The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Recently my friend Michael told me about a book called 'The Da Vinci Code', a thriller which so inspired him he booked a trip to Paris to check out the details. Not many books have that effect on people and I thought it worth checking out. In the bookstore yesterday I asked the first assistant I saw whether they had a book called "da vinci code.., or something like that." She smiled knowingly, apparently it contrives to somehow "fly off the shelves." The Assistant told me she was half way through its almost 600 pages, there are 10 million copies now in print and it recently became the best-selling hardback novel ever. While said assistant and I chatted, lady bystander picks up the book too, "Now you've got me interested!"

So I bought it and I read it. I'd only got to Chapter 6 by bedtime, but by 8am I was somewhere around Chapter 73 and by this evening the secrets had been spilled, I was finally able to put it down. The Da Vinci Code is a gripping story; a story of cryptography, art, religion, history, secrets, science and the Holy Grail. Based around facts and locations around Paris, London and Edinburgh, the book equips its reader for an arborescent voyage of discovery through future further reading, viewing and contemplation.

While The Da Vinci Code [Amazon UK, US] may well be open to charges that it is at times implausible or that the writing is perhaps not in itself a masterpiece, the book has other merit. Simply, it allows you to happily ignore everybody around you, delve headlong into the Holy Grail controversy and come out the other end with a new bunch of stuff you know you know too little of.

Posted by Paul in Recommended Books Entertainment at August 9, 2004 04:07 AM | 4 Comments