Monday, November 1, 2010

The Lost Symbol



I went to Boston this past weekend, so I wanted to read something good for traveling that would be entertaining but require no effort on my part, and Dan Brown did not disappoint.  I was very impressed with his ability to keep me riveted with the plot and yet be beating a dead horse at the same time.  The last 50-60 pages of this book are completely unnecessary and overkill and I was losing interest at an exponential rate, but luckily I was back home at that point and didn't feel bad about skimming.  The main idea in this book is that because God created man in His image, the human mind has godlike powers, which the ancients knew and appreciated, but that modern people have forgotten and lost the ability to tap.

"This is the great gift, Robert, and God is waiting for us to understand it.  All around the world, we are gazing skyward, waiting for God ... never realizing that God is waiting for us.  . . .  We are creators, and yet we naively play the role of 'the created.' We see ourselves as helpless sheep buffeted around by the God who made us.  We kneel like frightened children, begging for help, for forgiveness, for good luck.  But once we realize that we are truly created in the Creator's image, we will start to understand that we, too, must be Creators.  When we understand this fact, the doors will burst wide open for human potential."

I think that's a fascinating, inspiring idea, and I like the point that if our ancestors could see us today communicating through computers, transplanting organs, exploring space, etc., wouldn't they think we were gods?  Pretty cool.   Unfortunately Dan Brown makes his characters discuss this point ad nauseum until you want to shake him and be like I GET IT, ENOUGH ALREADY, HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK YOUR READERS ARE?!

Also, I think it's kind of a cheap trick to make the ending of every single chapter be a cliffhanger.  It's kind of exhausting when every 6 pages, someone is turning around and gasping, eyes wide in fright, as they make some alarming discovery and nananabooboo, I'm not going to tell you what it is yet.  And italics lose their purpose when they're so overused.  I've also never read a book where the word "esoteric" is used so frequently.  Has anyone ever actually used esoteric in a sentence?  I looked it up and I still don't understand what it means.

But despite all that, I actually love books like this.  It's the literary equivalent of a really nerdy soap opera.  Plus I really like Dan Brown's bad guys - the albino monk in Da Vinci Code, and now in this book there's a crazy tattooed antagonist who is really freaky.  So if you want a good page-turner with cool historical trivia for geeks, then I recommend this book, just don't think about it too hard while you're reading and feel free to skip the last 50 pages.

Up Next: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

1 comment:

  1. Edwin uses the word esoteric to describe student newspaper crossword puzzles and their clues. I don't really know what it means, either, but it sounds ok when ED-dubs says it.

    ReplyDelete