The Da Vinci Code

I was beginning to believe it was never meant to be. I had come so close to getting my hands on a copy of "The Da Vinci Code" on numerous occasions but only to have some unforeseen occurence ruin things at the last moment. I had almost resigned myself to my fate and decided to wait for the movie when voila, I come across a pirated version in Royston's room last Wednesday evening. I'm normally a very slow reader of novels and can easily take a month or two to finish one. This time however, the book was completed from cover to cover in a time of 4 days which is quite easily a personal record. The reasons for the rapid completion lie as much in the excitement of the story as in the fact that this just-concluded weekend was my college Gathering and that gave me a lot of free reading time.
Being born a Roman Catholic (though I'm not one any more), this book has obviously challenged many facts that I've grown up believing in. The problem that I now face is that I do not know how much of what Dan Brown says is truth and how much is fiction. What all actually transpired and what was thrown in by the author in order to fabricate it into a tellable story.
I want to believe that all of his historical and religious facts are indeed bona fide. I want to believe that Jesus had a wife and a child and that the family line continued. I would like to believe that there exist somewhere on earth today his direct descendents. (It would just be so much cooler!) I would like to believe that the Holy Grail and the Sangreal Documents still exist and can some day (the sooner the better) be made public. It's not that I don't like the Vatican; it's just that I like the truth better.
I like the book because I have always been fascinated by the pre-Medieval (and Medieval) history of Europe and the Holy Land. That's also the reason why I absolutely loved "Timeline" by Michael Crichton. As far as purely writing style goes, Dan isn't the greatest author in the world, but he isn't the worst either. I liked the suspense, but you get the feeling that the plot gets a bit too weird at times. The ending is good though.
For any of you other losers out there who haven't read the book - it's worth one read, so go grab a copy!!