Well, I finally finished reading The DaVinci Code. The first half was exciting and intriguing, with the “gravitational pull” that I once heard Philip Yancey talk about at a writer’s conference, the momentum propelling you onward. Then you get to the middle, where Sir Teabing lays out a sordid history of conspiracy and repression regarding the truth about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. That part disturbed me because it was just so doggone heretical.

But after that, the book bogged down, lost its gravitational pull. And Dan Brown resorted to assorted implausibilities. I no longer felt eager, let alone compelled, to keep reading. So I forced myself to finish the thing, like stale chocolate cake after a full meal at Smokey Bones. Now I’m done and can happily move on to something else.

I’ve not yet seen the movie, which has been lambasted by every critic I’ve read. Of course, if they had given the movie good reviews, Christians would say, “Aha! Another example of the liberal media supporting an effort to discredit Christianity.” Jerry Falwell et al don’t know what to make of “liberal media” folks criticizing something which is, at heart, anti-Christian. Oh, what a complex world we inhabit!

Anthony Lane of the New Yorker is one of the top movie critics, and I devour every review he writes, whether or not I care about the movie. Lane is incredibly entertaining and dumps molten sarcasm on any movie (or element of a movie) he dislikes.Such was the case with “The DaVinci Code,” though in this case, Lane also skewers the book. You must read Lane’s review in the New Yorker. It’s a LOL read.

For example, in the movie Sir Teabing talks about the Council of Nicaea. Lane writes, “We get a flashback to the council in question, and I must say that, though I have recited the Nicene Creed throughout my adult life, I never realized that it was originally formulated in the middle of a Beastie Boys concert.” He mentions the appearance of a villain “hitherto suspected by nobody except the audience.”

Of the book, Lane says, “no question has been more contentious than this: if a person of sound mind begins reading the book at ten o’clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk?”

For me, one of life’s simple pleasures comes when I finish a book, and then get to decide what to read next. Such a moment came tonight. I finished Donna Leon’s “Death at La Fenice,” and now I can stand at my bookshelf–the top shelf, filled with books I haven’t read yet, but which I fully intend to read, eventually–and make a choice. I always end up reading the backs of the books, even though I’ve read them before, searching for some piece of description that will snag my interest sufficiently so that I declare to myself, “This is the book.”

I did that some already tonight. Haven’t made a selection yet.

So, let me review what I’ve been reading. For the past several novels, I’ve chosen detective-genre books set in unusual (for me) surroundings. Philip Kerr’s “March Violets” was a detective novel set in Berlin just before World War II began. Before that, I read Dan Fesperman’s “Small Boat of Great Sorrows,” set amidst the not-too-distant atrocities of present-day Bosnia. Both of those books were outstanding. Curt Colbert’s “Sayanorraville” took me into the post-WW2 Japanese and Chinese immigrant communities in Seattle. And now, the beautifully written “Death at La Fenice” featured a plodding detective in Venice, Italy.

Commissioner Guido Brunetti never displayed a hint of violence, and guns weren’t mentioned in the whole book. I loved this piece of description early on about Brunetti: “His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.” Superb!

In 2000, Pam and I spent a day in Venice. That’s where I first tasted the unparralled Italian ice cream called “gelato” (not a bit like what fraudsters might call “gelato” in the States). It was a little ice cream shop facing the main canal, just at the end of the covered bridge. Venice, thanks to global warming, is a doomed city. It’s already sinking somewhat, and massively heroic measures are being taken to hold back the sea. But with water levels bound to rise a foot or more in the next few decades, there’s not much that can be done.

Because of that single day’s experience in Venice, the book felt a bit familiar to me. Interestingly, while all the other books were written in first-person, which is the viewpoint of choice for detective fiction, this one was written in third person, and needlessly so, I think. Brunetti appeared in every scene, and you viewed every scene through his eyes, which makes it ideal for first-person (much more intimate) writing. When you, for instance, describe a room in a piece of fiction, you should describe it not from multiple different angles, but through the eyes of a single person located somewhere in that room (so you can say “To the left was…” and “Against the far wall stood…). In “Death at La Fenice,” everything was described through Brunetti’s eyes, but not by him, which I felt sacrifices something. But it worked okay. Brunetti is neither hard-bitten nor sarcastic, as are most protagonists in this genre. It was a well-done book with a satisfying ending (which I didn’t anticipate, despite the clues dropped along the way), but I’m not sure I’ll read another one. I prefer the first-person, quick-punching, pistol-waving investigators of the Chandler/Parker variety.

