I see your point, though. I dashed off this review because, as I said, I am conflicted. I will say this, I liked it well enough to snatch up copies of ‘The Island of the Day Before’ and ‘Baudolino’ at a recent library sale. I also bought ‘The Name of the Rose’ at my local independent bookstore.

Really, though, after reading Le Code, I can see how you’d make that association. It’s dense, and wraps itself in layers of hermetic and tangential meaning. And both books (though Eco’s to better effect) have a central core which explores created meaning, and the need for that meaning to be in turn invested with belief by people.

However, Eco explores an intellectual and metaphysical plain which Dan Brown doesn’t even get near, much less touch. If you don’t believe me, check out “The Island of the Day Before,” a brilliant book with a narrator stranded on a ship in a bay by himself. Easily the most entertaining stuck-by-yourself-on-a-deserted-ship feel-good book of 2005!

And seriously, Umberto Eco will mess you up.