I liked both The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, so I'm very curious about this next book. I'm already on the waiting list at the library for this, I hope it will be good.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Lost Symbol

Am I the only person at RP who couldn't stand The Da Vinci Code . . . badly written, weak 'plot', historical inexactitude etc? Probably, as I remember being given a hard time by several of you a few years ago for my lack of appreciation of fine writing. ;-(
So, was it Columbus or the Pilgrim Fathers who were Masons?!

I thought the story was OK Vee, but the writing wasn't top drawer.
The new book has created very little interest at our shop. We have it at a special price with a free book thrown in if you pay before release (15th Sept) but have only 29 orders. Compare that with about a thousand for the last Harry Potter. My theory on this is that The Da Vinci Code sold on the back of a lot of word of mouth and media hype, and was bought by a lot of people who normally don't buy books. Thus they are not hanging out for 'the next one' like readers who are fans of particular authors.
But I could be wrong :-)

I thought DVC and A&D were okay for what they were-"suspend disbelief" thrillers in which the hero will face certain death many times but always beat the odds and survive to fight another day. I was horrified by the people who took the books as well-researched, historically accurate, barely disguised non-fiction. The court battle over sources didn't hurt the sales either.
I did get annoyed with his writing style-every so often he would stop the action to "teach" the reader something. Very jarring to the flow. I thought the authors of The Rule of Four handled the integration of information vs. plot much more seamlessly.

I agree about "The Rule of Four" being better written. I never claimed that DVC was seamless writing. I found some of the themes and settings intriguing, as I had majored in the history of art. After both the novel and film came out, there were several published rebuttals, claiming inaccuracies.

I pre-ordered the book from Amazon, wasn't going to, but curiosity got the better of me!
I know lots of readers on other forums have said that they have also pre-ordered it - so will have to read it & see how good-or bad (!) it turns out to be. One of my reading groups is discussing it in October.

Pat

Woodnymph-I know there were rebuttals-unfortunately, most were rather scholarly in tone so didn't interest the same demographic as the buyers of DVC!
What flummoxed me was the embracing by the general public of the book as "gospel"-I thought it was more along the lines of a James Bond type of adventure-thriller, with art and church history as the gimmick-not an expose(imagine accent over final e) by Brown of genuine Catholic and Papal intrigues! A lapsed Catholic library patron handed the book back in and told us that was why she had left the church years ago-because of all that secret plotting against the World in the Vatican. We just thanked her for getting the book back on time, as the wait list was quite long. "Good-everyone needs to read it and know the truth!" A tad scary.
No one seemed to find any reason for thought in the fact that in A&D, the Catholic Church is the victim, defended by Brown through our hero. So perhaps Mr. Brown wasn't out to get the church, just wanted to write a best-seller?

I bought the edition with the paintings reproduced along with the text for my son to read. Easier than looking things up on the web!

I confess that I pre-ordered the new Brown book through Amazon also. DVC and A&D were like great roller coaster rides... twists and turns and non-stop action. It was pure fun.

As far as the controversy, I thought it was strange. It is called fiction for a reason. The best part of the controversy is that it raised more of an interest in the history of the Catholic faith, indeed, in Christianity as a whole. Many people seemed to ask good strong questions about their faith. I think that is healthy. For some, the answers they found pushed them away from the church forever, and for others, it strengthened their faith. No matter which path people chose, I thought it was great the folks went out there seeking answers, asking questions and wanting to know more. If fiction can do that, well, to me, that is a great testimonial to the power of the written word.

PAM

I'll wait for the paperback. In fact, I'll wait till I find a paperback copy in the charity shop for a quid.

It'll be a great page-turner, and I'll probably enjoy it when I read it, but there are thousands of better books to spend my money on.

Of course, if you buy a new Sony Reader from Waterstones, you get a free ebook copy of The Lost Symbol.

Here is a link that might be useful: Waterstones

A review in The Guardian ('quality' English Daily newspaper) this morning said it is so bad it makes Geoffrey Archer look like Dostoevsky........

