As puffy books go, Angels & Demons was OK. I remember that it must have taken me an afternoon to finish the book. But just like the DaVinci Code, I could only stomach 27 minutes of the associated movie with Tom Hanks. Ok, maybe for the DaVinci Code, it was about 30 minutes. I watched about that much. Taking breaks didn’t help. In the end, I just moved on.
Personally, I think Dan Brown books are alright. I think that if you like the DaVinci Code, you should really read Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Now that’s a great conspiracy book. When I was 17, I read the French translation, Le pendule de Foucault. There were so many complicated words that were used in this book, that I needed a dictionary in order to grasp it fully. I’m planning on reading it again, but don’t foresee any problems as I’ve read other Eco books without needing any reference books.(Baudolino, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana) None of these were as complex as Foucault’s Pendulum.
That kind of reminds me when I read War and Peace for the first time. I must have been 12 and had to stop when there were all these descriptions of troop movements. I started up again a few months later to finish the book. I remember the ratty old copy my mom had lying around. Strangely enough, this copy was taken by my wife to Asia when we moved there. She took it out of my library.
