I'm not sure I'd want to read it, just because the bits and pieces I read really turned me off.

I think some novels get popular not for their artistry, but for the ideas they express. Questioning the official Christian version of history is getting more and more mainstream, and I think that's Brown's major contribution: mainstreaming the debates that have been raging for ages about how accurate the historical stuff in the Bible is.

It is getting people to ask questions, and that's not a bad thing.

Now the Holy Blood, Holy Grail thesis is very shaky. But the version of history it's attacking is also very shaky, and I think that's what the public is picking up on. From there, it might lead them to other, more solid attempts at reconstructing this stuff.

I don't know anything about Angels & Demons.