Rating: 
Summary: mmm
Review: Overall, I found this book to be extremely cheesy. But there were interesting ideas. The times set aside for holidays were chosen based on existing pagan holidays. Romanesque churches still standing today are believed by some scholars to be the work of rural pagan craftsmen who put sly references to their belief of male/female equality and such. Oh! And this document concerning PS leadership includes French film maker Jean Cocteau.
Rating: 
Summary: DaVinci Code
Review: I loved the book!!! The combination of suspense and historical
facts made in so interesting and entertaining. Someday this will be one #1 hit movie too.
Rating:
Summary: a great potboiler, but nothing more
Review: This is a great potboiler, a page turner, as they like to say. And why not, with chapters averaging a little over four pages per chapter and thrilling writing to rival Edgar Rice Bourroughs. (How many of you are familiar with the great Tarzan series, as originally written? And would you rely on these books for information on life in Africa?). But it's nothing more. And surely anyone who reads this book to discover what the reality is is in an advanced state of idiocy.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining but outlandish
Review: This is an action oriented tale that is pure entertainment. It unfortunately does not offer any character development of the main characters. We never learn much about them at all, nothing we wouldn't know from a 15 min. conversation at a cocktail party, except for secret associations and heritage. The story is based on a historical conspiracy theory that the author takes seriously but that lacks ALL credible evidence. For each assertion, there a hundreds of valid refutations that immediately jump out. The author is making a case that is so outlandish it is beyond being debatable. I did enjoy reading it but had to completely ignore many of the claims made regarding art, history, religion and secret societies due to their lack of credibility. I am really surprised that a book based on such erroneous and illogical claims could have been published at all and then be so popular. If anyone actually is swayed by the story's claims, just look at The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel or especially Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict, among other Christian books that offer evidence for all aspects of Christianity. They offer historical, spiritual, religious, and scientific evidence of the verity of Christianity, as opposed to this book's conspiracy theories. The truth concerning the issues relating to Jesus' life in this book are not mysteries as they are treated here. There has been more research and study of Jesus' life than anyone else in history. If the validity of his story and of the Bible was so ambiguous, neither would have stood against all the opposition to them both. Something built on lies and fraud cannot withstand the violent attacks levied against the early Christians. Besides, this book purports that Constantine initiated a great fraud that caused the Catholic Church and Christianity to be based on lies. Well Christianity was already 300 years old by that time, and the Catholic church is not synomous with Christianity. The author doesn't even address the initial growth of Christianity in the centuries immediately following the life of Christ. All of his logic follows this pattern--extremely shallow and easily diputed. You won't be missing much if you don't read it; if you do read it, you are sure to be entertained but not taught a history or religious lesson.
Rating: 
Summary: Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse....
Review: These two limited 1/2 dimensional characters, no more developed than a school boys first attempt at creative writing, receive a special key to a Swiss bank safe deposit box and wander off to the bank to find the next secret in their silly trek of Holy Grail gobbledegoop. When they initailly found the key it was tied to a scrambled number that, shockingly like a cold night in December not in Miami, turned out to be the Fibonacci sequence. Oh, my, and upon their arrival at the bank they, low and behold, realize they need an account number. They were shocked in their 1/2 dimensional ways, "We need a accouint number at a bank?" "Oh my, what will we do?" "What could it possibly be?" "You will have to leave if you don't have the number," says the bank manager. "We have to leave, but we have a key?" But wait, just then one of the two brain cells these characters share in common fires and they realize the Fibonacci sequence is the account number. Duh! Are you dumb as a box of rocks? Is this plot really this bad? Is America really dumb enough to take this trivial book, that should have never gone to print, and make it into a huge best seller? We are lost. The characters, the plot, the writing, everything is horrid, cheap, plastic and dull. This book is akin to seeing a lousy movie and then wishing you could have your two hours back.
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent and intriguing. This Christian loved it.
