The novel that thrust Professor Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbolist into the public eye.

A great puzzle murder mystery as curator of the Louvre Jacques Saunière is found dead, he’s body posed just like Da Vinci’s - Vitruvian Man.
It’s a race against time as Langdon is accused of the murder, the story jumps around at a breathtaking speed with art and history being integral to solving the murder.

It’s a fun thrill ride that instantly had me hooked.

"...if I agree to publish an idea like this...it'll kill your reputation. You're a Harvard historian, for God's sake, not a popshlockmiester looking for a quick buck."

"Renowned Symbologist" Robert Langdon was supposed to meet Jacques Sonier one night; instead, he gets called to the Louvre, the scene of Sonier's horrific death. Langdon spots clues to Sonier's murderer everywhere, which makes the French police officer, Fache, immediately think that Langdon is the murderer. Fortunately, sexy Sophie intervenes to shunt Langdon away. And then they are off, trying to avoid being arrested, trying to find the "Grail", and trying to discover who killed Sonier.

NOTE 1: My French is atrocious; expect misspellings everywhere.

NOTE 2: Light spoilers to follow.

This book has been quite controversial. A lot of Christian and Catholic churches have been up in arms about the claims Dan Brown makes in this book--namely how Jesus married Mary Magdalene and how the Church will stop at nothing to try to conceal this "horrific and world-altering" religious conspiracy.

Let's get this out right off the bat: I don't know if Jesus was married. Tradition has it that he was not, but since I wasn't there, I can't say for certain. All I know is that, if I learned Jesus was in fact married, I would probably be surprised, but I'm not going to suddenly abandon my faith just because of Jesus' relationship status. And while this may create a bit of controversy if it ever does appear to be true (I think there was a recent article that gave more evidence to this), I think a lot of people are just going to believe that it's all a bunch of lies. Good grief, stop making mountains out of molehills.

"Controversial" non-controversy aside, this was an absolutely unintentionally hilarious book. Characterization is astonishingly bad, the pacing is dull, the clues somehow end up between too easy and too difficult, the mystery is snooze-worthy, and the narrator's over-the-top French accent sent me into gales of laughter.

Our main characters are Gary Stu and Mary Sue--I mean, Robert Langdon and Sophie Noveau. Langdon is one of the most boring male protagonists I've had to read in recent history. I love how he supposedly looks so "bookish", with descriptions like this:

"His usually sharp blue eyes looked hazy and drawn tonight. A dark stubble was shrouding his strong jaw and dimpled chin. Around his temples, the grey highlights were advancing, making their way deeper into his thicket of coarse black hair. Although his female colleagues insisted the grey only accentuated his bookish appeal, Langdon knew better."
George Clooney anyone?

It was painful how every character had to clamor on and on about his "accomplishments" and how "intriguing" he is, or how the ladies' panties get all wet when he enters a room. If this is not male fantasy, I don't know what is.

The weird thing is, when it comes to actually solving the clues/mystery, Langdon is a moron. He spends so long talking about history, symbols, sacred feminine (I got a load on this one...), but he seems severely stumped when trying to solve a few clues. The worst was the mirror-image English. Do you seriously mean to tell me an American can't recognize mirror-image English? I, a measly engineer, experimented with reading mirror-image English and had no problems.

Meanwhile we have the set of boobs, Sophie. Don't expect her to have a personality or purpose besides being a set of boobs to get captured. I think Sophie is held at gunpoint 800 times in this book. She is even dumber than Langdon, despite being a talented cryptographer. She cannot solve any of the puzzles on her own, even though her OWN GRANDFATHER WROTE THEM.

The rest of the cast was goofy and 1-dimensional. Fache might as well twirl a mustache for all the good he does. I had no clue what Arringarosa's purpose in the story was. Silas' Sally Sob Story was so overwrought and cliche, I was laughing at his self-flagellation. And Teabing...good God, Teabing. I have no idea how to classify Teabing. Other than I kept imagining Sir Elton John, and I'm not sure that was the "characterization" Brown was going for.

But you know, a lot of thrillers are more about the puzzles and mystery and action than the characters. I can buy that. But you also know what? The puzzles, mystery, and action are horrible. The puzzles tend to be the same type over and over and over again. They also seem to somehow be way too complicated (such as translating one word into Greek, doing an anagram, then translating to English???) and way too easy at the same time. There really is no mystery; there are so few characters, that it's pretty obvious who the Teacher is about halfway through the book. And the action? PAH! None, or very, very sparse. Most of the book is long, boring talking scenes where Teabing and Langdon try to out-Wikipedia each other. I'd rather go to Wikipedia and read THAT then read the mangled facts here.