Posted below is the review from the Daily Telegraph not nearly as unkind as that given on the BBC Arts programme 'Front Row'. A group of readers had each been given a copy of the book and told to spend the day reading it. They laughed and groaned their way through the interview and mocked the so-called 'style', the inaccurate information and the over-use of adjectives. Their conclusion was that it would probably be bought by millions of 'non-readers' and thank goodness it was set in Washington, not Europe.

Here is a link that might be useful: Telegraph

It is an excruciating and losing battle to try to convince people that books like Dan Brown's are not only fiction but worse than fiction. They use real people and events to invent entirely false scenarios that are at best simply untrue and at worst deliberately deceptive, even malicious. The same is true of movies and TV, especially "historical" mini-series.

No matter how often this is pointed out, people continue to assume that if it's in print or on the screen, it must be true.

I laughed out loud (really) when I read that scathing Telegraph review of the Dan Brown. That reviewer really didn't like it and used all his power to express it but in a funny way.

Funny stuff.

Thanks for posting.

oh Ginny, how true, how true, how sad, how true.

I guess I should step in here and explain my post a bit... just in case. When I said that The DaVinci Code raised questions and sent many off to learn more about their religion, about Christianity and the history of their faith... I meant looking BEYOND the DaVinci Code, NOT using that book to learn. The story in the DaVinci Code was a springboard for many to turn to NON-FICTION sources for MORE information. When I re-read what I wrote, it seemed fuzzy to me. Sorry for any confusion it may have caused.
PAM

So come on Pam, Pat, Sheri - you've had two whole days to read it.

We've read the sniffy critics in the broadsheets, who were never going to give it a good review. Can we have reviews from people whose opinions we have good reason to trust?

BTW - there were people queuing outside Waterstones at four in the morning here in the UK to get their hands on a copy. Look, I can understand kids doing that for Harry Potter - but adults for Dan Brown? Sigh.

Google tells me there are 37,200,000 'Dan Brown' sites and even if I take that number with a few pinches of salt there does seem to be a great deal written about him.
I was wondering why his books have sold so well?
One site is headed The Age of the Sage and subtitled "Transmitting the Wisdoms of the Age"
(Question to self: does 'wisdom' take a plural?) and would like to ask RP'ers if the DVC and his other books were 'plugged' in the US as helping to find a meaning to Life/Faith etc? Here in the UK I'm sure they were just seen as light 'adventure' type reading with which to while away a holiday or a long journey and I would seriously doubt that anyone then went on to look for deeper meanings in Christianity . . .but I could be wrong.
In fact the Catholic Church, with some justification, reacted angrily to a few of Brown's more outrageous suggestions and the film-makers were refused permission to set parts of the movie in Canterbury Cathedral . . . the Mother Church of the C of E.
I suppose we should be thankful that many more people have been encouraged to read 'something' but it is just a pity that it has to be such badly written, inaccurate tripe.
Now someone shoot me down; tell me what I'm missing.

Martin, LOL! If it had been another Harry Potter book I would have had it in hand and read in two days, but this time around I actually requested The Lost Symbol from the library. I'm currently on the waiting list (with who-knows how many people ahead of me) but I'll definitely post once I've had a chance to read it.

PAM, I understand exactly what you meant by his books encouraging people to read more about Catholicism and Christianity. I read an absolute pile of books on the subject after reading The DaVinci Code, and discovered Karen Armstrong (brilliant, IMO) in the process. Proof that good things can come from popular fiction :)

There were 40 000 copies sold in Australia on the first day, but we certainly didn't have a queue outside.
Vee the books were seen by most people as thrillers here. It has always puzzled me that so many people thought they were 'true'. Why are they any more true than any other novel? Are so many unable to tell fiction from non-fiction?

Pam, I also understood what you meant, and for me it was a jumping off point to explore further the beliefs and history touched upon by the fictional work, which I knew was exaggerated. It got me reading Karen Armstrong, too, as well as delving into who the Gnostics were, the cult of the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages, church architecture, and so much more....

