The Da Vinci Code

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: In settling on a title for this review, I was at a loss to find the right adjective. Compelling? Intriguing? Informative? Gripping? All of the above, actually. I settled on "great," because I truly believe this book will be read as a classic of this era.

The book is an amazing learning experience, opening my mind to realms of thought and beliefs I never knew anyone espoused. As one who has always loathed history books, the education garnered from Brown's writing was assimilated without a fuss. Indeed, I absorbed willingly.

I enjoyed a similar experience from James Goldman's brilliant play, "The Lion In Winter." It's apparently useful to have the characters brought to life and given dimesion, not some dry account of their actions and their relevance to history.

The plot, stripped of its embellishments, is basic enough. Even trite. A man is accused of a crime he didn't commit, and with the aid of his brilliant, charming lady cryptographer, struggles to prove his innocence. But fiction readers of all stripes will find something to appeal, from mystery to history, and even a love story.

Dan Brown will prove to be recognized as one of the greatest writers of our time.

Rating:
Summary: Where to start...
Review: The only thing I'm sure of at this point is that The Da Vinci Code certainly doesn't live up to its hype. As someone who knows absolutely nothing about art history, I was fascinated by the impliciations of the protagonist's (a symbologist at Harvard University) unconventional analysis of Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork. But the more and more I learn about Brown's glaring inaccuracies (most of which the layperson to art history would not notice), the less respect I hold for the author and his book.

As far as the plot goes, I loved the first half of the book, until the characters got all nutty with the Royal Bloodline and the Holy Grail and whatnot. It was fast-paced, intriguing, and different. But it soon loses focus. As the plot gets more complex, Brown seems to think twice about the intellect of his readers. Whenever something happens, the implications are repeated. Several times. JUST TO MAKE SURE YA GOT IT. This is a thriller, a mystery, if you will. It's supposed to be subtle, not overtly user friendly. After the first half, this book just goes down hill fast. The simplicity of the riddles, and the difficulty these renowned scholars have figuring it out, gets annoying. The ending turns into a Oprah-like romance scene. And the revelation of the (once) enigmatic Teacher is disappointing to say the least. Anyone who's ever read a mystery before knows the bad guy is always the character you'd least expect. That's why most mystery authors have stopped using this passe technique, but unfortunately Brown has yet to catch on.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book !!!!!
Review: It's a thought provoking book with a great plot. I would highly recommend it to everybody.

Rating:
Summary: Cryptonomicon for dummies
Review: One time I ate a Krispy Kreme(tm) doughnut; one thing lead to another and I ate the whole box. That same feeling hit me when I finished this book. You will finish the book and ask yourself why?

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but hardly deep.
Review: I read this book after hearing the 20th person rave and gush about how she simply "could not put it down!" I had little trouble putting it down, myself. The Da Vinci Code is fun, but irritatingly commercial at times (starting with physical descriptions of our heroes, George Clooney and Julie Delpy, oops, I mean Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu). Some of the facts are just off, and show the single-source limitations of Brown's "exhaustive research": for example, the selection of books for the New Testament was basically solidified more than 100 years before Emperor Constantine was a wicked gleam in his father's eye, contrary to Teabing's claim that Constantine handpicked the New Testament volumes for their marketing values. Moreover, the canon of New Testament books was chosen from only 34 volumes, not 80. (By the way, if you're curious about those rejected books, try reading their translations on earlychristianwritings.com. It'll remind you of the well-circulated e-mail joke, "Rejected Dr. Seuss Books." You'll find that there are some good reasons why some of that material didn't make the cut, reasons that have little to do with portraying Jesus Christ in a negative light. Some of those proposed books of the New Testament are just laughably bad and bizarre enough to convince one that the Mediterranean cultures of the early first millenium A.D. were growing more peyote than olives.) Finally, I found that the puzzles lacked challenge: anybody who'd passed 7th-grade math could recognize the members of the Fibonacci sequence, and I spotted them right off. The anagrams were also obvious (duh, most famous artist in the world, most famous museum in the world, most famous painting in the world. Duh.), and anybody who's ever been to Westminster Abbey wouldn't have been much fazed by the "orb" and the "Pope" cryptography. If readers truly are looking for intellectually stimulating puzzles based on trivia about hoary-headed Western Civ All-Stars, try reading Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" instead. I haven't read other Dan Brown books, but my advice to him would be to skip the cheese-filled "it was all a dream" epilogue in future works. Not that my advice is worth anything to him...

Rating:
Summary: Good concept, decent plot, abysmal writing!
Review: Before you part with any cold hard cash, think back to your first creative writing class... now, remember the clunky prose and paper-thin characterizations of the least talented class members. This will give you an idea of how The DaVinci Code reads.

