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July 11, 2005

Da Vinci Code

I have just finished reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. It is a good read and intriguing at most. It writes about the Holy Grail, which it was believed, Christ used on his Last Supper and what secrets it was supposed to reveal. It has quite stirred a controversy and made Dan Brown a rich guy with millions of people buying the book to know what the controversy is about. What I want to emphasize to readers of the book is that it is fiction. What made it controversial is that the Author claims in the Acknowledgement that “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” A lot of the supposed to be “accurate” descriptions have been rebuffed by a lot of historians, scholars and researchers stating that Brown is almost wrong in all his description of history and the facts that he stated in the book. You can visit these websites, here here here, just to get an idea of what Dan Brown presented and what the scholars are saying about his claims. Again, the book is fiction. But Brown’s statement the items he stated are accurate is really misleading. I wouldn’t have any qualms about the book aside from this (and the bland ending). If people buy the book because of the media coverage, I would hope that they also look into the truth behind these claims and do their own research especially if they believe that Brown’s facts are accurate as he state they are. For Brown, I’m sure that he doesn’t really care if people are being misled as long as they buy the book. A movie is even being made about the book which I’m also sure, made Brown’s some millions richer. So why should he care? The least he could do is remove that line that makes the book controversial. But again, that is what keeps people buying his book, right? By the way, Dan Brown is also being sued as some claim that he ripped off the ideas of other books and rehashed them to make The Da Vinci Code.