And-- I forgot to say -- I also learned the difference between Carolingians and Merovingians. ;-)

I have always been surprised that anyone would take the book seriously - I can understand enjoying it as a thriller/mystery, although it got a bit bogged down. People, including me, often enjoy a hint of supernatural or ancient superstition mixed in their thrillers. Sorry Vee, I can't shed any light on the mystery of Dan Brown's success, or offer any reasons to like it. I am continually astounded by the public's ability to embrace fiction as fact, and even more astounded when frankly-not-very-good writers hit it big. Good thing I'm not in the publishing business - my firm would be a dismal failure.

veer, I'll take a stab at what you may be missing... but this is just my own little yet loud opinion.
Dan Brown is just pure escapism - like watching an Indiana Jones movie. (although Harrison Ford is much more attractive than Tom Hanks.). It's just adrenaline rush with smatterings of history tossed in for good measure. I think one of the things that made him popular is that he wasn't afraid to show the Catholic Church in a not-so-attractive light. That takes guts. And once word got out that the church was angry, well, that just added to the hype. Is he a good writer? How does one answer that question? Ummm, he is worse than John Steinbeck and George Gissing, he is better than Danielle Steele and a bunch of others. I don't think his writing ability is the draw. I think it's his ability to tell an action story. Sure there are holes in the story, sure there are times when you can throw up your hands and say, "Oh Come ON!" but accuracy is not his objective. Entertainment is the objective. And to go back to my Indiana Jones anaology, just as there is no way an Indiana Jones movie can be all fact (like finding a living 900+ years old Knight Templar guarding the Holy Grail), Dan Brown weaves his own fantasy with a few historical facts tossed in there for fun. Speaking for myself, I make a little list of the stuff I want to learn more about while reading any book.... from The Lost Symbol, I have already written down: The history of the US Capitol and The masons.

Does this help?
PAM

John Crace does a "digested read" of books in the Guardian - a short parody. Guess what he's taken on this week?

Here is a link that might be useful: Lost Symbol - Digested Read

PAM, thanks for taking the time to explain the appeal, for you, of Dan Brown's work.
I actually read and finished the DVC, but I must admit it never occurred to me to carry out 'follow up' research, although I understand that thousands of US tourists travelled to Scotland's Rosslyn Chapel (they had to enlarge the carpark) searching for . . .??

veer, you're very welcome. Thanks for taking the time to read my opinion. I find it ironic that of all of the books out there, so many people are picking on Dan Brown. What has he done that any other writer of historical fiction hasn't done? How many writers add real people to their fictional tales and never get crucified like Brown has been? I guess the part that I don't get is the singling out of Brown. It obviously did take quite a bit of research to write what he's written - no matter how convoluted it may have become, he still had to start with some sort of basic knowledge. Did Colleen McCollugh get drawn and quartered for The First Man in Rome and the rest of that series? No... but then again, ancient Rome is not as touchy as religion is to a lot of people. Even Brad Thor who wrote The Last Patriot about finding a missing book of the Quran which effectively said that terrorism and jihad were wrong and bad and will not get you into heaven(and received death threats for it by the way) didn't receive the nasty criticism that Brown has received and continues to receive.

Why do US Tourists travel to Rosslyn? Can I take a stab at this one, too? Americans are often seen as "amusement park" tourists. We want to have fun, ride around in big air-conditioned tour buses and see things, not experience them, just look at them from a comfortable seat. At least that's how we are often portrayed. Brown must have struck some sort of chord here. Maybe we are waking up to history outside of our borders, maybe it is curiosity, maybe it is religiously motivated, but ya know what? Whatever the reason, if they cared enough to make the trip and were eager to absorb the place, the knowledge, the history, then I applaud it. Americans are often criticized for being selfish and egotistical and superior... if a small ancient church in Scotland can humble some of us, then that is a good thing.