Review: The Da Vinci Code is a well-crafted high-suspense story, loaded almost to overflowing with history, architecture, theology, art and literary commentary, all centered around one intriguing question. Is it possible that Jesus was actually married to the woman known as Mary Magdalene, and to what lengths would anyone go to keep the world from believing this? You'll get your money's worth from this novel's 454 pages. Be prepared for a lot of information to absorb, but also for a fast-paced story, lots of action, high-suspense, frequent viewpoint shifts, more flashbacks than you can count, multiple cliff-hangers, and tons of riddles and rhymes to ponder.
ABC devoted an entire hour recently to examining the veracity of the Jesus/Mary Magdalene theory. As if this weren't enough to wonder about, there is also the belief, held by some, that Mary Magdalene fled to France following Christ's crucifixion and gave birth to a daughter whose descendents are supposedly part of a bloodline that includes Jesus Christ and King David. You may not buy any of this, but the fact that the Priory of Sion is a real society with such illustrious members as Da Vinci, Hugo, and Isaac Newton, is something to think about.
I had no idea that the Mary Magdalene story was so pervasive, and has been told allegorically in such classics as Sleeping Beauty, Wagner's Parsifal, and Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Even Disney's The Little Mermaid allegedly reflects what Dan Brown's symbologist Robert Langdon calls "the sacred feminine."
The Da Vinci Code is not for the easily offended. I disagree that Dan Brown had any ulterior motives for writing this story, other than to bring to readers' attention the fact that there are many unanswered questions about the life of Jesus Christ - questions that even the staunchest believers will not find answers to in this life. The author had no vendetta against the Catholic Church, no wish to embarrass anyone, no wish to destroy anyone's cherished beliefs. As the daughter of a minister myself, having grown up quite familiar with biblical stories as they are conventionally told, I very much enjoyed the results of Dan Brown's in-depth research. I have long believed that one must be able to read between the lines of the Bible to understand what is and is not there. The four Gospels do not tell the complete story of Jesus' life, not by a long shot.
I have read several reviews claiming that the information Dan Brown presents is flawed, biased, or simply false. I respect the opinions of others who were not pleased with The Da Vinci Code, but I strongly resist hearing criticism that does not explain itself. If what Dan Brown has presented is erroneous or untrue, please tell us why. Be specific.
The best fiction has always been whatever makes us think - about ourselves, about others, and about the incredible universe we find ourselves inhabiting. To quote one of my favorite Shakespeare lines, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Rating:
Summary: Nice Beach Read But the Research Is Really Bad
Review: With all the hype surrounding this book, it was inevitable that I would end up reading it. The book has achieved a life of it's own, much as last summer's Alice Sebold The Lovely Bones did. People have passed it along by word of mouth and intimated that here was a fresh and bold new mystery about intellectual ideas. After having read it, I can say that, depending on the attitude you approach the book with, this is either fun pulp fiction, or disappointing and overblown. I must say that as mind candy, I enjoyed the book. It is not at all great literature, but it is a page-turner and a fun read. The characters are pretty generic, with very little to distinguish them from a dozen other characters in mass fiction novels. Change the lead character, Robert Langdon from an Art History professor to an intelligence expert and you have Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Change him to a lawyer, and you have any number of John Grisham heroes. There is very little to distinguish him from any other popular novel hero. The same goes for Sophie Neveau or any of the other characters in the book. But the plotting is fast paced and keep you going. If the ciphers are obvious and some of the characters are obvious red herrings, and the prose style is a bit stilted, still the book keeps you entertained to the end. The problems of the book come on the intellectual side. The central premise of the Holy Grail history is based on several popular "Chariots of the Gods?" style books...Holy Blood, Holy Grail; The Templar Revelation; and a few others thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, the views outlined in these books are presented as representing the consensus of scholarly opinion on Grail symbology, rather than as what they are...popularized potboilers that outline minority opinions...opinions that have not stood up well in peer review, either in historical or in Art circles. And when Brown delves into theology he makes a large number of really egregious errors, errors that even proponents of the Gnostic Gospels don't make. He claims that the Gnostic Gospels are the "original" Gospels and that the standard canon of the Bible is a later attempt by the Church to distort an earlier version of Christianity. He claims that Constantine determined