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

Both charming and reckless, this scheme by Spanish company Luzinterruptus grabbed my attention. The premise of the initiative was to make unhospitable corners of the Madrid cityscape appear cosy, and somewhere you’d be nuts enough to curl up and read a book:

“This intervention used light from lamps and books and was carried out during a freezing night in Madrid. The objective of the project was to transform those places which in normal conditions would not catch our eye and we would not like stay there for a long time at night into more comfortable places.”

Cynicism aside, it’s a lovely project and some of the images produced are just gorgeous. I’d hate to be a wandering meth-addicted Spaniard, though; I’d become convinced there was a lamp-fairy stalking the streets, doling out sweet lampy justice, leaving weird blue lamps as a kind of calling card.

Clearly I have a stunning insight into the mindset of todays Spanish meth-addict.

/Paul

(Link via Notcot)

While we’re on the topic of Christians and their insatiable love for literature, here’s a heartwarming story about JoAn [sic] Karkos of Lewiston, Maine, a septugenarian and tireless defender of the civilised world’s moral fibre. Now I don’t like to fling around the phrase ‘political prisoner’ or ‘hero’ too freely, but JoAn [sic] may well be the greatest American crusader since Rosa Parks. You see, Mrs Karkos is facing JAIL because in September last year she loaned copies of the book ‘It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health’ from two libraries in her area and then refused to return them on the grounds that they were “sexually graphic, amoral [and] abnormal”. Why a grandmother was reading books on puberty in the first place is anyone’s guess, but one can only presume that life becomes very confusing when one reaches older age. You know, growing shorter, no hair where there was hair before, excess skin. It’s a difficult time. She was probably looking for ‘It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Old, Knitting and Knitting Patterns’, but really the covers are almost exactly the same.

It was hard to find a good picture of JoAn [sic] Karkos, Defender of Virtue, so instead I’ve used a picture of nuns with guns. I think the metaphor is adequate.

[via Boing Boing]

/Luke