Thanks for asking, hoping that I am not stepping out of bounds,
PAM

PAM, very interesting comments. My ?? at the end of the query re Rosslyn were pure laziness on my part because I couldn't remember why the story went up there. I'm sorry if I seemed to ask why Americans went there (or anywhere else for that matter).
In the UK, and in my home-town of Stratford, where I grew up, we were very used to US tourists, but they were coming for the culture, although often dazed by the number of towns they had visited/glimpsed (Oxford for lunch, Stratford for tea, Edinburgh for breakfast) some of them were, understandably, rather confused by it all. And I'm sure we don't think of Americans as selfish . . . or superior. For the most part the ones we meet are always very polite and often quieter than 'us'.
Regarding the DVC, I don't think the religious aspect of the book (as apart from the 'whodunit') had much impact over here among ordinary readers, but then, generally we are not nearly such a 'church/religion' centred country as you are in the States. It mainly ruffled the feathers of the various church dignitaries and a couple of albino monks had to have counseling ;-)
As an aside. Many years ago I was visiting US relatives and was interviewed by the local paper (it MUST have been a very slow news day) and I was asked "What do you think of all the Americans who visit your town of Stratford?" and I told the reporter "We love having them, they are our bread-and-butter."

FWIW, my take on the Dan Brown books:

If I had run across The Da Vinci Code on my own and read it without preconceived notions, I probably would've thought it was "a thumping good read" (to borrow a phrase from the late Common Reader catalogue), along the lines of Ian Fleming or Eric Ambler thrillers. I would have inhaled it, enjoyed it, and perhaps even recommended it in passing to those I know who enjoy an "entertainment" (Graham Greene's term). Otherwise, I would promptly have forgotten it.

However, I first heard about DVC from readers with either breathless enthusiasm or sotto voce, conspiratorial tones. Wow, I thought, I have to know what's causing these reactions. But I was disappointed because the book, although entertaining enough to me, was just another example of overhype. It didn't even break any new ground: the basic mystery had already bounced around for the previous couple of decades in the form of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Baigent, et al), but people were acting as if it was something new (which I guess it was for them).

Then the backlash started -- from disappointed readers like me who had fallen for the hype, I suspect. The complaints -- mostly against the gullible "idiots" who can't tell fiction from nonfiction -- became as vociferous as the interest in whatever historical background Brown had incorporated into his story. The last reminds me of the King Arthur seekers more than anything else: in both cases, a) there are those interested in the possible historicity; and then, b) there are those who are mainly interested in the fantasy and mysticism. Which brings me to the tourism aspect:

One of the ironies of the tourist industry is the proprietary disdain of the locals toward the outsiders whom they depend on for their livelihood. On the one hand, they are glad to have to enlarge their carparks and take the tourists' money, but, on the other hand, wouldn't it be ever so much nicer if the visitors weren't such ignorant swarms? As far as I can tell, this is a worldwide attitude.

veer, my apologies for all of my huge generalizations in regard to my fellow American tourists. My DH and I travel a bit and have almost always been treated with coutesy and curiosity. I live in a tourist town and the old bumper sticker "Welcome to ____, leave your money and GO HOME!" often holds true when we are in the throes of tourist season. We try to be kind and friendly and helpful but well, even happy people get tired of being happy.

Frieda, I read your comments with enthusiasm. Yes, yes, yes. The hype was a huge problem. Our expectations had been driven to a degree that satisfaction was simply not attainable. I was lucky to have had it read before the hype got to that point so perhaps my perspective is different from some others' perspectives.

Can we liken the DVC "theory" to the conspiracy theories behind JFK's assasignation? I don't know much about JFK as I wasn't born when it occured and never really researched it. But from the bits I do know, the DVC theory and the JFK theories have few facts, much speculation, and strong opinions. However, I am just typing "stream of consciousness" at the moment and could be way off base.
PAM

... a couple of albino monks had to have counseling ;-)
LOL, Vee!