21. Angels & Demons - Dan Brown

People told me that if I loved The DaVinci Code I would find Angels & Demons less than enthralling ... I guess that is just one more reason why I don't always listen to what other people tell me. I mean, yeah, both books followed a similar plot path and neither had any heart stopping character development. But what I loved about both books were the puzzles and the historical tid-bits provided. I am savvy enough to know that there were some inaccuracies and I'm not going to take all the information between the pages at face value - but I wouldn't do that with a history book anyways. What I enjoyed was how the history was presented and how I started thinking about the Church and about Rome and about art history in particular.

Angel's & Demons holds a special place in my heart simply by being set in Rome because I have a not very secret love affair with that city. I loved travelling through the streets and seeing the sights when I was there. I loved the heat (although not so much the feeling that I was melting at first), and the crowds of people and nearly getting killed by mopeds. And I have long had a fascination with Roman history - with the mythology and the architecture and the sheer scope and size of it all.

I was annoyed with one small inaccuracy though - when we tried to visit the Pantheon we discovered the hard way that it closed at 5pm daily. So the fact that there were people trooping in and out of there at 10pm was frustrating. Because I really wanted to go inside.