Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

I've been listening to The Da Vinci Code on tape, and, unfortunately, I'm finding it remarkably annoying. I've been on hold for this thing for months, several friends of mine recommended it, and it's a bestseller, so I expected to like it, at least somewhat. But I don't.

The book strikes me as remarkably manipulative. It's clearly supposed to promote the genius of Leonardo da Vinci and the huge loss of the "sacred feminine" to the marauding forces of patriarchal Christianity. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Christianity, and especially Catholic Christianity, is obviously Brown's villain, and that doesn't sit well with me.

5,000,000 women burned as witches by the church? Where is Brown getting these statistics?

Also the characterization is amazingly thin. I'm halfway through this book, and know next to nothing about the two leads except what I have to know to solve the "mystery." Brown writes in clunky flashback format which allows him to insert necessary info, but most of the flashbacks seem out of place and interrupt the book's flow. Plus, it annoys me that he continually references various Big Secrets, but never blurts them out. Keep it a secret until we have to know it, or tell us what it is already.

Robert Langdon doesn't seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer, despite his Harvard position, yet he and Sophie manage to solve every step of the puzzle within minutes based on their background skills and knowledge. If what they are seeking is easy enough for two previously uninducted people to uncover in the space of one day, security isn't that tight in the Priory of Sion.

Plus, I've never been particularly interested in Grail legend. I know what the Grail is supposed to be in The Da Vinci Code, and it strikes me as odd that the Priory didn't expose the secret when Europe was still Christian.
Surely the impact would have been greater then.

I just got to the part with Mr. Teabag, or Sir Teabing as Brown incorrectly calls him. Clearly, clearly, clearly, Brown is making up his church history as he goes along. What bothers me most is that there are a lot of people out there who are going to swallow this fiction whole as gospel.

Here are a couple of links with more precise, and actually true, theology.

I'm ready to turn this one in. The only thing I want to know is what grandpa was doing in the basement. If I had the book version, I could just skip ahead, but with the audio, I have to listen if I want to know. But I don't think I can take more of this book even to satisfy my curiosity.

Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose was a much cooler secrets-within-spooky-medieval-Christian