Rating: 
Summary: One of the year's best !
Review: What a Christmas for thrillers! I received Michael West's awesome novel "The Wide Game" (which I read in a day!) and this incredible thriller (also read in one day)! There's been a killing in the Louvre and the race is on to discover the truth behind an ancient secret, a secret hidden away since the time of Christ. West makes your heart race as you turn each page, but Brown takes it a step further to make your brain race as well. This is powerful work that will have you thinking long after you are done! I can't recommend it more!
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down...
Review: While this book was a complete thriller and everything you would want in a book (you really won't be able to put it down), I would have to agree with many of the reviews on here that most of the ideas in here are repeats. It seems like Brown was poring over books like "Holy Grail, Holy Blood" and even Merlin Stone's "When God was a Woman." Still, this is completely forgiveable because 1) he is introducing religious conspiracy theories (for lack of a better term) to the general public who may not have been familiar with such ideas beforehand and 2)the book is unable to be put down, so kudos to Brown. One of the best things about this book is that you can take an active part in the novel by working through the codes on your own, some of which aren't that difficult. Also, after reading this book, there were so many other books I wanted to read because of the many genres Brown touches on -- the life of Da Vinci, art analyzation, scientific revolutionaries (Newton, for example), religions (pagan and Christianity), secret societies and so on.
Rating: 
Summary: All that and a bag of chips
Review: Like most people out there, The Da Vinci Code was my first encounter with Dan Brown's writing, and I finished the book very pleased and impressed. On many grounds it appears similar to other good pop-fiction thrillers out there, though it is important to note one big difference: Brown is able to pack a lot of really fascinating information (some factual and some pseudo-factual) into his story, and still keep it very fast-paced and entertaining. This is not a simple task, and Brown does it marvelously. Far from being a burden on the story's action, one could easily make the case that the addition of such information goes a long way towards building up the novel's intrigue. The Da Vinci Code is styled like an action film (indeed Columbia Pictures has already acquired the rights), and as a result it is very easy to find yourself engrossed in the plot - even in its first few pages. It is requisite for me to note that I am biased in this regard, because I have always had a fascination with religious thriller movies like End of Days, Stigmata, and the Indiana Jones series. If you enjoyed any of those films, you will certainly like this story. On a personal level I found the Da Vinci Code to be so stimulating that upon stumbling on unfamiliar factoids and myths, I would put the book down to go search for related lore on the Internet (admittedly, not a first-rate source). This certainly was not necessary for grasping the background of the novel; the point I am trying to make is that the story was so interesting, that I was compelled to do additional investigating on the side. I have also been fortunate enough to have traveled to most of the locales described in detail in The Da Vinci Code. This was one of those little things that really made me fall in love with this book. Brown nails the descriptions of his settings perfectly every time; if you've ever spent any time in Paris (and London) you will instantly recognize the vivid imagery he paints. You may even recall a few 'forgotten' experiences from your own times spent at these locations (as I did). One of the major themes that crops up in this novel involves questioning the accuracy of our historical record. This is a deeply philosophical problem that cannot be definitively solved, yet begs at least some contemplation, and Brown certainly demands this from readers of the Da Vinci Code. If (even just for the sake of good fiction) you are not willing to suspend your faith in the accuracy of our given history, then you probably will not care for this book. Ultimately, I loved this book, and despite what I saw as slight predictability in the short-term, the Da Vinci Code is certainly a wild, unpredictable ride in the long-term. I firmly recommend it to anyone willing to temporarily suspend their beliefs and accept (at least briefly) an alternate view of history. If you become engrossed in the book, be sure to visit the author's website (danbrown.com), as it contains a wealth of supplemental resources and pictures.
Rating: 
Summary: Fiction
Review: We have to remember what this book is: Fiction. Well, Dan Brown, I guess I won't be seeing you after I die.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing, Entertaining and Thought Provoking
Review: This novel is a captivating read which I had trouble putting down. In fact my husband also started to read it at the same time,and we were quite competetive over who got the book at any given time!
The suspensful story begins with the mysterious murder of the curator of the Lourve with well defined strong characters of the investigating police, the niece of the slain curator, and an American expert in symbols who is unknowingly drawn into the mess as he had the last known appointment scheduled with the victim. What follows is the quest to discover the murderer in a story filled with fascinating details based on historical research of the Holy Grail, and a secret society of the Catholic Church called Opus Dei, and discussions of various aspects of church history, all of which enrich the mystery.
