I finished Angels and Demons the other day, and I just finished The Da Vinci Code. I must say that I rather enjoyed both of them. Angels and Demons, to me, was a better read, but that's b/c there was more action and the character had more to lose. Good books.

I'm now going to read The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. We'll see how that one goes.

I recently finished a booked called "Mao the unknown story" about Chinese communist dictator Mao Tse-tung (if you couldn't figure that out from the title). It paints a very different picture of the late Chairman than is typically present in many circles. Mao is typically depicted as a Heroic champion of the down trodden masses who through cunning guerrilla tactics defeated the nationalist army of Chiang Kai Shek and struggled against the occupying army of the Japanese empire is revealed as a cruel sadistic tyrant who barely had a hand in fighting the Japanese and rather than being a liberator of the poor and underprivileged drove China to even deeper depths of poverty. I'm inclined to believe that generally Mao is viewed as a tyrant by most people and only admired by EXTREME radicals so i really don't see the need for ?unknown story? subtitle but the book is so detailed and meticulously researched anyone interested in Mao will likely find it interesting. On a resent search i discovered that there is a severe lack of books written on the subject of Mao and a google search usually  turns up little more than quotations from his Little red book and various other of his writings so i was extremely pleased to read this book. The interview list was very impressive including virtually every person who knew Mao who is still alive outside of china as well as an impressive host of international figures. ( The Dali Lama, Henry Kissinger, and so on). Fans of the chairman will not likely enjoy the book and might even declare it to be propaganda (though i have yet to encounter one who is able to counter the facts presented in the book ) as it disputes many of the central ideas  of Mao's image ( He spend the long march on a bamboo litter reading books while his men died from exhaustion ) but i think most people with an interest in history will enjoy this book.