I finished The Da Vinci Code the other night… I found once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down! Caused lots of lost sleep…
!!!Spoiler Alert!!! Don't read any further if you don't want to ruin some of the surprises.
I really liked the book. I've read conflicting reviews on it - people seem to hate it or love it. It's quite controversial, in that it does attack the Catholic Church and Opus Dei quite heavily… Lucy (my girlfriend) came from a high school that is run by Opus Dei, and although she is aware of the corporal mortification that some people practise, she has never heard of members of Opus Dei acting as they did in the book. I personally doubt that the people of Opus Dei are anything like the characters in the book, so I'm not sure if it was totally fair of the author (Dan Brown) to portray them like that. I'm open to evidence to the contrary, though…
What I was really interested in was the whole concept of the 'Sangraal', or Holy Grail, which the main character, Robert Langdon, was searching for. The book is a work of fiction, but I wonder how much of it is fiction? If such documents do exist, and if Jesus was mortal, did have sex and was married to Mary Magdalene, to whom he passed his Church onto, then it puts a big hole into the Christian churches, especially the Catholic Church. The fact that the author referenced many of Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings and the imagery in them gives the theory a bit of credibility… Next time I'm at Chatswood, I think I'll pop into a book store and have a look at some of the books written about… this book.
I'm not thinking very well. Trying to watch E.R. and typing this is a bit of a struggle. Who said men can multi-task? 
Update: I happened to find a list of books on Technorati.com that were being discussed, and came across a few reviews of the book. There's a short, but good, one at Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog that picked up on some thoughts I neglected to mention. The author's right in saying that everyone's reaction to the book has only made it more popular. If there wasn't such a kerfuffle about it, many people would not have heard about it!
I found another review at Chance's Blog. I know exactly how this person feels: I found myself thinking "I'll finish this chapter, then quit reading," only to find myself desperately wanting to go on to the next chapter to see what happens. I think that's generally the sign of a good book.
Man, you watch ER? Lame-o.