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?

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.

In an amusing coincidence, Columbia have signed screenwriter Steven Knight to adapt to the book for film (Akiva Goldsmith penned the two previous adaptations). With Brown’s book bringing positive press to the Masonic fraternity, some readers might remember that it was the late British author Stephen Knight (no relation, as far as I know) and his book The Brotherhood which instigated a major scare campaign against Freemasonry in the 1980s….

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In late 2003 it was pointed out to me that the dust cover of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code contained a number of curious ‘anomalies’: map co-ordinates in ‘mirror writing’, bolded letters hiding odd messages, and more. The reason for these strange inclusions became clear when Dan Brown announced in an interview that clues about the sequel to The Da Vinci Code were hidden on the cover of the bestselling book. By solving these puzzles and ciphers – and being conversant with many of the topics and resources Brown was likely to use in writing the sequel, I was able to write a complete primer on the as-yet unpublished book in late 2004 (the progenitor of this book you are holding now). In this very early ‘guide’ to the contents of The Lost Symbol – originally titled (and self-published) as Da Vinci In America – I gave background information on many of the topics that I surmised would be in the new book: Francis Bacon and the transmission of Rosicrucian philosophies, the history of Freemasonry, how ‘the Craft’ influenced America’s Founding Fathers, and the esoteric landscape of Washington, D.C. (including such exotic locales as the Scottish Rite’s “House of the Temple”).

When the cover artwork for The Lost Symbol was released in July 2009 I received the first confirmation that my research was on the right track. Though only the front cover and spine design was released prior to publication, it was enough to show that various locations in the American capital which I had written about were important to the new book.

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Remember you can buy the complete guide from Amazon US for just $9.95, or if you’re on the other side of the pond, from Amazon UK for £7.99 (mad prices, I know). If you’re really cheap, or on the cutting-edge of technology (or both), you can instead grab the Kindle version for just $5.99! Either way, I appreciate your interest!

Update 19th Dec, 2009: I’ve just posted a HTML version of the article as well.