The Da Vinci Code

• The Da Vinci Code begins with a murder in Paris's famous Louvre museum, home to Venus De Milo and the Mona Lisa. A famous American scholar becomes a suspect in the crime and must solve the mystery in order to save himself from the authorities. Full of twists and chases, the story behind the crime reaches all the way back to the days of Christ and deals with a secret society whose job it has been for two thousand years to guard the most precious secrets of Jesus's life and the formation of the Church.
  
  Now, you are waiting for me to explain my title "Indiana Jones meets Scooby Doo". Ok, here it is:
  
  The best parts of the book remind me of the first and third Indiana Jones films (Temple of Doom sucked). Dan Brown builds his fictional story on just enough truth about Christian history to spark imagination and plant in his readers a kernel that will lead to conversations, research and a deeper understanding of the life of Christ, the Church and the role mankind has played in muddying up the religion. We shouldn't read his book as "The Gospel According to Dan", and I would bet Mr. Brown would say the same thing. But it is a wonderful starting point for someone unfamiliar with the formation of the early church and the political/social choices of the first leaders that have shaped the evolution of the faith. I have yet to talk to any reader of the book who did not immediately locate a copy of The Last Supper and look for the clues the book suggests exists amid its scene.

• Undoubtfully Dan Brown has done amazing jobs to his book "The Da Vinci Code". The story is powerful and magnificent. Mixing with a lot of traceable truth and facts, he made his novel sound extremely convincing and inevitably deluded you from what's real and what's fictional. However, please don't take it too serious, it's just a novel, not a research paper trying to make a breakthrough statement. Overall, the book has quite a lot of twists shocking you. Even the ending has double meanings. Make sure you read the Epilogue chapter, or you won't know where the Holy Grail rests that Dan Brown suggested as the poem below:
  
  "The Holy Grail 'neath ancient Roslin waits.
  The blade and chalice guarding o'er Her gates.
  Adorned in masters' loving art, She lies.
  She rests at last beneath the starry skies."
  
  For people who love deciphering codes, Dan Brown wisely placed some codings on the regular hardcover edition's paper cover. If you pay attention you may find some bold fonts seemed appearing randomly. Link them up and you should see a hint to read.

• I found this book EXTREMELY interesting and entertaining. It is fun to read a book that gets the ole juices flowing in the brain again. Like other reviews have said, I found myself putting down the book and running to the computer constantly to do research. It made me WANT to learn more about art, Christianity, history, etc. So what if a few of the facts are not 100% correct? I looked up on the computer what was important to me, and am enjoying all the new information and theories. It will be a fun topic of discussion and debate with my friends who are Christians, Buddists, Athiests, Agnostic, etc.

  Don't get me wrong, I am a Christain, and am very comfortable in my faith. I think reading The Bible cover to cover can be more disturbing! Talk about contradictions... An open mind is a happy mind.

• Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" is an interesting book for a number of reasons. It is entertaining yet essentially light reading. It is also filled with tantalizing bits of information about the history of Christianity and a miriad of other related topics including paganism, Gnosticism, The Knights Templar, art history, and the Holy Grail.
  
  The most fascinating aspect of this novel is the overwhelming public interest and controversy surrounding many of the assertions Brown makes in this book. It may be safe to assume that most people have little or no previous exposure to these topics and it certainly has generated extreme controversy in Christian circles.