Brown's "The Lost Symbol" pulpy and preachy

"The Lost Symbol,"

by Dan Brown

Can the writing style of a novelist get boring by just the third book?

I'm sure Doubleday is going to sell enough copies of Dan Brown's latest puzzler to wallpaper every monument and public building in Washington, DC inside and out. However.

Although I really liked "The Da Vinci Code," "Angels & Demons" wasn't that good and didn't hit the charts until Da Vinci made the author famous, and frankly "The Lost Symbol" got to be 500-plus pages to fight through.

By chapter 126 I was struggling to stay awake, and there were seven more chapters and an epilogue to go.

First-time readers of Brown may find the sleuthing of main character Robert Langdon fun to follow, but readers of Brown's first two Langdon novels are likely to see the tramping about Washington in search of clues as formulaic -- way too similar to the tramping about Paris and Rome in those earlier works.

Throw in the usual gruesome deaths and violent tortures, Brown's usual mysterious society -- this time the Masons -- and you've got your typical pulp novel. Of course that doesn't make for a 500-page book, so Brown does readers the real disservice of going way too deeply into explanations about ancient philosophies, symbols, religions, languages, sciences, archeology, plus off-the-chart mind-over-matter silliness, all of which seems like filler in what should be an action-packed story.

Anti-religion once again

Catholics and others who practice a traditional life of faith will notice that Langdon, Brown's protagonist, continues in this latest novel the insidious assault on organized religion and its traditions that he put forward in "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons."

Brown does his best to work in subtle jabs at the Catholic Church in particular and other faiths as well, questioning the veracity of truths they teach in some cases, in other times bluntly alluding to what he paints as errors.

An example is a passage half-way through the novel. You need not even know the context to see what I mean:

"Then he discovered the writings of Aleister Crowley -- a visionary mystic from the early 1900s -- whom the church had deemed 'the most evil man who every lived.'"

Really Mr. Brown? Two sources I read credit the British press -- not "the church" -- with calling Crowley "The Wickedest Man in the World." And your brief reference to him as "a visionary mystic" hardly do justice to the depraved person Crowley was.

Interested readers should Google Aleister Crowley to see what kind of person Brown is holding up to his readers as he puts down "the church."

Minus the overbearing scientific explanations and the graduate-school lessons in antiquities, "The Lost Symbol" might almost be a decent page-turner of a story. But then Brown succumbs to the temptation to get preachy.

Much of the reading satisfaction that was to be savored gets sucked right out. -- bz

Bishops are people, too! Who knew?

"Effective Faith,"

by Bishop Thomas J. Tobin

I've just read Bishop Thomas Tobin's book for the second time, and I liked it just as much as I did the first time.

I'd only spent a handful of hours in the bishop's company a few years ago, but I was invited to read a proof of a collection of newspaper columns that he'd written for diocesan newspapers in Ohio and Rhode Island.

What I said about the writing of the Bishop of Providence then ended up as an endorsement on the back cover:

"Bishops are people, too! Who knew? Expecting a book by a bishop to be dry and theological? 'Effective Faith' . . . is the antithesis. Meet a down-to-earth, self-effacing human being who happens to be a Catholic priest and bishop."

Teaching without preaching

I added at the time that this collection of columns deserves a wider audience, and I'm glad that Seraphina Press from Minneapolis has made that possible with this easy-reading, 175-page paperback.

What the bishop does best is take the news of the day -- the topics real people are talking about -- and make them the perfect subject matter to grab readers' attention and engage them in the lessons that life keeps teaching him.

That means writing about sports, about casinos, about how life changes, about all the "stuff" in his life and ours and the need to get rid of some of the baggage.

One of my favorite chapters is "The Gospel at 30,000 Feet," where he describes getting the third-degree about the church from a non-Catholic seat-mate on an airplane. The questioning is priceless!

There's a beautiful chapter about his interior thoughts as he held the baby he'd just baptized and pondered the world she would find on her journey.

"Ashley's World" lets us all into Bishop Tobin's world, if you will, and the questions we all have about what the future holds.

