In an ironic turn of events, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol has topped The Bible as the most highlighted book of all time on Amazon’s Kindle eReader:

Amazon has built a “Popular Highlights” section that showcases the book passages underlined by Kindle readers–a 21st Century twist on literary quotation. So far, that list has been dominated by The Shack by William P. Young, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

Here is the most underlined passage from Brown’s most higlighted title–underlined by 1,161 Kindle users: “Langdon came face-to-face with a bronze bust of Masonic luminary Albert Pike, along with the engraving of his most famous quote: WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OURSELVES ALONE DIES WITH US; WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OTHERS AND THE WORLD REMAINS AND IS IMMORTAL.”

Does that make Albert Pike bigger than Jesus?

Okay, so it’s not like Robert Langdon cracked a code and found the secret passageway into the Vatican Archives…but it’s interesting to note the indirect influence that may apply here. So go easy on me for the headline.

After centuries of being kept under lock and key, the Vatican has started opening its Secret Archives to outsiders in a bid to dispel the myths and mystique created by works of fiction such as Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.

The archives, until now jealously guarded from prying eyes, provide one of the key settings in Brown’s thriller, in which Harvard "symbologist" Robert Langdon, played in the 2009 film by Tom Hanks, races against time to stop a secret religious order, the Illuminati, from destroying Vatican City.

…They have been open to carefully vetted academic researchers for more than 100 years, but in the last few months the Vatican has granted tours to select groups of journalists and members of the public, allowing a glimpse into one of its inner most sanctums.

Note though that the ‘secret’ archives remain off-limits; so hardly the Vatican’s dirty laundry laid out for all to see. Full story here.

The paperback edition of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol will be released on October 19 of this year. The novel will be priced at $9.99 in the US market, with a print run of four million copies.