The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

This is the third book in the Robert Langdon series by Dan Brown. I had read The DaVinci Code first and then followed it up with the first book, Angels and Demons. Angels and Demons was a slower book than DaVinci Code but not too much. It's been awhile but The Lost Symbol seemed almost as fast paced as The DaVinci Code. It only took about 2 days to read.

This book is set in Washington DC and incorporates the legends and symbols of the Masons and how the founders of the country fit into the Masonic history. It also covers some pretty groovy science, Noetic Science.

As always, Dan Brown did a great job combining ancient myth, legend and mysticism with modern reality and science.

From what I can tell, the provable science of Noetics in the book is a bit further along than reality. Although, my research regarding Noetics has been pretty cursory at this point.

I really enjoyed this book. It was fast paced but kept my brain moving with a variety of story lines going at once as well as hitting on ancient beliefs of many kinds and modern science and "reality." I recommend this to anyone looking for a quick, easy and fun read.

Into The Beautiful North

Into the Beautiful North - Luis Alberto Urrea

This was a fun book, an entertaining read and, once I actually had time to sit and read, it went fast.

Most of the book is dialog so it reads fast. Some of the dialog is Spanish and if you don't speak Spanish and want to look up the words, it could slow you down a bit. Mostly, you can get away with not worrying about it because the rest of the dialog and text explains enough that you get the idea of what was said.

This is a story of a young woman and her friends in a small, rural coastal village in Sinaloa, Mexico. One day the woman realizes that, not only did her father leave to go north, so did every other man in town. Soon, drug dealers have figured this out as well and decide to move into this territory. After watching the movie, The Magnificent Seven, the woman decides she must go north into the US and get her father and 6 other men to come back and rescue the town from the drug dealers and help revitalize and populate the town as well.

Our heroine and her friends venture north to Tijuana having many adventures and questioning their logic and purpose all the while. Once at the border, they must figure out how to survive and then figure out how to cross the border.

They find their seven warriors and many more. They also learn much about themselves as people and as Mexicans. It is an interesting view of America from the perspective of a Mexican who just wants to go back to Mexico.

I highly recommend this book. It would be a great vacation book. It is a new book and not yet available in paperback so look for it at a book exchange or Costco or get it from the library.