Dan Brown would have us Believe...

Jeez Louise, I slept in. I still must not have shaken off the laissez-faire sleep economics of reading week. At least I can still make it to the class that starts in a couple hours and swing by the library. To assail a little time until then, here are my thoughts on the last book I read. (visual spoiler alert below)

The Da Vinci Code has recently made its way into my hands, and I must say it was a hard book to put down. Having a few Art History classes under my sordid academic belt has helped to enrich the story (finally it counts for something!). As well, I have been exposed to a lot of the novel's themes, supposed truths and shadowy societies through the net, movies and even videogames. So unlike say the average Oprah's Book Club reader, I haven't needed to google or Wikipedia anything for comprehension's sake. On a parallel, I wonder if a teary-eyed Oprah will have Dan Brown on her show to chastise him: "You LIED to us Dan Brown! It says on page..." Yeesh. Lighten up, it's in the fiction section, people. Some novels contain loose facts based on research, but the prime motive is always to tell a good story. If Brown had meant to confront head-on the subsequent flurry of Exposing Brown's Fraud documentaries and angry prayers for his damned soul by the church - he would have done away with a plotline and wrote a non-fiction book. All in all, it has been a smart and engrossing story, and I can see it further being a conduit for discussion and research. I'm looking forward to the movie. However, if Tom Hanks as Langdon makes a comment about how opening the cryptex is "like a box of chocolates", I'm out of there.