Dan Brown ingeniously weaves facts into his fictional tale, and is so convincing that some readers will undoubtedly take from this book some of his invented ideas with conviction they are historically true.
As a NY Times Bestseller, this book has received much attention in all media which only adds to the fun of reading it. There are magazine articles, and book club dicussions on the radio and television shows which have dissected the story and identified fact and fiction based on this remarkably entertaining and thought provoking read.
This is a book which I think will be judged as a significant work of pop culture.I look forward to the movie I anticipate will be forthcoming, so please read this BEFORE then-as books are OFTEN better than their counterpart movies!
Rating: 
Summary: ready to make into a movie
Review: Dear fellow readers:
This book, although entertaining, isn't made for people who enjoy a good read. Some chapters are only ONE page long. The book and the plot lack detail, depth, thorough research, imagination, and it reads like something that the author purposely made simple to facilitate its conversion into a motion picture. Kind of like a Sidney Sheldon or John Grisham best seller...P>Moreover, this book is just another story about a secret conspiracy by yet another secret society that is trying to rule over the world. Why are these conspiracy theories so popular? Because, due to the lack of external enemies (Soviets, Nazis, Japanese, etc.), someone feels the need to focus on internal ones (church, government, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness, wall street, etc.) and how they are secretly tring to dominate our lives and minds. What I would like to know is, if all this is true, wouldn't those secret societies come crashing down upon us and make us...Best regards AW
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the fact in this fiction?
Review: If I were to write a thriller featuring a high-speed car chase and wrote with what very little I know about cars and how they handle, I'd ruin the story. I doubt that I would find a publisher. In addition to several 'venial sins,' there are many serious lapses, mortal sins that make one wonder why the publisher went ahead with this project. The pain of childbirth did not give birth to the "idea" of original sin. Genesis, which came into written form in the 11th or 10th century before Christ, used that pain as one of a half-dozen symbol sets (joy and pain in childbirth) of the ambiguity-good and evil-brought into God's good world by the sin of Adam and Eve. The Hebrew canon or official list of books that constitute the Bible was determined by a rabbinical council near the end of the 1st century, and the list of what constituted the "New" Testament was evidently fairly well accepted by early Christian communities by the middle of the 2nd century.
Constantine make Sunday the day of worship. From the earliest days, Jewish-Christians observed the Sabbath, which ended on Saturday evening, and then, the same evening when the first day of the week begins, they concluded the Sabbath feast with a Eucharist to commemorate the resurrection of the Jesus. They gave significance to the day as the first day of the new creation (a reference to Genesis and the creation of the world). If pictures of the Egyptian Isis nursing Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing the baby Jesus, then the blueprint was hidden for a millennium. In earlier depictions, Mary is regal, seated by the side of Jesus. The first depictions of Mary nursing Jesus are medieval. Altars are found in the Bible, not just in pagan religions. Communion with the divinity is indeed found in pagan religions, but the Eucharistic consumption of Jesus' body and blood comes from Jesus' own transformation of the ritual of the Jewish Seder (or, possibly, a chaburah meal), not from paganism. The divinity of Jesus was not voted on at Nicea in 325. Belief in the divinity was firmly in place in the earliest Christian communities. Consider only John's Gospel, which was in existence at the beginning of the 2nd century. What was debated strenuously and eventually passed at Nicea was the introduction into a statement of belief of what heretofore had been a philosophical term: homoousios or, 'of the same substance.' The Gnostic gospels were suppressed not on the basis of their depiction of Jesus as human, but because they are fanciful accounts of miracles and distant travels. The four 'winning' gospels are really expanded passion/resurrection proclamations with few of the details that are indispensable to biography: childhood accounts, what Jesus did for the first 30 years of his life, etc. More than likely, the gospels of Philip and Mary and Peter and all the rest didn't make the cut because they went way beyond proclaiming the good news of the saving death and resurrection. The Dead Sea scrolls contain Hebrew and inter-testamental writings, not gospels. They have interest to Christians only as witnesses to the events that formed a background for the ministry of Jesus and travails of the early church. Mary Magdalene, the prostitute. It is true that Gregory the Great confused