Books like Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind the Da Vinci Code

I have an almost flashbulb memory of reading The DaVinci Code– I was 20, backpacking Europe for six months and staying for a few days with my best friend at her live-in B&B job in London. After Tube delays caused me to miss my discount early morning flight out to Berlin, I headed back into the city and spent the day reading Dan Brown’s thriller. As a lapsed United Church churchgoer, I wasn’t heavily undone by any of the religious conspiracies in the novel, but I was thrilled to be reading the book in London, which features prominently. I was in one of the greatest cities in the world, and I remember not being sad at all about staying inside and reading all day.Fast-forward 15 years and Secrets of the Code, a fan’s non-fiction compilation companion to The DaVinci Code has been collecting dust on my bookshelves, given to me years ago by friends but since languishing unread. I’ve thought many times about just donating this book to Goodwill without reading it, but that The DaVinci Code memory was too good and I thought I should at least attempt Secrets before I donated. So here we are!As noted above, this book itself is a fan’s compilation of non-fiction pieces relating to the various ‘mysteries’ that Dan Brown based his novel on. It gives each ‘mystery’ its own section (ie: ‘Who Was Mary Magdalene?’, ‘Was there a Conspiracy to Hide the Gnostic Gospels?’, ‘What Were the Knights Templar Up To?’, etc.), and then gives a) a quick summary of what the DaVinci Code has to say about these topics; and b) some unfiltered critical/academic articles on the same. Unsurprisingly, and as a consequence of being largely excerpts from other critical non-fiction works, it is a fairly disjointed and uneven text. Although Burstein attempts to provide different perspectives (ie: some pro some con on the answers to these ‘mysteries’), he doesn’t weigh in to evaluate the different critical perspectives, and I would’ve appreciated hearing his take. He did all the legwork and likely read much more than what was excerpted here- what conclusions did he come to?All this being said, I am glad I read Secrets before I donated, as this book has kicked off some Wikipedia searches that make me feel smarter (ie: there are actually other ‘ancient gospels’ found in Egypt in modern times, although what they mean and how they relate to the established gospel is still up for debate) and other reading that I’ve always half wondered about but had never gotten around to actually doing.