The other thing that drove me bonkers was how EVERYTHING, from Walt Disney to Sir Isaac Newton, from playing cards to the Mona Lisa, was about the Sacred Feminism. I don't doubt that the Sacred Feminism had its influence, but come on! It's like Brown randomly threw in artwork or famous people to be a part of his stupid conspiracy theory. It was so bad, I started throwing this guy around my status updates:



And the narrator! Good grief! A Geoffrey Harding narrated my copy, and he had the worst accents I've heard in a long time. Sophie sounded like a moron; the French sounded so ridiculous, I had to stop the iPod to laugh. And Harding reads everything in this movie trailer voice that makes the book seem so much more important than it is.

The best thing about this book was reading it along with my Goodreads friend. I loved how she would bring up stuff I totally missed or how we would virtual laugh over Dan Brown's ridiculous scenarios.

If you want a smart, intelligent read, don't go here. If you are expecting Indiana Jones style adventure, I think this is just too slow-paced for you. If you are looking for a Buddy Read to snark over, you've come to the right place!!

For the most part, it seems that people either passionately love this book or they passionately hate it. I happen to be one of the former. For my part, I don't see the book so much as an indictment of the Catholic Church in particular but of religious extremism and religion interfering in political process in general. The unwarranted political control granted to extreme religious organizations like the CBN is an issue that we will be forced to address one way or the other. To my eye, our political process has been poisoned by it and the danger of theocracy is quite real. Furthermore, Brown's indictment of the Church for removing or suppressing feminine divinity figures is justified and needs a much closer look. Women do not have enough of a role in religion, religious practice, heroic myths, and creation myths, nor are they portrayed as divinity figures enough. In short, our religious systems and institutions lack balance and have a bias to suppress issues, stories, and roles that empower women to live as equals to men. Finally, Brown wrote his story simplistically, in my view, to spread his tale to as broad an audience as possible. Though it is not as pristine a narrative as, say, Umberto Eco, the message it conveys is one that needs to be heard. More obscure books on the matter are not as accessible as Da Vinci Code and if someone were to write an accessible book of genius on this subject, I would give him/her all due praise. In the meantime, Dan Brown is telling a story that needs to be told. It is one that has been kept quiet and in the dark for far too long.

If for some reason you haven’t heard of the Da Vinci Code before now, I have no help for you. I live under a fairly substantive rock, and even I had heard of this book to death. I had even attempted to read it once or twice, during my stint at Waldenbooks, but couldn’t really get into it. So I gave up, and decided to relegate it to the same place as Titanic and Forrest Gump—works of popular culture that I have no interest in, and therefore, will not partake of. But in a testament to the power of the feminine wile, SV convinced me to read it, and so, at the suggestion of Professor Mortis, borrowed a copy from my local library before setting out for the Thanksgiving holiday (Thanks to PG and Laurion for their lending offers, though I did not take them up on it.).

So what did I think of this incredibly popular, highly controversial work that sold literally millions of copies, spawned a movie, and produced comments from the Vatican itself? In a word, it’s bad. Other appropriate single words might be awful, atrocious, terrible, or abominable. Other similar synonyms can be found here.

The Da Vinci Code is a combination of bad writing, shoddy history, poor plotting, and unconvincing characters that blends together to form a barely readable work. The fact that anyone took this work seriously in any capacity is amazing to me. The characters are flat, boring, and none of them exceed two dimensions at best. The “history” is so riddled with holes as to be completely unbelievable to the semi-alert observer (my favorite part is the explanation of how the Church’s desire to destroy the “sacred feminine” is responsible for Orthodox Jews and devout Muslims barring women from certain rites.). And finally, the plot just makes no damn sense. Even the much vaunted puzzles are fairly trite, and usually explained so quickly that it’s barely worth thinking about. The final puzzle that the main character is faced with is so mind-bogglingly obvious that anyone who knows how to draw a Mogen David (Star of David) can figure it out instantly.

So the question for me became this: given how awful this book is, why the hell is it so popular? I can offer the following explanations/observations.

First off, Brown employs a clever (and I use the term loosely) narrative structure in which he ends every single chapter on a cliffhanger. This forces the reader to continue reading, hoping to reach a payoff or stopping point that is never quite realized. Thus the reader keeps going to the next chapter, hoping to finally hit a point where the story will relax, only to discover that the story never really relaxes. It just plods relentlessly forward, like the Terminator chasing Sarah Connor with a SuDoKu puzzle.

