The Da Vinci Code

[richter915]

This seems more appropriate here than in entertainment...but yes, what do you feel about it? Have u read the book, do you know anything about it? I read the book a while back so I remember very little but do you believe that artists such as da vinci actually put subtle messages in their artwork? If you're curious, here is a site to get you started with all this stuff if u want...really interesting though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_vinci_code

[im_random]

I read the book awhile ago as well, and I really enjoyed it. I do have to say though that I liked Angels and Demons a lot more. I really really loved that one.

[richter915]

I read the book awhile ago as well, and I really enjoyed it. I do have to say though that I liked Angels and Demons a lot more. I really really loved that one.
dude same here...I really felt that angels and demons had less filler and way more action...one of few books that I just could not put down...one of my all time faves. Dan Brown has another book in the works, can't wait for that.

[weezer182]

loved the da vinci code. im curious to see how the movie will come out especially since tom hanks is playing robert langdon and ron howard directing it

[im_random]

dude same here...I really felt that angels and demons had less filler and way more action...one of few books that I just could not put down...one of my all time faves. Dan Brown has another book in the works, can't wait for that.

Yeah that's what happened to me with that one..I seriously could NOT stop reading it. During last summer I went to Minnesota and everytime we weren't doing anything one of the boys on my trip was reading it and I didn't understand why. But once I started..I was on a roll man. I got pissed once when my friend called me and was like "let's go out to lunch" and I almost said no so I could read haha. I kid you not.

[richter915]

i could write more inteligently than he did in the da vinci code. poor poor writing with a semi-interesting plot. ill see the movie though because tom hanks is a g.
ya the book itself wasn't well written...very simple...but I thought the plot was really really great...

russel crowe would make a better langdon.

[scitsofreaky]

A book doesn't have to be complex to be good.
I enjoyed reading, and I enjoyed it even more after I read Holy Blood Holy Grail.
Angels and Demons was also very good, but much different. Frankly, I think that the books aren't all that comperable, but that is just my opinion.

[duffe]

I read the da vinci code and really love it, I think I will buy angels and demons cause in random and richter915 love this one more than the code.

[Shatter590]

i really enjoyed the book, read it in a little under 10 hours. i was familiar with the history behind the plot, found it more than a little lacking, but otherwise very entertaining.

in the fall my college is offering a course in it.

[richter915]

i really enjoyed the book, read it in a little under 10 hours. i was familiar with the history behind the plot, found it more than a little lacking, but otherwise very entertaining.

in the fall my college is offering a course in it.
wow that college course thing sounds really really really interesting...DO IT!

[Shatter590]

i'm actually one of the graduate students who designed the course. I can't teach it as I don't have my masters yet, but I will be part of the professor's staff, grading papers and the like.

[punklet2101]

Yeah, I liked it a lot

[GothamCity_hXc]

Theres a movie in the making...

[punklet2101]

Theres a movie in the making...
Yep, can't wait :)

[scarybrennan]

i heard it was way sweet

[Alex Djaferis]

there is so much misleading information in the da vinci code. All it does is widen the arguments and cause a bigger rift.

i loved the book when i read it. the more i thought about it, and read up on it...the more i realised its bollocks and PURELY fiction.

Angels and Demons was better imo.

[sunpoison]

I think this book is highly overrated.

[niveK]

I though the concept was cool makign stories up of connection between real works of artt, but it felt like reading a bad action movie

[im_random]

I think this book is highly overrated.

I agree. I was pretty disappointed after I read it (in comparison to Angels and Demons at least).

[richter915]

I agree. I was pretty disappointed after I read it (in comparison to Angels and Demons at least).
ya see I read da vinci code first so I was like "woah"...then angels and demons and that was like "woah times two"

[trinekat]

It's all a bunch of croc... but I gotta give it to Dan Brown, for essentially re-writing what has been written at least 3 times before and seeing symbolism where it's never been seen before... and making his name appear much larger on the face of the book than the actual title.

Now that this book is being made into a feature film, maybe he can do something good with all his money.

[richter915]

It's all a bunch of croc... but I gotta give it to Dan Brown, for essentially re-writing what has been written at least 3 times before and seeing symbolism where it's never been seen before... and making his name appear much larger on the face of the book than the actual title.

Now that this book is being made into a feature film, maybe he can do something good with all his money.
well ya, it's a piece of fiction...but you can't deny that it makes you wonder. I just think it's amazing how huge it got around the world that the Catholc Church actually spoke out against it. Again, I think angels and demons was much more relevant to modern times but I like the topics he brings up...he makes you look closer into things.

What other books have been written on this topic?

[trinekat]

there was Holy Blood Holy Grail, and Messianic Legacy (I think by the same author but didn't read this one), Temple Revelation... don't remember the others off hand... but essentially they also made far-fetching theories along the lines of the da vinci code.

