I’ve been surpressing this for a couple weeks now, but I’m threatening to blow a gasket if I don’t do some venting.

Enough with the frigging Da Vinci Code already!

While over in Europe, I fulfilled some lifelong dreams by visiting the Louvre in Paris, as well as Florence and Rome. But everywhere I turned, I kept bumping into adverts for the Da Vinci Code. The Louvre even has it’s own Da Vinci Code tour.

Okay, nothing against Dan Brown. I’ve read the book, as well as Angels and Demons and Deception Point. I enjoyed them. They’re entertaining, but they’re blips on the cultural radar. Mr. Brown is a writer on par with a John Grisham or a Michael Crichton. The plots are mildly interesting, the characters are about as thin as the paper it’s printed on and the dialogue is as stiff as the hard cover. The whole ancient religious sect angle raises it to slightly better than average, but just slightly. There is no justification for this tidal wave of attention that the book seems to be garnering. I thought it was restricted to this side of the Atlantic, but I was sadly disillusioned to see that it’s taken route in Europe as well. Give me a break, Paris, Rome and Florence, you’re better than this!

If you really want to see how this whole angle can be handled masterfully, take a big juicy bite out of some of Umberto Eco’s works. Compared to Foucault’s Pendulum or Name of the Rose, the Da Vinci Code is like a postcard of the original Mona Lisa.