Regarding Baigent/Leigh's 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and Brown's 2003 The Da Vinci Code:

The respective figures for the two books are around 2m copies and 36m - still rising and set to rise even more sharply with the imminent release of the film version.

The claim by Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh is that "the central theme" of their book has been borrowed for the novel. The two men were noticeably not flanked by minders from their publishers: they are suing not Dan Brown but his publishers, for breach of UK copyright in the UK editions of the book. In a coincidence almost worthy of a conspiracy theorist, because of a string of takeovers in the industry, the books share the same publisher, Random House.

I'd noticed that traffic to my Kryptos site had doubled, with this time a sizeable percentage coming from a Guardian article that was published several months ago. Looks like this story is the reason: Brown is currently getting sued in the UK, and the Guardian article about it has a "see also" section referring to the Kryptos story.

There's speculation that the trial may delay the release of the movie. I wonder if that'll change the release date of my book! It's a strange feeling, seeing my own fortunes tied so closely to far away headlines...

Elonka

UK Guardian: In a packed high court, a new twist in The Da Vinci Code begins to unfold

] Greetings! You have found the home of the 133t version of
] the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith trailer. Only 15 hours
] after I put this file online, it has already sucked up over 23 GB
] of bandwidth. At this rate I'll be in the poorhouse before
] nightfall.

Heh. Watch it once just to see the trailer. Then watch it again and laugh at the 133t subtitles. ;)

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith - 133t trailer

] "If having two discs filled with amazing special features
] wasn't enough, the four-disc Extended Edition of The
] Fellowship of the Ring features two very cool Easter Eggs
] that just add to the awesomeness of the set."

On Disk 1 of the 4-disc set, go to "Scene Selection", then "Council of Elrond," then press the down arrow to get to a special "ring" icon at the bottom of the screen. Select it to get a very funny spoof of the Council scene. :)

LotR DVD Easter Eggs

] "A mediocre follow-up to the impressive opening picture,
] THE TWO TOWERS is too long, spends too much time with
] bits that don't bring much to the story, too little time
] with the characters that we got to know in the first
] installment and other than an all-out war between good
] and bad to end things off on a high note, not much that's
] particularly memorable."

This is from one of the very few reviewers who didn't like "The Two Towers". I don't agree with his "5 out of 10" score, but other than that I think he did an excellent job of pointing out some of the movie's flaws.

Also, for entertainment value, he has included a link at the bottom of his page, which points to many of the Emails that he's received about his review. Many of them are evidently from people who are hating him for hating the movie! (chuckle) It's a fun read.

Elonka :)

JoBlo's movie review of LOTR: The Two Towers