The chapters are short, worth savoring one a day for 40 days, worth reading and spending time reflecting on our own view of life, faith, the issues of our day and our own little world.

Nice job, bishop. -- bz

Quotes show comments in past were as nasty as today's

"Distory,"

by Robert Schnakenberg

Don't believe the voices clamoring about our 21st-century society being exceptionally rude and willing to belittle others more virulently than ever.

"Distory" proves that people -- especially some in high office -- have been saying ugly things about the rest of God's children for a good long time.

When Charles the Fifth led the Holy Roman Empire, he slammed an entire country: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse."

Nineteenth-century Speaker of the U.S. House of Representative Thomas Reed blasted congressmen of his time with the cutting remark, "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge."

And author Charles Dickens once called Henry VIII "a blot of blood and grease upon the history of England."

The whole book is like that, a series of quotations by individuals who have taken the kidgloves off and vented about another.

Insults through the years

Because the quotes are organized into chapters of insults by and about a) Americans, b) Brits, c) military figures, d) other nations and e) miscellaneous, and because they are listed chronologically, "Distory" can claim to teach us a bit of history as well.

Robert Schnakenberg subtitles this St. Martin's Press work "A Treasury of Historical Insults."

"Treasury" might not be the choice of nouns that polite folks would have used. In fact, some of the remarks are clever and witty. Others plain mean and graceless.

But I found it valuable to read the American chapter from beginning to end. It was a refresher course in history -- and a mostly witty one at that. I learned, too, what some of the great names in history felt about others of their time, perspectives that weren't in my elementary or high school history books.

Guess about whom pamphleteer Tom Paine -- the lauded author of "Common Sense" -- called "treacherous in private friendship . . . and a hypocrite in public life"?

Would you believe George Washington?

John Quincy Adams termed Andrew Jackson "a barbarian who cannot write a sentence of grammar and can hardly spell his own name."

General George McClellan called Abraham Lincoln "nothing more than a well-meaning baboon."

Teddy Roosevelt said that William McKinley "has a chocolate eclair backbone."

Press no shrinking violets

Media are often accused of being much more mean than their predecessors, but Baltimore Sun columnist H.L. Mencken was as nasty as they get when it comes to insults. He wrote this about Franklin D. Roosevelt:

"If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he sorely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House backyard come Wednesday."

Journalist Hunter S. Thompson at the end of the 20th century had a poison pen as well. Thompson on Richard Nixon:

"He was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad."

And Gerald Ford said, "Jimmy Carter wants to speak loudly and carry a fly swatter."

Brits: Masters of the 'craft'

Our friends across the pond, of course, have made political insults a science. Politico John Bright in the 19th century said of prime minister Benjamin Disraeli: "He is a self-made man and worships his creator."

Disraeli came back with this about the man who was both his predecessor and his successor, William Gladstone: "If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone pulled him out, it would be a calamity."

My favorite quotations, however, are this clever bit of repartee between playwright George Bernard Shaw and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Shaw: "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend -- if you have one." Churchill replied: "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second -- if there is one." -- bz

When baby No. 2 comes along...

"Not Yet, Rose,"

written by Susanna Leonard Hill,

illustrated by Nicole Rutten

"Is the baby here yet?"

Every parent who has another baby on the way will empathize with the answer "Not Yet, Rose."

Better yet, parents will want to read it to their toddlers -- and because the story is so right on, they won't mind reading it over-and-over -- fact-of-life for parents of toddlers -- because it offers such teachable moments.

Teachable moments for adults are there, too, for those able to get past the exasperation of their child/children and see the book's parents as role models worth emulating.

Sibling rivalry is most likely going to happen later, for sure, but Hill's gentle touch is sure to ease the mind of many a first-born as they wonder about their own life after the baby comes out of mommy's tummy.

Will my life change? Will it be the same?

Do I want a brother? Would a sister be better?

Maybe I don't want a brother or a sister at all!

Rutten's illustrations with their soft palate and warm tones create just the right atmosphere for cuddling up with this wonderfully done book from Eerdmans.

Baby No. 2 on the way? Buy this book. -- bz