that Christ should be considered God and thereby wiped away any of the "real" gospels, creating the fictions we know as the standard canon. Unfortunately, none of this is true. The earliest we can date any of the non-canonical writings is the second century CE, while the Gospel of Mark has been pretty conclusively dated to the decade of the 60's CE. Even the latest additions to the Bible in modern scholarship predate most of the Gnostic texts by at least 80 years. Further more, Constantine did convene the council of Nicea as an attempt to create at least the semblance of uniformity in Christianity after the Edict of Toleration, the belief that Christ was "fully human and fully divine" predates Constantine by a full two hundred years...and the belief in the divinity of Jesus goes back at least to the Gospel of John, around 95 CE. The above is not to deny the Gnostic Gospels their due...they represent many of the competing strains of Christianity which existed in the Church's first 300 years, until they were forced underground by the growing power of the hierarchical Orthodox church. But the simplistic views stated in The Da Vinci Code paint a hugely distorted picture of something that deserves more thought and more study. The second objection I have to the book is the portrait of the Catholic Church and particularly the Opus Dei. Though Brown tries at the end to lighten his portrait of the Church, he mostly presents a distorted image of the Church as the enemy of truth. Though undoubtedly, the Church has been guilty of some pretty awful things in it's history, in Brown's hands the Church ends up as a caricature...a paper tiger. Also, the portrait of the Opus Dei in the book is based on only the most negative images of the organization. Opus Dei is controversial, undoubtedly. But to create such a ham fisted portrayal of the organization lends no help to either side in the debate over the organization, turning it from a questionable Traditionalist organization to a secretive, Jim Jones-like cult. And as the disturbed assassin, Silas, Brown has created perhaps one of the least believable characters in the book. All that being said, the book is a fun read, as long as you can approach it as just another thriller and don't believe all the genius hype. If you are interested in a really good, well-researched book about the same Grail lore, I would highly recommend Umberto Eco's vastly superior Foucault's Pendulum. Eco takes similar theories, but approaches them with much more art and skill to create a truly magical book. Read it when you want your mind stimulated and leave the Da Vince Code for beach reading.... that's where it belongs.
Rating:
Summary: Mind candy for the brain
Review: An entertaining quick read, though I think it'll end up making a better movie than it did a book. The mechanics of plotting could have been smoother, and the book would have been better had I just been allowed to read the author's cleverness for myself without the characters telling me over and over again how clever he was. That became distracting early on.
Rating:
Summary: Popular McThriller
Review: A light, airy, almost forgettable thriller in and of itself (nothing at all remarkable about the writing), the strength of this novel is the attention to details, more often with its locations. This is a fine bathroom novel. The descriptions of Paris and other locations are vivid and well-researched. My frustration with this book is three fold: first, it reads as if Brown memorized the writer's guide "How To Write A Blockbuster." The use of delaying information to create forced cliffhanger after forced cliffhanger became painful. My thought was "Get on with it!" especially when the basic information a third into the book was the same anyone can find on the inside front cover. He also forces drama by having people do things no smart person in their right mind would do. ***SPOILER*** The ONLY reason Langdon is suspected is because he was supposed to meet with the vicitim. Murder weapon? No. Motive? No. If he was to write "Langdon killed me" then he would have done so, right? Why a dumb game? I thought Langdon got exactly what he deserved. Second, Brown isn't always true to his own logic. His conclusions are often trivial, and while one set of "truths" (such as the entire foundation of Christianity) with thousands of witnesses is dismissed, other brands of "truth" are supposedly proven by a single quote from dubious sources. Just because someone says its true doesn't make it so (and maybe that's Brown's point). Third, I guess I expected some clever codes and insightful info on cryptology. What I got was a lot of anagrams and literal codes. Something I could get in any issue of The Hardy Boys. Bottom-line, this is a fun book with some interesting trivia and zip-a-long pacing, but don't expect a steak dinner. You'll get a fast-food McThriller, and if that's your appetitie then by all means...
Rating:
Summary: Read "Foucault's Pendulum", rather than this pap....
Review: If "Da Vinci Code" sounds interesting to you, you would be far better served by turning to Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum", which at least makes intellectual demands on the reader. It is indeed depressing when truly trivial books, as this one is, become best sellers.
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