In a similar vein, Brown keeps his chapters short. In fact, I’ve read verse poetry that was longer than some of the chapters in this book (and considerably better written). This helps the reader feel as though they are making progress, because they’re suddenly on Chapter 44, and can reach Chapter 50 with only a few extra minutes of reading. Hooray for the short attention span.

Likewise, Brown taps into some popular political and historical fallacies that are guaranteed to make him well-liked. Namely that the Catholic Church is an evil conspiracy (Christianity is one of the few religions it’s still ok to hate in this day and age, after all) and the notion that ancient Europeans were all ecologically conscious, goddess-worshipping pacifists until the evil patriarchy destroyed their edenic culture. And hey, both of those are popular, if totally un-nuanced and historically questionable viewpoints, but shoddy history is always popular with the masses. The popularity of this book is proof enough.

Knowing that I’m one of the last people in the United States to have read this book, I can hardly imagine my recommendation can save anyone at this point, but on the off hand chance it can—don’t read this book. It’s a waste of time. At the very least, take it out of the library so you don’t put more money into the pocket of an author of questionable talent. There’s much better writers in this world.

most of us have heard of this controverisal book. it takes an open minded person to read this and to remember it is just fiction. but it brings up a lot of important questions about the Christian church, and the loss of paganism and the respect of the Goddess or the Woman.

I don't care if I am the only one who likes this book. it is my own truth, and i will think what i want to think. Dan Brown didn't LEAD me or anyone else. he OPENED our minds. simply and importantly...he was just a catalyst for different thinking. that is a good thing...poorly written or not.

if you finish the book you will notice that Dan Brown even makes it clear to readers through his characters words, that he doesn't want to destroy christianity because it has done so much good for so many people, and if it works for them, let's let them continue to do what works for them. but find your own path.

if you were or are a Christian ask yourself about the topics in this book. They are so eye opening. Jesus having a baby? totally possible...never thought of it before. never thought of it. is it true? who knows. Things like this are happening all the time today...Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq? sound familiar? Maybe the church repressed information LIKE this because it was a threat to the church. totally possible. The catholic church creating the biblical canon with a political agenda to wipe out paganism? actually this seems to be a fact. women being oppressed due to the fear of religous zealot men in power losing their power...never looked at it that way. but this seems to be a fact too. is it helpful in broadening my perspective of the fact that christianity is just a religion made by fallible people. it sure is. does it open my mind to other faiths like paganism, judiasm, islam, bhuddism, and want to take the truths from all of them, and then THINK FOR MYSELF and figure out my own truth. it sure does...and that is what this book has probably done for many other people. why do you think Dan Brown's book was on the bestseller list for so long...and became a movie...obviously it was doing some good.

This book, this book, this hopelessly stupid book. It's okay. It's something to read. It's not the worst book I've ever read. I did get through the whole thing. But, simply, it is not THAT good.
I will now proceed to quote from another reviewer, Mer, who has said exactly what I have been saying for years -albeit she does it far more eloquently than I:

"The characters are weakly drawn. The dialog is excruciating. The research is shoddy and self-serving at best. The plot, no matter how open-minded you are, is beyond ludicrous.(...)
"I'm all for fictional subversion of the dominant Catholic paradigm, but only if the subverter knows what the hell they're talking about. Brown DOESN'T. He's all "la la la, connect the dots" but the picture he comes up with is awkward and unconvincing.
"The DaVinci Code is a dead easy, nay, downright lazy read, and yet droves of people are patting themselves on the back for having read and *gasp* actually understood it. Like this is some spectacular achievement? WHY? What, because the slipcover describes it as "erudite"? Are you fucking kidding me?
"Don't believe the hype, kids. You are profoundly more intelligent than this holiday page-turner gives you credit for."

So, so, so true. And if you've read "Angels and Demons" you'll see that it starts out precisely the way "Code" does, nearly word-for-word, even using the dreaded looks-at-himself-in-the-mirror character description cop-out.

This, and the man (the author, that is) looks like a troll. A self-aggrandizing oh-so-clever stuffed pompous troll. All he did was capitalize on a theme that's been out there for years, insist that it was all 100% factual, and put a pretty red cover on it. He's created a sensation and got himself a movie, I'll give him that. I bet he swims around in vaults of money every night cackling at his deluded readership.

