Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code sold 88 million copies. I want you to roll that figure around in your head for a moment. 88 million. Yes, well done, you’re correct, that does indeed make The Da Vinci Code one of the highest selling books of all time. In fact, if you take out the religious books and political manifestos, it manages to enter the list at somewhere between fourth and fifth. Right behind Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, The Lord of the Rings and an Agatha Christie novel that I’ve never heard of.
Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code. Now, see, I’ve read the book. And it remains, to this day, the only book that I have ever thrown on the ground in utter disgust when I finished it. Disgust at the book, certainly, but also disgust at myself for having finished it in 24 hours (I was sick at the time, don’t judge me too harshly). Certainly as I rounded the final 100 pages I was becoming increasingly delirious with fever and sub-par fiction, but by that point there was no way out except through the denouement. And, I assure you, the conclusion to The Da Vinci Code could well be re-titled ‘The Final Insult’ so poorly does it tie together everything that has come before.
But nonetheless, it sold, it really sold. I was working in a bookshop at the time and witnessed the phenomenon firsthand. It was terrifying. But apparently people really arc up for a massively pretentious, faux-historical tome of pseudo-scandalous sacrilege written in a style that could only really be described as ‘laboured’, and featuring a protagonist with all the personality of a fridge with legs. I mean, at least Harry Potter chimed with emotional resonance. By contrast, The Da Vinci Code was, in every sense, a sequence of dull thuds.
Whew. Good to get that off my chest.
Anyway. Dan Brown’s long-awaited follow up finally hit the shelves on Tuesday. It’s about the Freemasons. Ooooh. As you can guess, I probably won’t be reading it. But on the plus side, it has given birth to a new array of entertaining and excoriating reviews, as well as this hilarious list of Dan Brown’s 20 Worst Sentences from the UK’s Telegraph. The commentary is what makes it.
10. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 4: Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow.
Did they hit him with the kaleidoscope?
and
8. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 3: My French stinks, Langdon thought, but my zodiac iconography is pretty good.
And they say the schools are dumbing down.
It’s that brand of charming snideness that only the British can really pull off, but it does make me feel a little better about the fact that Dan Brown is almost assuredly, right now, throwing hundred dollar bills into the pit of a volcano, just because he can.
For someone who loves books, I do seem to hate an awful lot of them.
/Luke
8 responses so far ↓
1 Simon // Sep 18, 2009 at 4:16 pm
How does that drivel get past an editor?
2 Maddy // Sep 18, 2009 at 9:51 pm
My favourite is this stuff:
“He was sitting all alone in the enormous cabin of a Falcon 2000EX corporate jet as it bounced its way through turbulence. In the background, the dual Pratt & Whitney engines hummed evenly. ”
I read the book when i was roughly thirteen and I just remember going, “Why do I care what the effing engines are?! Show me a narrative, or at least some more gore! None of this makes sense! “
3 Taylor // Sep 18, 2009 at 11:55 pm
LOL @Maddy…so true!
I’ll confess to having read DaVinci and Angels & Demons (A&D being the better of the two, neither of them really being good, per se).
But I won’t be drawn into this wacky Freemasonry. No thanks, Dan.
4 blotto // Sep 19, 2009 at 8:35 am
the thing is luke if you really love something then you can see the faults in everything about your passion.
books just like television movies and video games get produced at such an alarming speed that so much bullshit is out there it takes a true connoisseur to distinguish the crap from the gold.
so consider yourself lucky you can find the gold amongst all this pre digested bullshit
kudos to you for being able too cause i actually enjoyed the shit house dan brown books. says alot about me dont it
5 Rach // Sep 21, 2009 at 3:59 pm
You didn’t work at Dymocks in Garden City, did you? Because I swear I had a massive Dan Brown centric bitching session with one of their employees around the time everyone was cuddling The Da Vinci Code every night before bed.
6 Luke // Sep 21, 2009 at 4:01 pm
@Rach: no I did not, I was working at a very nice independent bookshop in Perth, which made the whole thing even more traumatic. The ladies who lunch were buying it like street grade heroin.
7 Kia // Sep 22, 2009 at 11:33 am
Lol! I devour books at a rate of about 1 per 2 days and when I get a shit book the shitness is directly proportionate to the length of time it takes me to read it. Davinci Code took me two whole freaking painful weeks.
Dan Brown = mundane.
On a side note: I fell prey to the Twilight series. All 4 books took me 4 days and it was while I was working full-time too. $30 per book but I kept buying them and hubby’s like “Where the heck did $120 go this week?!!” and I really didn’t have a good answer for that.
8 danisageek // Oct 30, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I did this book for my year 11 reading journal (back in the day). My concluding essay was pretty much that the only way Dan Brown had even vaguely contributed to society was through the debate he raised. Reading his books is actually like having your head slowly stuffed with faeces. I got a 20.
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