Author Dan Brown seems to be book lovers’ Sarah Palin: They either love him or hate ‘em. And his stories seem just as open to diverse interpretation.

News of his next novel, coming a mere six years after the blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code,” is being rolled out with almost as much finesse as the final book  in the Harry Potter series. Yesterday, Doubleday let us peek at the book jacket for “The Lost Symbol,” which has a strict on-sale date of Sept. 15. The publisher plans to tease readers until then with secret codes and puzzles, including hints on Facebook and Twitter.

Whether you liked “The Da Vinci Code” or not, Knopf Doubleday knows what it’s doing by ordering a first printing of 5 million books. (This writer’s position is that yeah, the “Code” is goofy junk that Brown never should have claimed was backed by historical fact. And that means its conspiracy story goes down as easily, enjoyably, regrettably as a double chocolate shake.)

Scottish Rite temple in Washington D.C.

Set in Washington D.C. and featuring Brown’s symbolist Robert Langdon, the Freemason seal on “The Lost Symbol”  seems to allude to a Scottish Rite emblem (the book is expected to use the Scottish Rite temple in Washington as part of its plot).  If you enlarge the book jacket at Amazon.com and squint really hard at the seal, it seems to show a double-headed eagle, a triangle with the Masonic number 33 and the Latin phrase Ordo Ab Chao (order out of chaos).

Also on the book cover is a picture of the Capitol building, with various other symbols in the background.

I admit to be more intrigued by the symbols in Brown’s stories than I should be. After all, we’re living in a world of 21st-century symbols that I can’t make heads or tails of (they are on road signs, car dashboards, electronic gizmos), and I usually just find them annoying.

Are you looking forward to Brown’s next book? Admit it. Someone is ordering it - it’s already ranked No. 2 at both Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.