I never read angels and demons, but from the sounds of it, i'll be picking up a copy...

[im_random]

ya see I read da vinci code first so I was like "woah"...then angels and demons and that was like "woah times two"

Yeah see one of my friends told me to read angels and demons first. I think if I had read the davinci code first I would have been much more impressed with it..but then it still would have paled in comparison to angels and demons, probably just not as much.

[HaloAction]

I read The Da Vinci Code last year and I thought it was really good and also believeable. Recently the Catholic church has been urging its congregations not to read this book. If you ask me the Catholic church fears whatever has a possibility of taking away from their holy collection plates

[aminorthreat55]

It's a good book, but you know why most of America is obsessed with it? Because we're idiots and most of us can't comprehend complex language, dialogue, or plots. That's why everyone in this country between 10 and 90 has read this book and liked it.

[richter915]

It's a good book, but you know why most of America is obsessed with it? Because we're idiots and most of us can't comprehend complex language, dialogue, or plots. That's why everyone in this country between 10 and 90 has read this book and liked it.
true that brother...It's a very "simple" read but if you look on the best seller list...most books are not above a 7th grade reading level. But I think that applies to the appeal of it in a way...you don't have to be a literary type person to enjoy it. Take me for example, I hate reading...always have and always will but yet this book is appealing.

I also think it's popularity is due to the controversial themes within the book.

[SparkyThePyro]

Awesome book, you should read Deception Point if you liked the Da vinci code.

[richter915]

Awesome book, you should read Deception Point if you liked the Da vinci code.
my friend read deception point...what exactly is it about...from what I recall...darren langdon isn't the protagonist...it's a woman, right? My friend always had it but I have no clue what it's about...run it down for us!

[ohsoradbaby]

I liked it, but I liked Angels and Demons by Dan Brown better.

[richter915]

bringing this one back too...along with a link to the trailers for the movie

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808625216/trailer

[ImpulZe]

i actrually read the book..i dont read..at all. didnt like the ending

[richter915]

I thought the ending was a bit lame...but I did guess it, hah.

[mcfly21]

If you liked this book Dan Brown has another book that's excellent as well, it's called digital fortress

[oldwirehands]

I love reading about alternative Christianity, ancient civilizations, and Da Vinci himself.

I'm not big on novels but this book is awesome.

[unwritten]

Angels & Demons > Da Vinci Code......but both are awesome and I'm excited for the movie. To finally be given a visual for the words will be real cool.

[CROMagnon]

good book, interesting alternatives presented
i want to start reading his source material when i have some time

[lovely864md]

I've read it twice and thoroughly enjoyed it both times. The ending definitely could've been better, but it's smart and a page turner, I hardly put it down at all. The second time I read it I got kind of annoyed at the cheap cliffhangers at the end of chapters.

[osunfg]

i have yet to read this book. my virgin dan brown was angels and demons and i loved everything about this book. and from what i hear it beats da vinci code. none the less, im all about good suspense books, especially if they involve any science/philosophy.
as for the movie, i think it should be cool. im not a big fan of book movies unless i have read the book first, otherwise it ruins the imagination in the reading experience.

[costello.]

da vinci code is my favourite book ever
but i'm only thirteen
so i guess i haven't read many good books yet to compare it to

[preppyak]

bringing this one back too...along with a link to the trailers for the movie

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808625216/trailer
This is gonna be another movie where I haven't read the book. Did the same thign with LOTR's and Harry Potter, and its great not to be let down because it doesn't live up to the book.

Like, I read the book form of Episode 1 of Star Wars, then saw the movie, and it lost a lot of the characters thoughts, that you can only really show on the screen through facial expressions and voice overs.

The trailer was interesting at least, so it made me want to see the movie, but not as much as Inside Man.

[Darren McLeod]

Good read for anyone who's interested is this article on Da Vinci Code by author Craig Clevenger:


"I've been cornered one time too many by someone earnestly trying to convince me that Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is a great novel, when it's not. It's a fun read, I suppose; a reasonably interesting premise for a thriller with plenty of interesting factoids (though most of them seemed forcibly shoe-horned into the book) and an overall solid structure. It's the stuff that Hollywood blockbusters are made from, and Code will likely join their ranks in a few short years.