But the book is just NOT THAT GOOD. Get over it. Want something historical? Read Anya Seton. Something thrilling? Read Thomas Tryon. Richard North Patterson. Jon Krakauer. Croikey, even Clive Cussler! Anything but that damn Dan Brown.

Dan Brown - image from USA Today

A real page-turner, about a Holy Grail quest. It is replete with oodles of interesting little items about church history, the true meaning of the grail, secret societies through the ages, Opus Dei and architectural details.


Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou as Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu - image from Rotten Tomatoes

In this fast-paced adventure an American art expert is accused of killing a director of the Louvre. Rescued by the deceased's granddaughter, a police cryptologist, the pair flees from both French and British police. The tale is enlivened with characters such as Silas, an albino ex-con who has seen the light and been taken in by the head of a Catholic extremist cult, Leigh, a British knight obsessed with finding the grail. Great fun!


Paul Bettany as Silas - image from Rotten Tomatoes

(Rotten Tomatoes gave it only a 57% rating, but I liked it a lot.)


I also reviewed Brown''s
-----Angels and Demons
-----The Lost Symbol and
-----Inferno

ماذا أقول...ماذا أقول؟؟
إبدااااااااااااااااااااع

First of all, let's try to rid our mind of all the hype and hoopla surrounding the whole thing. Let's pretend the whole thing is just some spiral bound notebook that you found on the train and read because you were lonely.


Ok, having accomplished that, let's dole out some compliments. Good plot, Danny boy! You managed to write an interesting crime/mystery/whatever thing WHILE managing to blaspheme one of the most worshiped dudes of all time. That takes some creativity, and some balls. Kudos.

If i might suggest something, though- and I realize this is hurtful, but take it like a man big guy- you probably could have done the literary world a favor by giving this wonderful little story to, er, a writer. I mean, it's nice to be able to read the whole thing in one afternoon without even having to get up for a piss, but I couldn't help but feel like I was reading the newspaper the whole time. And that's a big part of a book's validity- the whole "quality of writing" thing.

Anyway, you kind of got fucked over with the whole international attention thing- now all the 'cool' people in the world will diss on your book because it's way overblown, and the only people who still embrace will be those poor little simpletons who don't know the difference between hip and square. Looks like it's a life in the lower-middle class for you, Mr. Brown.

But hey- enjoy that swimming pool filled with gold doubloons.

I thought I was going to hate this when I picked it up. I thought there was no way I was going to fall into the hysteria that happened years ago when this book came out. I didn’t exactly find myself in a frenzy but quickly found myself fifty pages in and interested in a hurry. It reads fast, with short chapters and a thriller pace. Maybe I should read more thrillers but I doubt they will fill the same urge. I enjoyed this book thoroughly but, in the end, I don’t know exactly what I came away with. It felt like a car commercial at times, written for the big screen and the characters were pretty weak, but the story did grip a cynic/atheist like me, so that’s something.

The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon #2), Dan Brown

The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown.

It follows "symbologist" Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris causes them to become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ having been a companion to Mary Magdalene.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «رمز داوینچی»؛ «راز داوینچی»؛ نویسنده: دن براون؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 2007میلادی

عنوان: رمز داوینچی؛ نویسنده: دن براون؛ مترجم: نوشین ریشهری؛ تهران، نگارینه، 1384، در 336ص؛ شابک 9647533764؛ چاپ سوم 1385؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 21م

عنوان: راز داوینچی؛ نویسنده: دن براون؛ مترجم: حسین شهرابی؛ سمیه گنجی؛ تهران، زهره، 1384، در 462ص؛ مصور؛ شابک 964570340؛ چاپ هفتم 1385؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، علم آرین، 1384؛ در 462 ص؛ شابک 9649582541؛

عنوان: راز داوینچی؛ نویسنده: دن براون؛ مترجم: مریم بهرامی؛ تهران؛ بهزاد، 1385؛ در 571ص؛ شابک 9642569264؛

صهیون، نام خرابه های قلعه ای در «سوریه»، و نزدیک «لاذقیه» است، در زمان «اسکندر»، «فنیقیان»، چهارصد سال پیش از میلاد مسیح در آنجا مسکن گزیدند؛ در سال 1119میلادی، به تصرف «صلیبیون مسیحی» درآمد، سپس «صلاح الدین ایوبی»، در سال 1188میلادی، آنجا را فتح کرد؛ همچنین کوهی است، در جنوبغربی «اورشلیم (بیت المقدس)» که معبد را روی آن بنا کرده اند، و در آن «مسجد الاقصی» و «قبه ی صخره» است؛ گاهی «بیت المقدس» را به این نام خوانند؛ از فرهنگ معین

