L for Leonardo Da Vinci

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

L is for Leonardo Da Vinci

"Langdon was talking in rapid bursts now. 'The Priory's membership has included some of history's most cultured individuals: men like Botticelli, Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo.' He paused, his voice brimming now with academic zeal. 'And, Leonardo Da Vinci.'

Sophie stared. 'Da Vinci was in a secret society?'

'Da Vinci presided over the Priory between 1510 and 1519 as the brotherhood's Grand Master, which might help explain your grandfather's passion for Leonardo's work. The two men share a historical fraternal bond. And it all fits perfectly with their fascination for goddess iconology, paganism, feminine deities, and contempt for the Church. The Priory has a well-documented history of reverence for the sacred feminine.'"

- from The Da Vinci Code, chapter 23

A portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci, a key figure in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code

K for Katherine Solomon

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

K is for Katherine Solomon

"Katherine Solomon had been blessed with the resilient Mediterranean skin of her ancestry, and even at fifty years old she had a smooth olive complexion. She used almost no makeup and wore her thick black hair unstyled and down. Like her older brother, Peter, she had gray eyes and a slender, patrician elegance."

- from The Lost Symbol, chapter 5

A Mediterranean woman with olive skin and dark hair, similar to how Dan Brown describes Katherine Solomon's appearance in The Lost Symbol

J for Jacques Sauniere

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

J is for Jacques Sauniere

"In the centre of the light, like an insect under a microscope, the corpse of the curator lay naked on the parquet floor.

"You saw the photograph," Fache said, "so this should be of no surprise."

Langdon felt a deep chill as they approached the body. Before him was one of the strangest images he had ever seen.

The pallid corpse of Jacques Sauniere lay on the parquet floor exactly as it appeared in the photograph. As Langdon stood over the body and squinted in the harsh light, he reminded himself to his amazement that Sauniere had spent his last minutes of life arranging his own body in this strange fashion."

- from The Da Vinci Code, chapter 6

The self-arranged corpse of Jacques Sauniere in the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

I for Illuminati

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

I is for Illuminati

""If you don't mind my asking, Robert, how did you get involved with the Illuminati?"

Langdon thought back. "Actually, it was money."

Vittoria looked disappointed. "Money? Consulting, you mean?"

Langdon laughed, realizing how it must have sounded. "No, money as in currency." He reached in his pants pocket and pulled out some money. He found a one-dollar bill. "I became fascinated with the cult when I first learned that U.S. currency is covered with Illuminati symbology.""

- from Angels and Demons, chapter 31

A U.S. one-dollar bill featuring the Illuminati pyramid and all-seeing eye

H for Hassassin

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

H is for Hassassin

"They were renowned not only for their brutal killings, but also for celebrating their slayings by plunging themselves into drug-induced stupors. Their drug of choice was a potent intoxicant they called hashish.

As their notoriety spread, these lethal men became known by a single word - Hassassin - literally, 'the followers of hashish.'

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

As the Hassassin stood there savoring his prize, he ignored the throb in his arm . . . 

Gazing down at his incapacitated prisoner, the Hassassin visualized what lay ahead. He ran a palm up beneath her shirt. Her breasts felt perfect beneath her bra. Yes, he smiled. You are more than worthy. Fighting the urge to take her right there, he closed the door and drove off into the night."

- from Angels and Demons, chapters 5 and 95

Hashish - not to be confused with chocolate!

G for Grail

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

G is for Grail

""The legend of the Holy Grail is a legend about royal blood. When Grail legend speaks of 'the chalice that held the blood of Christ' . . . it speaks, in fact, of Mary Magdalene - the female womb that carried Jesus' royal bloodline."

The words seemed to echo across the ballroom and back before they fully registered in Sophie's mind. Mary Magdalene carried the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ? "But how could Christ have a bloodline unless . . . ?" She paused and looked at Langdon.

Langdon smiled softly. "Unless they had a child."

Sophie stood transfixed.

"Behold," Teabing proclaimed, "the greatest cover-up in human history. Not only was Jesus Christ married, but He was a father. My dear, Mary Magdalene was the Holy Vessel. She was the chalice that bore the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. She was the womb that bore the lineage, and the vine from which the sacred fruit sprang forth!"

- from The Da Vinci Code, chapter 58

Leonardo Da Vinci's painting, "The Last Supper" in which the figure to the left of Jesus looks feminine, and with Jesus, forms the chalice symbol, a downward pointing arrow (V), which many scholars have interpreted to be in fact, Mary Magdalene.

F for Fibonacci

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

F is for Fibonacci

1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21

"This is the Fibonacci sequence," she declared, nodding towards the piece of paper in Fache's hand. "A progression in which each term is equal to the sum of the two preceding terms."

Fache studied the numbers. Each term was indeed the sum of the two previous, and yet Fache could not imagine what the relevance of all this was to Sauniere's death.

"Mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci created this succession of numbers in the thirteenth century..."

E is for energy

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

E is for energy

""Within a matter of years, modern man will be forced to accept what is now unthinkable: our minds can generate energy capable of transforming physical matter . . . Particles react to our thoughts . . . which means our thoughts have the power to change the world."

Langdon smiled softly.

"What my research has brought me to believe is this," Katherine said. "God is very real - a mental energy that pervades everything. And we, as human beings, have been created in that image -"

"I'm sorry?" Langdon interrupted. "Created in the image of . . . mental energy?"

