com­put­er, though.

      I also have Pluck­er for read­ing plain­text and HTML and I can also read DOC/RTF files with Word­Smith. I used to have the Adobe Acro­bat read­er on my Palm, but it’s very slow when read­ing files off of the mem­o­ry card, and my 16MB Tungsten|T does­n’t have a lot of room to spare, con­sid­er­ing how much stuff I already have on it. if I upgrade to a T3 Acro­bat Read­er might go back on.