Da Vinci Code

After more than two years dominating The New York Times best-seller list, The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, is dropping off the list, at least temporarily. In the week ended Oct. 29, The Da Vinci Code ranked 16th in the statistically weighted survey of almost 4,000 bookstores and wholesalers serving 50,000 other retailers. Therefore, it will be missing from the list of the top 15 best-selling books, to be published in the Nov. 13 edition of The Times Book Review. On the list to be published today, The Da Vinci Code ranks No. 12, in its 136th consecutive week on the list.

HOLLYWOOD - Not a single foot of film has been shot, the movie doesn't open for a year and a few critics already are denouncing it, but The Da Vinci Code nevertheless has made its multiplex debut. Sony Pictures, the studio behind the Ron Howard-directed adaptation of Dan Brown's mammoth best-selling novel, has released a short Da Vinci Code trailer, which has been playing in a number of theaters just before Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. The "teaser" trailer, as such early previews are called, is debuting just as Britain's Westminster Abbey announced it would not allow Howard's movie to film there because the abbey considers the book "theologically unsound."

WHEN I GAVE the assignment to students in my opinion-writing class at the Johns Hopkins University a few years ago to write a review of any book they had ever read, I was expecting quite a bit of variety. It's a good thing I don't get tired of being wrong. One after the other, the reviews came in. More often than not, they were for a book I'd never heard of: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Hey, what can I tell you? I'm addicted to nonfiction books. I am, after all, in the business of nonfiction writing.

Fans of Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, have been obsessed with his next book since he revealed earlier this year that The Da Vinci Code cover contains clues about his next novel. What it does not contain is the title, which will be The Solomon Key, a nugget Brown's publisher, Stephen Rubin, let slip recently during a lunch with reporters who cover the book industry. The book, whose release date has not been announced, is likely to be the most anticipated novel to hit stores in years, not least because The Da Vinci Code, published in March 2003, is still selling tens of thousands of copies a week.

They came in masses: teachers, social workers, even the odd biblical scholar, filling the 420-seat auditorium at the Walters Art Museum and spilling into the hallway. Some drove for an hour or more on a work night to watch five people sit on stage and talk about a book. Such is the appeal of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown's fictional treatise that melds together the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Catholicism, the Holy Grail, murder and secret societies. Barely 19 months after it was published, the book's publisher already is claiming that it is the most popular hardcover book yet printed.

He dissected 30 bodies, kept about 20,000 pages of notes and seldom finished what he started. But nearly 500 years after his death, Leonardo da Vinci can still draw a crowd - not only as an artist, but as a scientist. Tonight, a sellout crowd of more than 400 will gather at the Walters Art Museum to hear Kennedy Krieger Institute researcher Jonathan Pevsner discuss da Vinci's genius, focusing on the Renaissance master's study of the human brain. Scholars have spent careers deciphering da Vinci's sketches of flying ships, his catapults and the prescient knowledge of his celestial observations.

An interview with Liz Tomalis, founder of the Fulton Ladies Book Club. Why did you start this book club? I had been in one in another state and really liked it. So I started asking people that I met socially if they would like to join one. Who are the Fulton Ladies? We are a group of women who mostly have children at Fulton Elementary or who live in the Fulton area. We needed another outlet besides working, carpooling, kids, all that stuff. How long have you been meeting? We started in September.