the identities of Mary of Magdala and the woman who was a sinner. Whether that culminated a smear campaign in the early church is far from certain. Some 'Fathers of the Church" called Mary 'the apostle of the apostles." Social decorum at the time of Jesus did favor marriage, but there were brotherhood societies (chaburah) and religious communities. Scholars today are not sure if the Last Supper was a brotherhood meal or a Seder. In either case, it would not have been surprising for a celibate teacher to gather the family of his disciples for either of those activities. The tribe of Benjamin is not a royal tribe. Neither is the tribe of Juda, the other of the 12 tribes that survived the Assyrian conquest when the 10 'lost' tribes disappeared. But the family of David of the tribe of Juda was a royal family. 'Q' stands for Quelle (German for source). It refers to a hypothesis favored by biblical scholars of all major persuasions: a common source of the sayings of Jesus might pre-date and underlie the sayings that are found, in near word for word identity, in Matthew, Mark and Luke. This source may have been incorporated into the synoptic gospels, each of which has its unique character. No one believes that such a source would have been written by Jesus in his own hand. Shekinah is a word meaning 'the presence or shining forth of God' and was a circumlocution for the inhabitant of the Holy of Holies, whose name, YHWH, could never be pronounced. When the Israelites said that the Shekinah dwelled or pitched tent in the Temple, they meant that YHWH did so.
A constant message of the prophets was condemnation of those Israelites who forsook YHWH for Baal and his consort, Astarte. Intercourse with Astarte's Temple prostitutes was an act of sacred mimicry that was supposed to guarantee fertility in one's fields and livestock. The practice was a constant temptation to Israelites to forsake their faith in YHWH. YHWH is not derived from Jehovah. It's just the other way around. Hebrew never showed vowels, only consonants such as the sacred YHWH. For that reason, ancient pronunciations are guesswork. Whenever Jewish readers come across this tetragrammaton, they substitute for it the word ADONAI, which means 'Lord.'Someone in the 16th century evidently asked a Jewish person to pronounce YHWH and got ADONAI. So he took the ADONAI vowel sounds--A,O and A--and inserted them between the four consonants, coming up with JAHOVAH (or Jehovah).
Rating:
Summary: Great Theme- Humdrum Prose
Review: Dan Brown has the elements of what could be the news story of the common era. There's the possibility that the founding of Christendom was shrouded with the same deceit and treachery that accompanies those other Jesus- come- lately religions. And to think that there's a living group of seers who may have the power to rock the spiritual universe should they choose... What a theme! Most people interested in religious history have probably learned bits and pieces about Gnosticism. This novel takes some of those suppositions as Gospel and stretches the consequences to the present day.
Here's the problem. Such a grandiose theme demands concomitant language. But Dan Brown's prose has all the polish of a daily blog. Too much energy is devoted to word riddles and pursuit. The inner lives of the main characters are so little explored one doesn't much care what happens to them. At the end, I was just sorry that P. D. James didn't write this mystery.
This subject deserves the attention of a competent historian or perhaps requires the sleuthing of an investigatory journalist. I hope The Da Vinci Code inspires someone to do better.
Rating:
Summary: WOW!!
Review: I had a terrible time putting this book down! I read chapters before work, after work, in the car picking up kids...everywhere I could. Dan Brown's tale about the search for the Holy Grail is fast paced and never boring. The surprises just keep coming. The biggest surprises are who the "Teacher" is and where the Grail is located. Dan Brown obviously uses a lot of historical facts and suppositions to weave his tale. Whether or not you believe in what he writes it will certainly make you question the beginnings of the modern Church if only for a second. The only thing that upset me about this book is that it had to end!
Rating:
Summary: Best Book I Have Read in Years
Review: The Da Vinci Code is the most outstanding book I have read in years. Dan Brown's writing style is simply unbelievable. It flows smoothly and he includes just enough detail to make his plot move along perfectly. He is a master of subplots, and the storyline is so thrilling and captivating that the reader is unable to put the book down. His character development is exceptional, and the reader actually feels that he/she is part of the plot rather than merely a witness to it. Clearly, the book is meticulously researched and it is obvious that Dan Brown is an extremely intelligent fellow. This book deserves a 5-star rating without a doubt. The people giving it low scores are probably devout Catholics embarrassed by the sad truths about their Church revealed in this book.
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