New Dan Brown book

The Final Symbol comes out on September 15th, according to Amazon and for those who care. I'm sure I'll end up reading it. I enjoyed the da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons in the same way I enjoyed Michael Crichton's later writings - as a diversion, preposterous but easy-to-get-lost-in books that I never took seriously, and so could enjoy for the light entertainment they were. Anything thought-provoking in his books is always "borrowed" from other authors (mostly pseudohistorians, or 'alternative historians' as they prefer to be called) such as Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln, Lynn Pinknett, Clive Prince, Margaret Starbird, and the like, anyway. All he does is weave a generic fictional tale around the idea to make them more palatable to the consumer, who for the most part abhors nonfiction unless it's a new diet or self-help or pop psychology book, or something else in a very narrow category. For that matter, I enjoy reading those alternative historians myself; I've even read John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, Michael Bauval, David Icke, Erich von Däniken and others who are quite off their rockers when it comes to being serious historians or researchers, but who I find quite entertaining in the way one wonders, "what if Hitler hadn't invaded Russia?" or "What if the Dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out by an asteroid?" At least I know when I'm reading far-out speculation and when I'm reading mainstream academic research. The only thing about 'Alternative History' that concerns me is that there are a lot of people who can't or don't make that distinction. The same holds for the Bible. I love reading the Bible, and books about the Bible, but I always know I'm reading fiction, or severely mangled semi-historical accounts combined with older mythical traditions, written by human beings with an agenda, mis-copied, mis-translated, added to and expurgated, and chosen from a great wealth of similar texts for political reasons centuries later to make up an official, nonsensical canon. It's fun and full of exciting mysteries but I don't take it seriously for a moment. Unfortunately, many people do. I think the Bible, the Qur'an, and the Torah should be labeled as fiction and put on the mythology shelf with the books about Zues, Mithras, Baal, and Isis. Stop treating that stuff as though it were true! I'd give all my business to the first bookstore that did this.