"Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre, Jacques Saunière, has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vault of history."

Bought from a second-hand book shop.

Still TBR, but I'm lending the book to mirz.

Read once in Finnish, now in English. Then back to myntti.

Comments later.

Yksi kiinnostunut olisi ilmoittautunut: maarit.

OK, much better in English, naturally. Original is the best in most of the cases. Translation wasn't bad, Finnish translators are great, but still I think that one should always read both. The time issue, I know, I suffer too.

I really love this book, I'm totally Dan Brown's. Can't wait to get the third Robert Langdon book in my hands. I love books with problems and codes to solve. When book mess up with fact and fiction, and the line between them isn't so clear, I'm entertained.

I highly recommend this book. And I know my father does too, not to mention my "better" half.

I liked this book, it was entertaining. I especially liked the fact that this didn't have all the same little details as Digital Fortres and Angels&Demons. What bothered me was how stupid the main characters could be. I atleast thought that they were supposed to be intelligent. Still they managed not to know or comprehend many simple things. I guess this book was written to get more attention to the theories. And it certainly has worked. I was surprised to find out that there was wery little that I had never heard about.

You know, I won't mind if you tell me I've kept a book for too long.

It's been a while since I read this, I've postponed the journal entry because I wanted to write it in peace and put some thought into it. Well, to heck with it - I can't remember what was so important about it.

Although very good, this one did not captivate me as thoroughly as Angels and Demons, nor did it have as "big" thoughts as that one. The "message" in this one was just to enlighten the reader about modern Grail research, which wasn't very novel for me. Now that I've read this, I can but wonder what all the fuss is about. Are people really so ignorant? People who attack this book with all kinds of allegations only see the bits where Brown has stretched beyond known fact (the bloodline and some parts about the secret societies) and fail to notice the more important stuff (the history of the sacred female and the history of the Bible and the Church).

For me, The da Vinci Code was "yes, uh-huh, *nod*, yes, that's right" whereas Angels and Demons was "wow man, this is really fundamental stuff, I never though about it this way, I mean WOW".

But of course it's just me.

Given all that, it would have been good if at least the plot and narration had managed to captivate me like with A&D. However, Brown really seemed to have problems getting this one rolling. At times, the plot really dragged onwards. Don't get me wrong, it still was a good ride as a whole, just not compared to A&D.

And the characters were just stupid. Much better characters in A&D (even Langdon was somehow better in that one). Bezu Fache, bah. What a one-dimensional character. Leigh Teabing, likewise.

I'm tempted to drop my rating from 8 to 7. But I guess it was better than 7.

I wonder where this should go now? Maybe back to Myntti in today's unofficial meet-up.

I got the book back from Sammaltassu today. TBR.

***

30.4.2006
Much ado about nothing. I don't understand the brouhaha surrounding The Da Vinci Code. Apparently Dan Brown and his publisher know how to create publicity for a book...
This was a mediocre thriller with cardboard characters. And the ending - what a saccharine overdose! Still, the book must have had its moments because I read it through. The story might work quite well as a movie - the short chapters and quick "cuts" reminded me of a movie script right from the start. Good movie or not, it is certain to rake in millions.

3.5. I got the book from the montly meeting for my release trip to Budapest via Estonia-Latvia-Lithuania-Poland-Slovakia.

RELEASE NOTES:

I left the book on a railing of a cafe opposite of ProMod.