The Great Dan Brown Experiment

We interrupt our regular scheduled blogging for two important announcements.

First, Dance With Sunflowers will soon migrate to a new location, at entropy2.com. The process of starting up the new website and switching over will take another month or two, and in the meantime I will continue posting here. The new site will include several new blogs and other exciting endeavors I will tell you about later. Be on the look out.

Second, as part of the new website, I will be conducting my first live blogging event. I will be reading Dan Brown’s new novel, The Lost Symbol, over the course of 24 hours, with a running journal of my reactions. Join me as I experience the best selling book (2 million copies sold in the first week) for the first time, with immediate feedback on what will surely go down as a modern classic.

Of course, being invested in the novel might influence my impartiality. So I am looking for someone who will loan it to me in the next few weeks. Please do not buy it with the specific intention of giving it to me, as that will defeat the purpose. But if you already have it, I will be happy to take it off your hands.

When I have a date for the Live Blogging session, as well as the debut of the new website, I will let everyone know.

To whet your appetite, here are some facts about Dan Brown’s previous novel, The Da Vinci Code:

• According to Wikipedia, it has sold more than 80 million copies to date.
• 80 MILLION! That equals The Catcher In The Rye, and easily surpasses Charlotte’s Web, To Kill A Mockingbird, or Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
• That’s right, more than the dictionary
• In fact, the only novels to have sold more books in the history of humankind are: Le Petit Prince, She, Dream Of Red Chambers, The Hobbit, And Then There Were None, The Lord Of The Rings, and A Tale Of Two Cities. That’s it. The entire list. The Da Vinci Code is already the 8th best selling novel of all time
• It is almost entirely based on the Umberto Eco novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, which predates it by more than a decade.

Check out Decater's new novel, available now at Amazon. Plus, don't forget his earlier books: Ahab's Adventures in Wonderland and Picasso Painted Dinosaurs.