Your thoughts on Dan Brown
- Thread starter Greedo
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Complexity
Philosopher
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Dan Brown is a really bad writer.
You can blame his catering to religious beliefs and other superstitions on his target audience (i.e. Money!),
but his plots suck
and his sex scenes are inexcusably inept.
I don't think the man has every given anyone, including himself, pleasure in bed.
You can blame his catering to religious beliefs and other superstitions on his target audience (i.e. Money!),
but his plots suck
and his sex scenes are inexcusably inept.
I don't think the man has every given anyone, including himself, pleasure in bed.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
In fairness, sex scenes are hard to write well. What browned me off (pun intended) was his novel "Digital Fortress" which was filled with such crap that it turned me off Brown forever.
Sam.I.Am
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Sam.I.Am
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Interestingly enough I have a few of his audiobooks for just that reason.
erwinl
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I've only read the one book by Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code.
After I read it, I let my wife read it. We then sat in the couch looking at each other with the same thought in our minds. "What the heck was this that we read?". After we stopped laughing we put the plotholes we read on the table.
Mind. I do like brain popcorn books. I got a lot of Turtledove books so I do like thrash books from time to time.
The Da Vinci code was something different though. It didn't follow even in its own premises. People acted like they knew more than they could in that stage of the story or otherwise unlogically according to their goals. The timeline makes it unbelievable as well. In all there was no moment where the suspence of disbelieve could be achieved by either me or my wife.
It ended up in me throwing this book in the thrashbin. Making it only the third book I gave this treatment in the last 15 years.
After I read it, I let my wife read it. We then sat in the couch looking at each other with the same thought in our minds. "What the heck was this that we read?". After we stopped laughing we put the plotholes we read on the table.
Mind. I do like brain popcorn books. I got a lot of Turtledove books so I do like thrash books from time to time.
The Da Vinci code was something different though. It didn't follow even in its own premises. People acted like they knew more than they could in that stage of the story or otherwise unlogically according to their goals. The timeline makes it unbelievable as well. In all there was no moment where the suspence of disbelieve could be achieved by either me or my wife.
It ended up in me throwing this book in the thrashbin. Making it only the third book I gave this treatment in the last 15 years.
AnnoyingPony
Critical Thinker
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To be fair, I enjoyed reading The Da Vinci Code and Dan Brown's other books even though I knew they were wrong.
Although a closer inspection reveals that not only does Dan Brown fail at history, religion, math, common sense, and simple fact-checking, but he also fails at languages and linguistics.
In Digital Fortress, there is "a short description involving decrypting a code that is wrong on several levels. Firstly, the code was thought by the characters to be "Mandarin symbols", when Mandarin is a spoken oral dialect. The character then realizes that the symbols are "Kanji language", but Kanji is a component in the Japanese writing system, not a language of its own. It is further ridiculous to think that anyone could confuse Chinese with Japanese, as Japanese writing makes use of another set of characters, kana, which are not present in Chinese. Finally, the code is decrypted out of sequence, for security purposes. Translating Chinese or Japanese out of sequence would be just as impossible as reading English text scrambled by a randomizer."
Dan Brown also fails at Italian and French. I know there was a part in the book where characters are supposedly speaking in French, but the sentences are completely incorrect translations of what they were trying to say. I'll have to find it.
Although a closer inspection reveals that not only does Dan Brown fail at history, religion, math, common sense, and simple fact-checking, but he also fails at languages and linguistics.
In Digital Fortress, there is "a short description involving decrypting a code that is wrong on several levels. Firstly, the code was thought by the characters to be "Mandarin symbols", when Mandarin is a spoken oral dialect. The character then realizes that the symbols are "Kanji language", but Kanji is a component in the Japanese writing system, not a language of its own. It is further ridiculous to think that anyone could confuse Chinese with Japanese, as Japanese writing makes use of another set of characters, kana, which are not present in Chinese. Finally, the code is decrypted out of sequence, for security purposes. Translating Chinese or Japanese out of sequence would be just as impossible as reading English text scrambled by a randomizer."
Dan Brown also fails at Italian and French. I know there was a part in the book where characters are supposedly speaking in French, but the sentences are completely incorrect translations of what they were trying to say. I'll have to find it.
Complexity
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Given my background, I thought I'd enjoy (or enjoy hating) Digital Fortress. I remember reading the beginning of it in a bookstore. I think it was his terrible sex scenes in that book that made me reshelve it carefully, wash my hands, and be glad that I had escaped with most of the book unread.