Mando.org

So I’ve got a wiki up for the book club. For some good info on what a wiki is, why we’re using it, etc., check out Oddmuse.

This is the wiki engine we’re using.

I was talking with my most excellent friend Mark last night, just catching up and what not, when our conversation turned to books. He mentioned that he was almost finished with Snow Crash and was looking for something else to read. I told him that I hadn’t read anything worth recommending in recent months.

Upon lamenting this sad state of affairs, the M&M Book Club was born (until we find a better name, M&M is it).

Since I’m in lovely TX and Mark is in God-forsaken CA, we’re gonna do this remote style. Maybe a Wiki is called for…

So we’ll need a book to start with. I’m thinking maybe one of these:

• Books I’ve always wanted to read:
  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
  • The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. I hear Foucault’s Pendulum is good as well.
  • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
  • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
  • Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Religious books I’ve always meant to read:
  • Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.
  • The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis.

An imminently readable book: I devoured it in two evenings. Of course, I’ve always had a facination with the Knights Templar/Grail legend/etc., so I think I’m right in Brown’s target audience for this one.

Brown postulates that Christ married Mary Magdalene before his crucifixion and that the Holy Grail is a metaphor for Mary Magdalene and the bloodline of Christ. The “truth” about the line of Christ, including the whereabouts of his decendants, has been guarded throughout the centuries by a shadowy group
called the Priory of Sion. Brown’s protagonists get sucked into this conspiracy and are called upon to guard the secret from the Catholic church who wish to destroy any evidence of the Sions.

This isn’t, of course, a new or original idea. Charlemagne was claimed to have been decended from the Merovingian Kings, which are supposedly the decendants of Christ and Mary.

Is it true? Depends on who you ask. Most Christians will argue that something as important as Christ’s family would have been included in the Gospel accounts. Most conspiracy theorists will counter by saying that the Gospels were butchered at the Council of Nicea in order to keep the power of the church out of the Sionic line.

I am not educated enough to say definitively Yea or Nay, but I suppose that in the end it’s of little true importance. The physical decendants of Christ would be a scientific curiosity indeed, but little more. Christ’s divinity has been passed on to all who believe in him through his sacrifice on the cross. There’s little to gain from finding the physical decendants of Christ. I mean, why concern one’s self with
great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren when you can have a relationship with the source?

Whew. This one’s taken me much, much longer than I thought it would. But I’m almost done…