Angels & Demons

Imagine your name is Edwin Booth. You are an actor, in fact you are considered the greatest American stage actor to have ever lived. Yet today the average person has no idea who you are. They have never heard of you, but every single one of them knows your younger, less talented, president killing brother, John Wilkes.

Thus is the case of Angels & Demons which is far and away better than its more popular and hyped-up brother The Da Vinci Code.

So it's summer, and my favorite time of year mainly because, for every year of life I have always had a summer vacation. Every job I've had from the age 14 until now, over the months of June, July, & August, has either been part-time or temporary summer work. I have no real understanding of things like having to save paid time off days in order to take a summer vacation.

So with summer comes summer reading, and while I don't want to hype up this book too much because there is a difference between an entertaining book and a good one, Angels & Demons would be a perfect example of a beach book. First off, a 5th grader could read it. Mr. Brown isn't exactly James Joyce. Secondly, it has all the classic action/adventure cliches: the ticking bomb, the cliff hangers, the huge plot twists, the good guys who turn out to be bad guys, the love interest, the reluctant hero, and so on and so forth.

I'm a Christian but not Catholic so my reaction to the media focused, controversial elements of the book is from a slightly limited perspective, but with that said, I had a hard time seeing what all the hype was about. I mean it's a fictional story based on conspiracy theories. Interestingly enough there were many favorable, yet probably unintentional, pro-religion elements sprinkled throughout the story.

One last fact on Edwin Booth that's insanely interesting yet totally unrelated to all of this. Shortly before his brother became world famous, Edwin was at a railroad station when a young boy stumbled and began to fall in front of a moving train. Edwin was able to pull the boy out of harm's way saving the lad's life. The boy was Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the man Edwin's brother would later kill. This interesting tale and many more can be found in Assassination Vacation , a book by the voice of Violet in The Incredibles.