For the Pagan information.

After hearing so much about this book, it was nothing like what i was expecting. It was entirely predictable and not suspenseful at all. I had things figured out while the main characters were still reeling and wondering what the heck was going on. It took forever to get to anything… and it turned out that i was listening to an abridged version! If it would have been the full version i think i would have been bored to tears. This is entirely fiction and unbelievable.

The way Mary Magdalene was presented as the wife of Christ was not offensive to me as a Christian, but perhaps this is because i just finished taking Mythology and the way gods and goddesses were presented as equals has become usual to me. i have no trouble with the concept of Jesus marrying a woman other than the fact that it’s not biblical. If Jesus wanted to marry someone He could have, but as He didn’t it’s a moot point. This is only fiction, looking at different possibilities, which i don’t think is wrong as long as one realizes that these possibilities are not the truth.

i know little about the beliefs of da Vinci or the other former members mentioned save Sir Isaac Newton: he, i know, was a Christian and gave Christ and other peoples’ research the glory for all of his accomplishments. He would not have been the member of a secret society like this unless there were biblical differences as i mentioned.

i am relieved that the pagan rituals weren’t outlined in detail, though perhaps it was different in the full version of the book. i don’t know why anyone is complaining about there being no sex in the movie; there was no sex in the book! If this is different in the full version, please tell me.

Overall, this book was a poorly written bore masquarading as a hit. The beginning was okay. The middle dragged. The ending was the final straw: it was pointless and dumb and destroyed an already tottering mess. Badly written with a myriad of unbelievable elements, i am not impressed.

This is worth reading only if you accept that it is a work of fiction, a mystery & a thriller. I found it a real page-turner but I can’t see what all the fuss was about. I’ve read much better thrillers, but this book passed the time & was entertaining enough to read whilst commuting.

horrible, horrible. there are not enough words to describe how much i can’t stand the da vinci code. from factual innacuracies to plot inconsistencies to flat-out logical absurdities the da vinci code has it all.

and more deus ex machina than you can shake a stick at.

anout the only way to read something worse than the da vinci code is to read angels and demons.

Read Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum instead. Foucault’s Pendulum is everything the Da Vinci Code dreams it could be.

That said, I enjoyed reading DVC. The key to reading this book is to remember that it is primarily a work of FICTION. Take everything that Dan Brown says about the Church, Opus Dei, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Da Vinci, art history…actually, everything Dan Brown says that seems like it should be based in fact…take it all with a grain of salt. A shaker of salt is more like it.

If you’re going to read it, just be skeptical about everything he says that seems factual. Remember that Brown is primarily a fiction writer, not a religious scholar, not an art historian, not a Parisian tour guide.

If you’re looking for a good conspiracy theory novel, go with Foucault’s Pendulum instead.

I did find the premise intriguing. If only his writing didn’t suck. Maybe I’m just a literature snob, but Dan Brown’s writing style is just generic. I felt like I could have been reading at least a thousand other books, and this was evident from the very first page.

And the ending! Dan Brown is a tease. He builds up to a big ending and it just falls flat. Does he figure the rest of the plot is enough to get him by? I’m told his other novels have less than stellar conclusions as well.

By no means is this the worst book I’ve ever read. It is kind of nice for light reading when my brain wants to take an intellectual vacation.

i like the author’s views on religion and i think that more people should know the history of their beliefs instead of just blindly following them. and the whole goddess worship deal, i loved it, i guess since i’m a woman. it was a very exciting story, i found it hard to put down.

5/5
http://www.expage.com/moreofjessysbooks

Thankfully I didn’t buy the book – borrowed it from a friend. It was fine for a bit of mindless entertainment, but when there are already too many GOOD books out there to read in a lifetime – why would you bother?

I must say it DIDN’T help that I had read “The Holy Blood & the Holy Grail” 10 years earlier…

Well researched and some interesting ideas, but the writing was horrendous, the pacing repetitive and predictable. I mean, every chapter ended with YET ANOTHER AMAZING REVELATION! The characters were flimsy and obvious projections of the author. I couldn’t finish it. Maybe it’ll make a better movie.

But I think that people and the media take it far too seriously as a ersatz replacement for the discussion of religion and history.

I think of it as Harry Potter for adults. A quick, entertaining, read, but not worthy of the serious discussion or thought it generates.

A strange book this one. It’s entertaining with a great plot just really poorly written. It should give comfort to any author that they could write a massive best-seller , no matter how poor their writing, if their ideas are good enough.

don’t by into all the hype of this book…yes, certain notions are interesting but it’s a ho-hum mystery at best

Well, it was difficult to stop reading, chapter after chapter you wanted to know more and more.
I got to know about a few interesting things, e.g. derivation of the superstition about Friday the 13th.
Although the idea that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife does not appeal to me, I like that the book makes reader realize the way various people in history ignored and underestimated women.