But it's not a great novel for one reason, and one reason only: Dan Brown can't write. There, I said it, the emperor has no clothes, there is no Santa Claus and Cousin Marty isn't resting, he's in a mental asylum. Living in a large, glass house, I'm loathe to trash another writer and I told my editors as much, but I've had too many quiet nights with a pint ruined by some moron derailing my silence with, So, have you read The Da Vinci Code? It's awesome…

Yes, I've tried… I'm about three quarters of the way through it. It's slow going, what with the blood leaking from my eyeballs every few pages, or having re-read a paragraph or a line of dialogue two or three times to ask myself, did he actually write that? People think this is good? Below are five passages I've quoted, minus the character names; two from the Code and three are not. See if you can tell which were written Dan Brown, and which weren't (answers below):

1) They walked past the huge multicolored and vaguely anthropomorphic metal sculpture that stood guard outside the station area. The sculpture always reminded [her] of how she felt after a heavy weekend: split into pieces, one eye by her toes, the other perched on her ear.

2) She was moving down the corridor toward them with a long, fluid strides… a haunting certainty to her gait. Dressed casually in a knee-length, cream-colored Irish sweater over black leggings, she was attractive and looked to be about thirty. Her thick burgundy hair fell unstyled to her shoulders, framing the warmth of her face. Unlike the waifish, cookie-cutter blondes that adorned Harvard dorm walls, this woman was healthy with an unembellished beauty and genuineness that radiated a striking personal confidence.

3) He relished the unaccustomed silence of the country and the privacy which the garden afforded. It was large, partly walled, and the remainder enclosed by a tangled hedge bordering fields that undulated from down to the village somewhere below. Wild and overgrown though it was, the garden had transmuted neglect into beauty: clematis and honeysuckle toppling over the crumbling brick walls and a confusion of rampant ivy threatening to smother the orchard.

4) Two minutes later she was creeping out of the open front door and heading for the path toward the stables. To the left of the gazebo, a heavy iron gate guarded the entrance to the grotto. She'd never been there- it had always been too overgrown- but she'd heard the gardeners clipping it back on her first morning… A quick examination confirmed that the padlock was missing. [She] brushed the orange flakes of rust from her fingers and gave the gate a shove. It swung open with an eerie creak.

5) Perfect. Now all that remained was to close and lock the door. Leaving the box on the ground for a moment, he grabbed the metal door and began to heave it closed. As the door swung past him, [he] reached up to grab the single bolt that needed to be slid into place. The door closed with a thud, and [he] quickly grabbed the bolt, pulling it to the left. The bolt slid a few inches and crunched to an unexpected halt, not lining up with its sleeve.


Paragraphs two and five, above, were both taken from The Da Vinci Code. The first, third and fourth paragraphs are taken from the following: Cheap Trick, by Astrid Fox (Black Lace, 2001); The Reckoning, by Anonymous (Blue Moon, 1998 ); A Gentleman's Wager, by Madelynne Ellis (Black Lace 2003). As you might have gathered, those last three are soft-core porn paperbacks; Astrid Fox' and Madelynne Ellis are most likely pseudonymns for writers who realized that Anonymous was already taken (is it me, or does Astrid Fox sound like some female superhero's alter ego?).

I'm not trying to be cruel, but prove a point. My first measure of a writer is how he or she handles language, and the level of writing in Code is clearly no better than pulp novel pornography. To be fair, there's likely some undiscovered and formidable talent wasting away in some of those little black paperbacks. But as near as I can tell, Code isn't much better than the bulk of those… having skimmed a number of them to find appropriate passages, I noticed that the writing in some of them was noticeably better than Brown's, though the dialogue was terrible in all of them; Brown also shares with his pornographic brethren a penchant for detailed descriptions of churches, museums and gardens, along with many parochial authority figures. The only things keeping Dan Brown from being just another Astrid Fox are a lot of dumbed down history lessons and a lack of spanking."

[richter915]

If you liked this book Dan Brown has another book that's excellent as well, it's called digital fortress
I've heard about digital fortress but heard it was worse than DaVinci Code.

[oldwirehands]

I sense a little jealous. Not everything is perfect. The Da Vinci Code isn't the best written book in the world but it sure has sold a LOT of copies.

I find it funny how this guy said he couldn't read it but yet there are thousands of legit/educated people who read the Da Vinci Code and liked it.

Someone just sounds a little pissed off that HIS book hasn't been on the New York Times Bestseller list for 142 weeks.

[KropaCabana]

i to liked angels better but his novel Deception Point is very good as well

[blankster07]

i actrually read the book..i dont read..at all. didnt like the ending

ending was lame... the book had some interesting ideas in it , however, was written poorly and had a poor plot...

[richter915]

I sense a little jealous. Not everything is perfect. The Da Vinci Code isn't the best written book in the world but it sure has sold a LOT of copies.

I find it funny how this guy said he couldn't read it but yet there are thousands of legit/educated people who read the Da Vinci Code and liked it.