After reading these books set in exotic settings or different time periods, I’m not as interested in trade paperbacks by such mass-market novel juggernauts as John Sanford and James Patterson (though Robert Parker will never lose my favor). Chandler still does it best, but I’m fully intrigued by Philip Kerr’s “Berlin noir” books. He writes wonderfully, and the backdrop of Nazi Germany makes it engrossing. Alas, I don’t have another Kerr book on my shelf, so for now, I’ll force contentment from some other book.

The legend is that the same man wrote the Nancy Drew mysteries and the Hardy Boys mysteries. That’s not quite true, as I just learned from reading a wonderful article in The New Yorker. A guy named Edward Stratemeyer, a superb writer, came up with the idea of book series aimed at kids, and with continuing characters. But he didn’t have time to write them all. So, being quite the entrepreneur, he developed the idea of a “publishing syndicate.” He would send a writer an outline for a book, just enough to get him going, that person would write the book, then Stratemeyer would edit it for consistency and quality. This started around 1906 with a series called the Rover Boys. He eventually had 14 series going at once, with a slew of writers cranking the books out.

The books were basically ghost-written, and then published under the same name. In the case of Nancy Drew, it was “Carolyn Keene,” although a young college grad named Mildred Wirt wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books. That became Stratemeyer’s best-selling series, eclipsing the Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, and Tom Swift.

I used to read some of Mom’s Nancy Drew books, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. My wife, Pam, has the whole series, too. Now I find out that we probably didn’t read the same books. In 1959, the whole line of Nancy Drew books was updated. Among other things, Nancy’s age increased from 16 to 18. Offensive stereotypes were expunged. Lots of stuff. Those are the books most of today’s readers remember. But I had Mom’s books, which predated 1959. I’m sure they were more pure and wholesome.

The Hardy Boys books, which came before Nancy Drew, attracted severe criticism from educators and librarians. They said “the harm done is simply incalculable.” The series would “debauch and vitiate” a child’s imagination. The books were simply escapist, with no overriding moral theme. Keep in mind that in the early 1900s, most kids were growing up on farms, and kids worked hard. For a boy to lay around reading a mystery book…that probably didn’t sit well with farm dads.

So I’m thinking of parallels. Despite the early condemnations, today people look at Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys as good, clean, safe reading for any kids. The TV shows I watched during my childhood were probably blasted by conservative Christian groups, though we now look back on 1960s TV fare and say, “That was good, wholesome entertainment.” People used to rant about how families didn’t converse with each other or do things together–they just sat in a room like a bunch of zombies and stared at the boob tube. So people claimed. But today, families don’t even do that together–each member of the family has a TV or computer or X-Box in his/her own room, and they part ways for the evening. I remember very fondly my whole family looking forward to Friday night, when we would don our PJs (with the built-in feet) and gather in the family room to watch “Friday Night at the Movies.” Mom would make her wonderful buttered popcorn, and we’d have Pepsi. Good times. Are there families today that spend the evening watching, together, “Desperate Housewives”? I hope not.

Until the mid-to-late 1800s, the United Brethren church had some strict rules against music. We outlawed choirs in 1861, reasoning that everyone was supposed to sing at the same time, not just part of the congregation. In 1865, we outlawed using instrumental music in church services. Those prohibitions were removed in 1885, and I’m sure people, being people, decried it as the liberalizing of the church.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen how shocked people are when we add drums and guitars to a traditional hymn. Imagine in the 1800s when people, for the first time, heard a mere piano used with a hymn, instead of singing only acapella. Maybe there were fierce debates about adding an organ along with the piano, and people who complained that the newfangled organ sounds just didn’t go right with a hymn. Of course, the piano-organ thing was the norm for me.

In my church, we’re doing some of the new songs that combine a hymn with a few new lyrics. Like Todd Agnew’s “Grace Like Rain” (Amazing Grace) and Chris Tomlin’s version of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” Today’s generation, having never heard the unadulterated hymnbook version, will assume that that’s how it was originally written. Just like readers of Nancy Drew after 1959 assumed they were getting the original book, when actually it was an older, more contemporary Nancy Drew.

I guess we shouldn’t be quick to criticize changes in society or the church. Because, 20 years down the road, we’ll probably wonder what all the fuss was about.