I had opportunity to peruse an old Franklin W. Dixon Hardy Boys story recently, THE YELLOW FEATHER MYSTERY. As a child, I devoured these stories, speeding through the breathless prose as Frank and Joe fell into mystery and adventure seemingly on every single page.

They don’t age gracefully, the Hardy Boys. Considering the wealth of brilliant children’s fiction that is available, The Hardy Boys are, sadly, bland and boring, written with a wretched style that gives the word `style’ a bad name. It’s peculiar how one’s priceless childhood memories invariably disappoint when filtered through the prism of years of experience.

However, reliving the glory years of Mr. Hardy’s sons brought me new insight into the travesty that is Dan Brown’s THE DA VINCI CODE; it is a Hardy Boys adventure, a poorly-written serial novel right down to the ridiculous plot twists, wet tissue paper-thin characters, and easily spotted villains. Dan Brown is the new Franklin W. Dixon, and considering how low on the authorial totem pole that is, it is not a position one should brag about.

For those who have existed in a cavern for the past two years, THE DA VINCI CODE revolves itself around the murder of a curator of the Louvre, and a mystifying message he left scrawled in his own blood. Promptly summoned to the scene is Robert Langdon, intrepid world-famous cryptologist (!) who, with the help of a spunky policewoman (shades of Nancy Drew), becomes embroiled in a mystery so convoluted, wacky, and frankly utterly ludicrous, Joe and Frank would be embarrassed to have their names ascribed to its solution.

The quandary with DA VINCI is not the elements of the plot, a mishmash of conspiracy theories and religious arcana that many theologians and scholars have debated to death. Suffice to say that Dan Brown comes across as an undiscerning man who believes absolutely everything he reads on the Internet.

No, the problem is not the plot. To paraphrase film critic Roger Ebert, it is not the story one tells, but how one goes about telling it. To pull two examples from a hat: Stephen King’s THE SHINING is laughable on the face of it, yet King makes it work, expertly filtering an affecting subtext about the destruction of the family unit through alcoholism into a haunted house scenario. Ernest Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES is a simple tale of unlikable people behaving atrociously throughout Europe, yet by the end you have learned so much more about the human condition than you ever thought possible.

Unfortunately, Brown is not King, nor Hemingway; he’s not up to the low standards of a Dean Koontz , Brian Lumley, or Tom Clancy. He’s not even a Richard Marchinko. Instead, he’s a hack on the level of the atrocious Tim LaHaye, an abysmal storyteller who has taken every single pathetic element of a Hardy Boys series novel, applied a few seven-dollar words and obscenities, and claimed the style as his own. He is even so shameless as to beat Joe and Frank in the use! of! exclamation! points!

What is most appalling about DA VINCI is the fact that it is page for page, character for character, almost word for word identical to the last three novels he’s unleashed on an innocent public. Every novel, from DIGITAL FORTRESS on, follows the same blueprint: someone dies; someone’s called in; everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off while an evil overlord pulls all the strings.

Brown writes like his intended audience is fourteen-year-old boys on a sugar bender, needing a thrilling escapade every three pages lest the ADD kick in. He writes, in other words, like all the authors who wrote under the Franklin W. Dixon pseudonyms. And when one considers how many top-notch authors there are who have covered the same material with wit, originality, and breathtaking literary grace, Brown’s success is appalling.

Consider Arturo-Perez Reverte’s THE CLUB DUMAS. Consider Umberto Eco’s THE NAME OF THE ROSE. Both have intricate plotlines involving religious conspiracies and lost tomes. Both are superlative examples of the conspiracy genre. In fact, anything by Perez-Reverte fits the bill.

Brown is undeserving of his success, and THE DA VINCI CODE is wretched literature, by any standard. He has written a novel that makes the reader feel smart, all the while duping them with a hackneyed plot that reads like warmed-over Hardy Boys. Let us all hope that, with all his millions, he spends fifty dollars on a mail-order novel-writing course. It could not possibly come out any worse.

man awesome story from the start to the end i never would have thought it is related to religion still it is worth reading. I specially liked the part where the robert works out the anagram and the part where he explains everything about christianity and all. I read it because i was always fascinated by Da vinci and his various inventions and paintings specially monalisa. Someday I would like to see the painting in louvre.

I didn’t want to read this, since it had been a best seller and I hate when people just praise a book because of how many people have bought it. But I want to read it to be able to give my opinion and base it on something I’ve experienced first hand.

I enjoyed this book to start with, mostly because it described a lot of the places in France that I had recently visited. I was disappointed by the ending though, and am not going to try another of Dan Brown’s novels.

It was okay. I don’t see what all the fuss was about it, though.

I really enjoyed reading this book, and I really recommend that you read Angels & Demons if you haven’t already.

Not bad for fluff. I don’t usualy read mysteries but after all the hype I was interested. It was a fun read, kind of disappointing after all the hype. Angels and Demons is much better.