Someone just sounds a little pissed off that HIS book hasn't been on the New York Times Bestseller list for 142 weeks.
you know what...I'm gonna have to agree there (it's my cynical nature I guess)...the flaw in this author's argument is really apparent (along with some spelling mistakes which I'm SURE he woulda jumped on Brown for having)...when a person...a random joe schmo says "So, have you read The Da Vinci Code? It's awesome…"...does that automatically mean that they think this is the next To Kill a Mockingbird?? No of course they're not saying that...Dan Brown gives the people what the people love...that's short details and tons of action with a bit of an edge. He adds that whole "omfg I can't believe he said that" sorta thing. And yes, he does draw out some very very very ill-theorized thoughts...but this is a book of FICTION. What bugs me so much is all the books published to counter it (and how much money these people are making off of it)...Brown is not marching around saying it's fact. And people should realize that it is FICTION. It's these authors like the one mentioned here...they just wanna bitch for the sake of bitching. Brown is not a great writer, this book is not beyond an 8th grade reading level...and I doubt it was Brown's intent on fascinating the literary world. When people actually acknowledge the reason for the popularity of the book, they should also realize that Brown probably had to dumb his writing style down to appeal to the masses.

[Emopunkthrice]

I enjoyed this book, I dunno if I'll like the movie

[Darren McLeod]

I sense a little jealous. Not everything is perfect. The Da Vinci Code isn't the best written book in the world but it sure has sold a LOT of copies.

I find it funny how this guy said he couldn't read it but yet there are thousands of legit/educated people who read the Da Vinci Code and liked it.

Someone just sounds a little pissed off that HIS book hasn't been on the New York Times Bestseller list for 142 weeks.
He probably is pissed off about it. It's the same as if you are on Arrested Development, on the verge of being cancelled, wouldn't you be pissed off that Two and a Half Men and The War At Home are getting great ratings?

Clevenger is a brilliant writer, which could make reading something poorly written hard to read. Sales don't mean everything... look at what CDs and Movies do the best at the box office. Are they the best ones? No. Usually, they're the ones with big hype that appeal to people with short attention spans, ie: Da Vinci Code.

Also, while the book is of fiction, I remember a warning at the beginning stating that the theories he discusses are factual, or some pieces are, or something along those lines. I'm probably wrong, but I remember something similar to that.

[richter915]

ya I totally agree with that. Good sales obviously does not always mean that it's good quality work. You couldn't be more right. The problem I have with Code haters is that, like this guy, he's thinking that just cause someone enjoyed the book, they're automatically emplying that it's the best piece of literature in the past century. He has to realize that many of the people saying this are just regular schlums who work day jobs that do not relate to the literary world at all! if this guy were to quote credible literaries and critics...then he'd have a good argument. For him to get mad cause people are enjoying this is just a waste of his own time.

I think if it says the theories are factual...it means more like...ya you will find people around the world who think this...not really "yes, this is the fact everything else is wrong"...know what I mean? It's accepted but only by a small minority.

[Darren McLeod]

I think he does realize that the people saying it's a great book are regular schmoes... and maybe that's why he made the article, just to overexaggerate his point.

[somethingyellow]

i really enjoyed reading this book

[oldwirehands]

He probably is pissed off about it. It's the same as if you are on Arrested Development, on the verge of being cancelled, wouldn't you be pissed off that Two and a Half Men and The War At Home are getting great ratings?

Clevenger is a brilliant writer, which could make reading something poorly written hard to read. Sales don't mean everything... look at what CDs and Movies do the best at the box office. Are they the best ones? No. Usually, they're the ones with big hype that appeal to people with short attention spans, ie: Da Vinci Code.

Also, while the book is of fiction, I remember a warning at the beginning stating that the theories he discusses are factual, or some pieces are, or something along those lines. I'm probably wrong, but I remember something similar to that.

Thats all true. I get what you're saying. But I'm sure there are a lot of intelligent people who enjoyed the book. I don't consider myself stupid.

[Darren McLeod]

I enjoyed the book. I'd consider myself to be intelligent. I'm not saying that only stupid people like the book, because that's far from the truth, but it is a book that appeals to the new generation of short attention spans in North America.

[oldwirehands]

I enjoyed the book. I'd consider myself to be intelligent. I'm not saying that only stupid people like the book, because that's far from the truth, but it is a book that appeals to the new generation of short attention spans in North America.

Thats very true. I really just like the subject of the book. It is a fiction/drama but what its based around is very interesting. I have always researched the topics they mention in the book so when I heard about it, I had to check it out. Maybe it will open some of the minds of those with the short attentions spans.

[richter915]

I enjoyed the book. I'd consider myself to be intelligent. I'm not saying that only stupid people like the book, because that's far from the truth, but it is a book that appeals to the new generation of short attention spans in North America.
haha new generation? I think people read more now than ever before. The fact that Brown made such a popular best seller shows the opposite...he pulled people away from the TV and put them into a book.

people were always stupid, they just lacked a source to let them remain stupid.