The Red Book Club

Read, Eat and Drink!

Upcoming Events

For August, our book is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and we'll be discussing it at Margaret's on Monday, August 25th at 7pm.

If the idea of a mystery that draws on the history of religion and art sounds like the kind of "must read" you've picked up before only to find yourself bored silly (i.e., Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose"), let me hasten to reassure you that Brown, for all the facts he throws around, operates squarely in the territory of the pop bestseller. "The Da Vinci Code" doesn't offer the kind of solid descriptive writing you find in the work of the best practitioners of crime fiction. Brown appears to be the kind of writer who hits on a snazzy gimmick and then mines it for all it's worth. And it's one hell of a gimmick.

Dan Brown was born and raised in the small New England town of Exeter, New Hampshire. The son of a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, he grew up in a house full of books on a street where John Irving used to live. After graduating from Exeter and from Amhearst College, Dan followed in his father's footsteps by teaching English at Exeter. His debut novel, Digital Fortress (St. Martin's Press, 1998) is a heart-pounding techno-thriller about a beautiful and brainy NSA cryptographer who must defeat a madman's sick plan to cripple the U.S. intelligence community. With non-stop action, cutting edge intelligence data, romance and a very real controversy about personal privacy versus the threat of terrorism, the book is garnering rave reviews from critic and fans alike, and just went into its third printing. When he's not writing or touring for his new book, Dan can usually be found hiking, playing tennis or squash or indulging his passion for music composition.