Don't get me wrong: I'm no literary snob, and I love a good Michael Crichton or Stephen King as much as the next person, but The DaVinci Code was no Firestarter. Many of the theories it hints at are never developed; the editor (if there was one) was clearly asleep at the wheel; and the characters themselves are so clichéd and unbelievable that you will soon find you are only reading to find out how it all ends. In short, Dan Brown makes John Grisham look like Shakespeare.

However, despite its flaws, this novel is not without merit:

BONUS #1: Dialogue so stilted you will laugh out loud.

BONUS #2: Possibly the lamest, least imaginative, most one-dimensional rendering ever of an uptight Brit by an American author... found myself wondering less where the holy grail was and more why on earth Brown chose to revive such a dull, DOA stereotype for one of his main characters.

BONUS #3: You DO have a chance in hell of getting published after all!

For a somewhat better read on the same subject, I recommend The Prophetess by Barbara Wood.

For author Dan Brown, I recommend Creative Writing 101 and a seasoned editor!

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: Unfortunately I can't give this less than one star.

I am not going to review this as a novel. If you read this as a novel you may enjoy it, I can't speak to individual tastes.

This review is more for those of you who are in anyway duped by the author's claim to historical accuracy.

Simply put, this is unimaginatively rehashed anti-Christian propaganda from days of old. That it is presented as a novel is simply to make it easier to sell. It is seriously remiss in some of it's blatant misinterpretations and outright falsehoods. By way of example, the Council of Nicea did not deify Christ. One has only to look to St Peter's words "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" in the Gospel of Matthew, St Paul's Letters "God sending his own Son", "the only begotten of the Father" St John's Gospel, never mind the voice from the sky at the transfiguration "This is my beloved Son", and so on, for it to be blindingly obvious from the earliest that Christ was revered as God made man.
To then say that 250 years later the early Church Fathers rewrote swathes of text to present Christ as divine is the cheapest way out of an argument ever. "I make a claim that X is false." But the evidence disproves your claim. "Then the evidence has been doctored." Please. I hearby claim that Dan Brown is a short tentacled alien from Venus and that any evidence to the contrary has been doctored by people who wish to present him as human.

This is tabloid history from the 'mud sticks' school of journalism that has no need of or regard for truth. It reminds me of one book claiming the Apollo moon landings had been faked that reinvented basic geometry to prove a point. Presumably they hoped the reader wouldn't notice.

The same trickery is in evidence here, as a particularly simple example for non-Christians shows. For more on this I would direct you to an earlier reviewer's (Evergreen, CO) nice summary of existing collections of Da Vinci's artwork including not least an early sketch of the Last Supper where the artist has labelled the figures. Shock horror, yes that figure is John, who is always depicted as young and clean shaven and not Mary Magdelene. If Brown the 'historian' can mislead you on these details don't kid yourself about the depths he will sink to to make money. After all, his making money is his and his publisher's main motive. Truth? Truth doesn't pay for his house.

Ask yourself, why wouldn't Peter or Paul or James or any of the Gospel writers talk about Jesus being married, particularly Paul when defending his own right to have a wife (1 Corinthians)? Were they running a conspiracy whose nefarious aims were to ask people to love God and each other?! Oh no, that's right, their texts were doctored by short tentacled Venusians to hide the truth about the Moon landings.

Spend your money more wisely and get some texts on logical poofs and fallacies so you can spot this sort of trash earlier next time.

Rating:
Summary: Treasure Hunt for the Grail
Review: This book should be included on the top one hundred books ever written. I feel as if I've just completed a thrilling college course, and wouldn't be at all surprised if the study of this book wasn't eventually offered as one. It covers a little bit of everything from history, math, logic, science, religion, astronomy, art, and architecture. Back when I was in High School, I had heard about the universal code of Nature (1.618 PHI.) in a science class , but it was never presented in such a way before that made it interesting enough for me to really sit down and think about it. After reading this book I was doing little experiments to verify that it was true. Oh, by the way in addition to being a very good college text, this book was also a very good murder mystery involving a treasure hunt in search of the Holy Grail. The questions remain however, "What is the Holy Grail or San Greal?" "Is it a chalice, a women, a royal blood line, or a bunch of hidden documents?"

The book quotes the following from Leonardo Da Vinci that it says is in reference to the Bible, "Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!" The line refers to people blindly reading the Bible without questioning the truth in the message. I would like to caution people not to make the same mistake here by blindly reading this book and accepting everything said here without looking things up for themselves to see how much of it is based on facts, and how much on innuendo. Some of course is just based on innuendo for the story line, but I was amazed by how much is actually based on real facts (especially the art work, and symbols). Leonardo obviously had a hidden agenda with some of his paintings, but what that message was is still open to interpretation. (It does look like there really was a women sitting at the table in his "Last Supper" painting to the right of Jesus. Whether this person is supposed to be Mary Magdalene however is open to discussion. This painting of course is Da Vinci's interpretation of that scene rather than based on anything that actually happened.)