"Exactly. Our physical bodies have evolved over the ages, but it was our minds that were created in the image of God. We've been reading the Bible too literally. We learn that God created us in his image, but it's not our physical bodies that resemble God, it's our minds.""

- from The Lost Symbol, chapter 133

D for Delta-One and Delta-Two

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

D is for Delta-One and Delta-Two

"Delta-One reentered the tent and addressed his two fellow soldiers. "Time for a flyby." 

Both men nodded. The taller of them, Delta-Two, opened a laptop computer and turned it on. Positioning himself in front of the screen, Delta-Two placed his hand a mechanical joystick and gave it a short jerk. A thousand meters away, hidden deep within the building, a surveillance robot the size of a mosquito received his transmission and sprang into life."

- from Deception Point, chapter 2

A small surveillance robot which can be used for espionage, as Dan Brown mentions in Deception Point

C for CERN

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

C is for CERN

The CERN building

"The world's largest scientific research facility - Switzerland's Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) - recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter. Antimatter is identical to physical matter except that it is composed of particles whose electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter.

Antimatter is the most powerful energy source known to man. It releases energy with 100 per cent efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5 per cent efficient). Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation, and a droplet could power New York City for a full day.

There is, however, one catch . . .

Antimatter is highly unstable. It ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything . . . even air. A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb - the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Until now, antimatter has been created only in very small amounts (a few atoms at a time). But CERN has now broken ground on its new Antiproton Decelerator - an advanced antimatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quantities."

- from Angels and Demons, FACT page

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN

Atoms are sent whizzing around underground tubes like this in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

The tubes comprising the Large Hadron Collider lie 175 metres under the ground and have a circumference of 27km. It is located near Geneva under the Swiss-French border

B for Bernini

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

B is for Bernini

"The note indicated that the famous Bernini sculpture, The Ecstasy of St Teresa, shortly after its unveiling, had been moved from its original location inside the Vatican . . . Pope Urban VIII had rejected The Ecstasy of St Teresa as too sexually explicit for the Vatican. He had banished it to some obscure chapel across town."

- from Angels and Demons, chapter 84

Bernini's The Ecstasy of St Teresa

A for Ambigram

Posting the A-Z of Dan Brown's books through his words, characters, places and more. Welcome to the A-Z April 2015 challenge...

A is for Ambigram

The word 'Illuminati' in this ambigram can be read right-side up as well as upside down

"Although accounts of the Illuminati emblem were legendary in modern symbology, no academic had ever actually seen it. Ancient documents described the symbol as an ambigram - ambi meaning 'both' - signifying it was legible both ways. And although ambigrams were common in symbology - swastikas, yin yang, Jewish stars, simple crosses - the idea that a word could be crafted into an ambigram seemed utterly impossible. Modern symbologists had tried for years to forge the word 'Illuminati' into a perfectly symmetrical style, but they had failed miserably. Most academics had now decided the symbol's existence was a myth."

- from Angels and Demons, chapter 9

Another ambigram featuring the words 'earth', 'air', 'fire' and 'water'

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

I have watched all the movies but amazingly, as yet, haven't read any of the books. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

It is great reading from cover to cover as we follow young Harry Potter discovering he's a wizard and immersing himself in his new school, Hogwarts, for wizards and witches.

I found Professor Snape to be the most fascinating of all the characters, and I look forward to see how he develops in the books as opposed to the movies.

For Teaser Tuesday, which is hosted by MizB, I have selected this paragraph near the end. Ok, it's more than two sentences, but it was the standout part of the book for me. I stopped reading to share it on facebook!

"Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realise that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign ... to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good."

Alex Ferguson's autobiographies; Teaser Tuesday

Alex Ferguson's two autobiographies

Perhaps the greatest British football manager ever, Alex Ferguson managed Manchester United for the best part of 27 years, an unparalleled feat of longevity in our time. Coupled with huge and continuous success, Alex Ferguson restored the glory years to this illustrious club, elevating it above Liverpool as the most successful English team in history.

"Managing My Life" is the first of his autobiographies beginning from his early days growing up in Govan, his days as a player in Scotland, his seasons as a manager in Scotland, and his spell in charge of Manchester United up until the famous Euorpean Cup final triumph on that magical night in Barcelona in 1999.

"One Year On - Fully Updated Edition" is the second of his works and covers his time from his first European Cup success up until his retirement, and beyond as the club moved forward under new management.

These two books provide the avid sports fan with a fascinating look into the world of football, the management of human beings, the daily hard work that it takes to be successful, behind-the-scenes intricacies involving players and coaches, transfer policies and transactions, balancing family life with work, while also looking back in some detail on momentous and significant matches which shaped Manchester United.

A thoroughly enjoyable and intriguing read, and rather unique of its kind. There will probably never be a manager again like Alex Ferguson who can stay for 27 years at a club the stature of Manchester United.



Here's a teaser from 'Alex Ferguson, One Year On,' by Alex Ferguson, in conjunction with Teaser Tuesday which is held by MizB at Should Be Reading:

"He was such a brilliant long passer that he could choose a hair on the head of any team-mate answering the call of nature at our training ground. Gary Neville once thought he had found refuge in a bush, but Scholesy found him from 40 yards."

Ok, I thought that was hilarious, but I guess you have to be a football fan to really appreciate it!