The Lost Symbol 
Publication date/ Length: 2009 / 509 pages
Synopsis (from the jacket cover): “As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object — artfully encoded with five symbols — is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation…one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom.”
First line: The secret is how to die.
Review: So, how late am I to be reading Dan Brown’s latest now! But what a happy surprise I found it to be… I do not often read thrillers, but have enjoyed each of Brown’s novels to varying degrees.
I could do without the freaky monsters, of course, really not my thing… but I loved the philosophical bent to The Lost Symbol. While the theme is universal — which is the point of a theme, after all — I think the timing was quite welcome. We tend to get so caught up in our daily lives that we forget the potential that lies within us. So, I think enduring crazy tattoo man was a small price to pay for an reminder that our potential is so much greater than we ever realize. Powerful quotes, from Mandela’s sublime Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure to Glenda the Good Witch’s You had the power within you the whole time color the history of humankind, and Brown has added his own voice, cloaked in puzzles and riddles and fast-paced car chases, with a nice reminder that the voices that endure through the ages are often not the loudest, but the wisest…
Here is a sampling of lines that particularly resonated within the novel:
“…when we hear the truth, even if we don’t understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us… vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called… re-membered… re-cognized … as that which is already inside us.”
“And if we look at the darkness growing in the world today, we have to realize that this means there is equal light growing.”
“Small minds have always lashed out at what they don’t understand. There are those who create… and those who tear down.”
So, what a happy surprise this novel was… I started it out of obligation, but finished it with a renewed sense of gratitude…
