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I'm getting a little tired of the Da Vinci hype. I'm tired of seeing it stacked rows and rows in every bookstore. I'm tired of seeing more books either trying to debunk it or trying to jump on the "It's-all-a-conspiracy" bandwagon. Most of all, I'm tired of Christians getting all fired up issuing warnings and counter-arguments and counter-evidences against Dan Brown's fictionalised facts.

I get the impression there's a war going on and there are Dan Brown bombers flying overhead on a regular basis and some Christians are shouting for everyone to take cover and make sure we all have a pamphlet on what to do when the sirens go off.

That some of it necessary is undisputed. I mean, yeah, if someone spreads historically dubious information about someone I love, okay, we gotta clarify, correct and so on. But when the thing dominates one's horizons, when it usurps one's agenda, when I get excited over almost nothing else, when I snap at anyone who isn't half as enthusiastic as I am about slamming those dangerous liars or who feel that maybe should try as hard as we can to learn something from the issues raised, then I get a feeling that somehow it defeats the purpose.

The life of truth, the 'learning towards' truth, has been hijacked by the very effort to resolve what was lied about.

And besides, as far as 'popular' novelists go, Dan Brown doesn't quite do it for me. In fact, for my tastes, he's some (long) distance away from :

...Stephen King (I can read his Hearts in Atlantis over and over again for the sheer sorrowful humanity portrayed; and all aspiring writers CANNOT MISS On Writing, a short but great auto-bio),

...Stephen Hunter (if you haven't read The Day Before Midnight, you haven't read an action novel),

...David Gemmel (hard-hitting straight-to-the-point characters giving life to worlds so dark you're glad they're just fantasy; try the Lion of Macedon if you can find it)

...John Grisham (whose Street Lawyer is a present train-buddy I'm happy to be acquainted with; the book is about a big-time attourney calling it quits from the big money and taking on public interest law for the sake of the homeless, those whose voice nobody bothers to hear - now why does this resonate so well?)

...Jeffrey Archer (whose Sons of Fortune sits atop one of me shelves, awaiting its time; my first Archer book was A Matter of Honour, still one of the best novels I've read),

...Marc Olden (for crime thrillers, no other author gets so thick and deep psychologically; I promise you Oni will make you flinch)

...Ken Follett (how can anyone put down Eye of the Needle and Lie Down With Lions? Follett is the more sexually explicit of this group, something I doubt many will complain about)

Compared to the books written by the gang above, the Da Vinci Code is less than in-da-vinci-ble. Do I plan to read Digital Fortress and/or Deception Point? Later, dude. Much later. Right now I can't wait to dig in to my just-arrived copy of The Scripture Principle. Now that's a ball of fire I can't wait to hurl at someone, ha!