I'm on a business trip (again, yay me ...) but I just wanted to drop by here to tell you that I am reading The Da Vinci Code and I don't know who made this book the huge bestseller that it was because it's a *yell* HUGE PIECE OF CRAP */yell* (*pantpant* thankyouverymuch for letting me vent) I mean come on - the author introduces his leading people as really smart cryptologists. Then he puts riddles in the book that a three-year-old could see through and they are hemming and hawing. In the chapter I am reading now they are looking at a piece of paper that has backwards written English words on it and are musing about whether it's Hebrew or some unknown language. Please.

Also, the whole concept of the book is ridiculous - this guy gets shot and has 20 minutes to live but he still devises this INGENIOUS set of codes that ONLY his granddaughter can see through (the aforementioned puzzles for three-year-olds - then again, the granddaughter apparently is as smart as a sack of beans). That's not the point here, though, but because even if they're totally easy they're rather elaborate and in no way would anybody find the time to think about devising such codes, writing stuff on top of the Mona Lisa (yeah right) and then positioning himself in a certain way so that the leading expert in symbolism later on has NO IDEA WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO MEAN and spouts off stupid drivel about female/male symbolism even though the reader is pounding his/her head on a wall in near frustration and yelling "Think Leonardo, you dumbass!!!". Oh, he also writes a number on a piece of paper (lateron the protagonists need an account number and go "Duh. We haven't got a number. No number at all. If he only had left a number." Hello?? Brain?? Anybody home? About an hour later they think of it.

In addition the book is written in a way I absolutely hate: Building up towards a secret and then not telling it to keep suspense up when there's no reason (within the confines of the story) not to tell it. Like: "The secret of the Holy Grail is really shocking. It will shock you a lot. Very shocking, that. I can't tell you know because saying the one sentence that would tell you about it would take too much time and you know we are in a truck going somewhere for hours but if I tell you know you'd be so shocked because it's a really shocking secret. SHOCKING!! Not telling you though. Later. (Did I tell you it was shocking?)" And almost every chapter contains one of those "shocking" secrets that people DO NOT TELL. Grr-Argh!!!

Need to go now - my time is running out on this internet café thingy. If I can think about more I will post more on this piece of shite later (hopefully they will have divulged the SHOCKING secret - which, to me, is crystal clear anyway and not at all shocking, but hey, what can you do).