کتاب «رمز داوینچی» ترجمه خانم «نوشین ریشهری»، با پاراگراف بالا آغاز شده، «رابرت لانگدون»، سمبل شناس و استاد دانشگاه «هاروارد»، و «سوفی نی وو» نقش آفرینان رخدادها هستند، دل انگیز بود، کتاب با نام «راز داوینچی» و با ترجمه جناب «حسین شهرابی» و بانو «سمیه گنجی» در انتشارات زهره، و با ترجمه بانو «مریم بهرامی»، در نشر بهزاد، نیز منتشر شده است

ماجرای داستان به یک تئوری ویژه، درباره ی تاریخ «مسیحیت» برمی‌گردد، که پیش از این کتاب نیز، در موردش نوشته هایی نگاشته شده، و تاریخ‌دانانی با آن موافق هستند؛ کتاب «خون مقدس، جام مقدس»، منبع اصلی «براون»، برای این تئوری‌ها بوده ‌اند؛ طبق این تئوری، «عیسی مسیح» با «مریم مجدلیه» ازدواج کرده‌؛ و صاحب فرزند شده ‌است، و کلیسای کاتولیک، و «واتیکان»، با آگاهی از این قضایا، برای پنهان کردن آن‌ها کوشیده ‌اند؛ در ضمن «جام مقدس»، نه یک شیئ، بلکه خود «مریم مجدلیه» است؛ تئوری‌های دیگری نیز، در این کتاب وجود دارند؛ که «لئوناردو دا وینچی» همجنس گرا بوده، و نقاشی معروف «مونالیزا»، در واقع پرتره ی «داوینچی»، از خودش به شکل یک زن است؛ داستان کتاب، در کشورهای «فرانسه» و «بریتانیا»، و در اماکن نام آشنای این دو کشور، رخ می‌دهند؛ (همانند «موزهٔ لوور» و صومعه‌ ای که به «صومعه برهنه» موسوم است، و همچون نقاشی مشهور «داوینچی» از آناتومی انسان ژست گرفته، و پیغامی رمزی نیز در کنارش نوشته شده ‌است)؛ پنج ماه پیش از آغاز داستان، «واتیکان» به اسقف «آرینگاروسا»، رهبر فرقه ای مسیحی تندرو، و مبتنی بر ریاضت‌های سنگین جسمانی، موسوم به «اپوس دئی (یعنی: کار خدا)» اعلام می‌کند، که می‌خواهد دست از حمایت از آن فرقه بردارد، و بیست میلیون یوروی اهدایی فرقه را هم، پس خواهد داد؛ فردی موسوم به «استاد»، که در اصل قصد تخریب وجهه ی کلیسا، و «اپوس دئی» را دارد، به اسقف پیشنهاد می‌دهد، در ازای بیست میلیون یورو، جام مقدس گمشده ی «عیسی» را، در اختیارش بگذارد، تا «اپوس دئی» قدرت و محبوبیت پیدا کند؛ ولی در حقیقت، با استفاده از یکی از نیروهای اسقف، به قتل اعضای دیر صهیون، که مخالفان قدیمی کلیسا، و حافظان جام مقدس هستند، می‌پردازد، تا خودش بتواند جام را به دست بیاورد؛ «استاد اعظم دیر صهیون»، که رئیس موزه «لوور» است، پیش از مرگ، اسرار یافتن جام را، به نوه ‌اش «سوفی» گفته است، و از او خواسته، از دانشمندی «آمریکایی» به نام «رابرت لنگدان»، که در نمادشناسی مذهبی، و باستان‌شناسی تواناست، یاری بخواهد؛ این دو، با وجود پیگیری بی‌امان پلیس، و نیروهای «استاد»، مرحله به مرحله، به «جام مقدس» نزدیکتر می‌شوند، و در این راه، از یک تاریخ‌دان «انگلیسی» به نام «تیبنیگ» هم، یاری می‌گیرند، نهایتاً «پرنسس سوفی»، خانواده گمشده ‌اش را پیدا می‌کند، و «لنگدان» هم جام مقدس را؛ و تازه آن دو همدیگر را نیز پیدا می‌کنند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 03/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 15/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

I didn't enjoy this book at all. The story was very juvenile and quite unbelievable. I'm still shaking my head!