I love a book that makes you think and go out and learn something new and this book by Dan Brown does that. It reminded me a little of Michael Crichton's books like Jurassic Park or Congo, that take some real facts then ask what if, and lay out a believable story that leaves you scratching your head at the end wondering what is real.

Is the Catholic Church built on lies, and if so does it matter, or do we even care? As a Catholic I remember being concerned years ago when I found out that Jesus might not have actually been born on December 25th, but that the Church choose this day to celebrate it since it coincided with other Pagan god's birthdays. I wondered how many other things were done while setting themselves up to try to eliminate the competition, and this book just opened up a whole bunch of additional questions that I will now have to research and decide for myself on what is real.

The basic teachings of the church are still the same and have a good message. That hasn't changed. Even before reading this book however I have felt like something was missing from the church or needs to be changed. Maybe by reading this book it will help point me in the right direction as to what I am looking for.

On a side note I saw that Nicholas Flamel the alchemist was listed as one of the previous Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion. Nicholas is mentioned in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", but I hadn't noticed until this book that he was a real person when I looked him up on line. ...

Rating:
Summary: Very riveting, great fictional extension of history
Review: After hearing so much about the book I picked up the audio CD so I can listen while I was driving. I was pleasantly surprised by the pace of the book. The book was always moving forward and always left you hanging for the next chapter. The story follows the death of the curator of the Louvre and leads to a quest for the Holy Grail and a possible truth about Jesus Christ that could topple Christianity. What I love most about this book is that the author took a long series of true events and weaved them together with just enough fiction to make it seem so believable. To me this is a sign of a good book. It makes you follow the story because you think it is true but the author's imagination takes you to a fictional place your own mind would not have gone too.

The story to uncover the Holy Grail is well laid out by Dan Brown. The book really takes place over teh course of two days but so much happens in those two days. Reminds me of the fast pace that the TV show 24 has made so successfull.

I am Jewish and not an expert at all on Christianity, but the truthful and fictional tales woven together about Christ and the Holy Grail were so fascinating. Add a long history of a Secret Society that guards a secret the Vatican wants to remain a secret, but one that the society is obligated to reveal. What could the secret be that would topple an entire religion. Why would a secret society exist to guard it and how is the Church going to protect itself? More importantly, why is a museum curator for the Louvre a central figure that ties all of this together?

The questions above are an indication of the wonderful ideas the book brings out and makes you think. There is suspense as the two main characters follow a series of cryptic codes left by the curator and are followed by the police and a killer who is being ordered by a very powerful man behind the scenes. Is the Church involved?

Then there is the question of the secrets of the Holy Grail? Are these two characters following clues that will ultimately lead to the Holy Grail? What is the secret that could ruin the church and what does it have to do with the Holy Grail?

I could not stop stop listening to the CD as I needed these questions answered. THis book fulfilled my desires, a great suspenseful story that realy made me think and question things as they are. I recommend this as a great pleasure read or listen.

Of course the overriding question to all of these subplots, is what does this also have to do with leonardo Da Vinci??? These questions make you want to read or hear more and keep you captivated.

I know other reviewers criticize the book for certain factual mistakes. However, I took the book for what it was, a fictional novel. You have to suspend your belief somwhat. I feel the author's research and touch of fiction have made the story seem so realistic and possible, which is the sign of a great book. It makes you question real facts even though such facts were introduced in a fictional work. Even when the fringes of fiction come through the truth, your quest to follow in the character's excitement makes you jump into their shoes and it feels realistic. I think I can let a few historical "stretches" slip by when I am reading fiction because it is not a documentary. Personally I was so swept up in the story, I really would not notice anything incorrect unless I did the research myself.

This book has spurred numerous discussions about Christ, Mary Magdelegne and Christianity and the Church. How awesome is such a work of fiction that it makes us question reality??

The writing style is very straightforward and clear and easy to follow. The text moves quickly and there is not one point where it slows down, making you want to read more and more. Pick it up and jump in with both feet.

Rating:
Summary: Run, Kid, Run!
Review: Maniac Magee is a white kid who can run on the rail of a railroad track!Crazy,huh?!Maniac Mageee is a great book by Jerry Spinelli is a great book about Jeffrey Lionel Magee(AKA Maniac Magee).He was orphaned when his parents died in a trolley crash.Maniac ran from Holiaysberg,P.A. to Two Mills,P.A.(200miles) when he was 11 years old.Two Mills is seperated into the West End and The East End.West End is white people.East End is black people. Maniac just runs around town...West End AND East End!Will anyone ever take Maniac into their home?Will Maniac run into trouble on the East End? Does Maniac make any friends?To find out read this exciting book,Maniac Magee!