The Lost Symbol

You guessed it. This is the third book in Dan Brown's trilogy, following Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code. I finished this book most recently.

I remember when this book hit the library shelves because I was in my advanced reporting class in the fall of 2009. For the first couple of weeks in the semester, I had a student in the beginning reporting class, Adam, shadow me to get the hang of shooting, editing, and writing a package. The story we looked into together was the higher influx of peeps heading to the library to avoid the costs of renting/buying movies (and books, but movies were mostly relevant because that's when Blockbuster started to close like a billion stores). Adam looked into The Lost Symbol on the library's system and found that it had more than 80 people who had placed a hold request on it.

Robert Langdon is slightly older, but still an intellectual giant in the world of symbology. There are a couple over-arching things about the third book that I liked a lot. First, the whole thing takes place in Washington, D.C., so for once it was my turn to enjoy the places mentioned and be able to picture them from the fam's east coast vacation in 1994. Secondly, the historical aspects of this book tie into Freemasonry. I still don't know a ton about the Free Masons, but a) I know Joseph Smith was a Mason, and b) National Treasure, one of my favorite movies, has a lot of ties to masonry, too. Overall, it's a group that intrigues me, if nothing else.

While Whitney and I agree that this book wasn't quite as satisfying as the first two because the whole clue-filled quest didn't seem to serve as much of an overall purpose, it was still a good read with some intense moments. In fact, I told Whitney not to read it right before going to bed because she often has nightmares, and there's at least one scene in particular that could be kind of scary. It is not, however, a scary book; it's just that the villain is quite a creeper.

The DaVinci Code

Part Two. This is the second book in the Dan Brown trilogy, after Angels and Demons. Again, it doesn't really matter what order you read these books in; I'm just posting about them in the order they were written. But, truth be told, this was the first of the three that I read.

I say 'read' loosely, for Whitney and I listened to it on CD way back in May 2008 while we drove from Provo to Midland and back for our wedding reception. I remember that the corresponding movie came out while I was on my mission. People in Argentina were outraged by the movie because they (the majority of whom are Catholic) didn't like that the book portrayed Jesus Christ as having been married during His life. But remember, this book is fiction tied into some real pieces of history. As far as I'm concerned, looking at it as fiction shouldn't cause anyone with a true testimony to waiver. Anyway, listening to the book sure made the 17-hour one-way trip a lot shorter (by taking breaks to listen to other things from time to time, the book CDs timed out perfectly; the book ended when we were about 45 minutes away from Provo on the return trip).

Robert Langdon is back in action, this time in Paris. Well he starts in Paris, but the whole book takes him through various European countries (again leading to Whitney's excitement). This time he's following clues left by artists (can you guess who one of them is?) and other great thinkers to ascertain the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. It's not as Indiana Jones-y as it may sound on the surface, but it is again pretty intense. There are moments when you pride yourself if you can figure out clues before Langdon does.

This is also a really good book, and we've also seen the movie, which did a pretty good job of matching up to the book.

Angels and Demons

Betcha didn't think you'd hear from me on this blog, did you? Well I do read. Occasionally. When I have time. And a good book. And this happened to be one such good book.

Despite what movie watchers may think, this is the first in a trilogy by Dan Brown (he has written two other books that I know of outside of the Robert Langdon series). It was made into a movie after the more famous movie, The DaVinci Code, but it was actually written first. The series is one of those where the plots technically did happen in a certain order, but it doesn't matter in what order you read them; they aren't connected in any way except that Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor and symbologist, is the main character in all of them.

This suspense-filled series ties fiction into many things that are quite historically accurate (okay, I didn't independently verify that it's all accurate, but Brown has short notes at the beginning of the books that tell the reader which organizations/events/traditions actually exist).

In Angels and Demons, Langdon is in Rome (and The Vatican City), chasing down the bad guys to try to stop the murderous intentions of the Illuminati, a science-based brotherhood that originated long ago to keep scientific discoveries protected from the Catholic Church, which tended not to be so accepting of worldly knowledge back in the day. Centuries after the church put great scientists and thinkers to death for their works, the Illuminati want revenge.

I usually only had time to read it a little bit at a time before bed, and there were some nights when I stayed up later than I should have because the book was so good. Whitney read it right after I did, and it was really fun to share our thought processes throughout the plot. Plus, she loves it because she's been to most of the places where things happen in the book.