text: So this page-turning thriller was on the best-selling list for a gazillion months and put Catholic and fellow Christian faithful in a defensive uproar. I'm fairly well read and, yes, I've earned a few bucks with my prose. I'm also a sucker for historic tales, ancient folklore, mythology and Old Testament characters who lived for 800 years and begat like rabbits. OK, I decided, now that it's in paperback, I'll give it a read. What I concluded was this: Those who found The Da Vinci Code an affront to their faith could have could have ended the argument before it reached the level of theological debate by countering that Brown's work is a literary steaming pile. I read page after page, waiting for the moment when I would start to give a rat's ass about The Da Vinci Code's protagonists. What a bunch of twits. Langdon is a leading authority in the obscure field of symbology (I don't know if I spelled that right, but I'm not about to go back in that book and check it). Apparently, there are enough people in the world who crave more symbology that Langdon's books sell better than Brown's, entitling him to the academia equivalent of rock start status. Sophie is effectively portrayed as a cuddly French chick who's easy on the eyes -- someone a man might make a hit on before the first 300 pages if he wasn't a dipwad like Landgon. She's got some inner deamons that make her interesting enough, but she's been isolated from folks like you and me in a cradle of artsy culture so high-falluting most French probably couldn't tolerate it. And then they hook up with that insufferable aristocratic British snob Teabing. From cradle to some approptiately haught estate near (but, of course) Versaille, this memeber of the Royal Lucky Sperm Club has never had to lift a finger to earn buck or a pound or a Euro. So he's been free to pursue his fascination with Bigfoot rumors about how the Priory of Sion, Opus Dei and those cool Holy Grail Knights from the third Indiana Jones movie have contrived through the centuries to keep the lid on damning evidence that Jesus made a baby girl and God had originally intended women to be in charge of everything. Or something like that. Oh, I forgot, Teabing's crippled so I should feel bad about talking bad about him. Anyway, this trio of prententious intellectual clods sit around do what pretentious intellectual clods do -- make lofty, self-affirmed pronouncments about how the world's going to turn upside down when this cat gets out of the bag. The point is that these characters aren't very approachable and Brown does little to convince me that this secret will destroy Christian faith as we know it. Hell, it's been more than 100 years since Darwin presented pretty clear evidence for evolution, yet the Christian faithtul still pack churches around world. But back to how bad this book is. Trite doesn't begin to describe some of the wincing turns of phrase. I would give you some examples but, like I said, I'm not going back in there. One of the more laughable scenes of upper-crust idiocy occurs when Langdon and Sophie meet up with Teabing in his metrosexual parlor. By now, Sophie and Langdon have somehow eluded the grasp of professional killers several times, been on the run and are exhausted. With a straight face, Brown describes how Sophie's delirium is sated by a spot of tea and her hunger is satisfied by... crumpets. Yes, crumpets. Hell, Teabing, shut up about your conspiracy theories, roust your beligernet butler and have him fix these people something to eat. Offer Langdon a stiff drink. I sure needed one at this point. By now I'm pulling for the albino. Then they escape the jaws of death yet again and, naturally, high-tail it to England on Teabing's private jet. I hoped maybe Teabow would turn back upon discovering he'd left his Grey Poupon behind. I stopped reading it about 30 pages later when it became clear that the Albino wasn't going to get a chance to wack any of these intrepid protagonists. I don't know how it ends. I don't care. However, there were plenty enough nuggets of research on the subject to entice me into watching a few nice documentaries laying out this whole conspiracy on the History Channel and Discovery. Who knows? You might like it. This is just my opinion
  