After trying to implement this nifty script in Python 3.2, which is by the way impossible because the Python 3.x ports both PIL and PythonMagick refuse to work, I said dammit, I can also write the blog post I was planning to write anyway.

Ok, so I read The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. You might remember, the guy who wrote an innocent book about the church and got lots and lots of publicity. I read all his books years ago and for the most part, enjoyed them. So I picked The Lost Symbol and was quite disappointed, up to the point of rethinking my previous judgements.

Here’s why: it is stereotypic and repetitive. I read the book in, maybe a week, because the style is admittedly flowing quite well and hooked up the reader. But it has lots of chapters and many of these chapters recapitulate in the first paragraphs what happened in the previous chapter. Some readers may remember that the Harry Potter books do the same at the beginning of each book, but there it serves a purpose, because they were released years in between. The chapters in The Lost Symbol are meant to be read more or less in one go.

So, why stereotypic? Well, because the “hackers” are portrayed in the stereotypical way how any cheap movie would show them. I think we moved past that. Also, Langdon has no development and apart from knowing his symbolism and being every woman’s darling, no personality. While I do not expect him to be a super-sophisticated character, halfway though the book I just stopped caring about him, whether he is caught or anything.

And then there is the missed chances. There could’ve been some interesting plot turns especially about the origin of the antargonist or well, by simply getting rid of Langdon in an interesting way. But Dan Brown chose not to do it, because, maybe it would make it harder to write a next book where Langdon goes to yet another city and solves other ancient mysteries with the help of another beautiful woman.

Oh and don’t get me started on the “science” part. That was just so much bullshitting and not explained in any credible way that it was just silly. Also, the mysteries in this book seemed to me to simple. I am by far no person with any sort of special knowledge in ancient stuff, but many of the riddles, especially at the beginning were obvious even to me.

After all, not a bad book as I read the 600-odd pages in a week, but I felt some kind of guilt to be absorbed in such a cheesy story.