# Dan Brown - Crap
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 15, 2005, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167 "2005-02-15T09:20:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/1 "2005-02-15T09:20:58Z")
My mother in law just bought me “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown for my birthday. I got three chapters in by blind perseverance and had to put it down and get out a Ian M. Banks book.
The writing is attrocious, the dialogue is about as corny as it can get - quote “our roots infiltrate everything you can see … even the sacred fortress of our most sworn enemy”.
Get real, I read comics and the dialogue is more authentic than this crap. Don’t even get me started on his allegedly accurate scintific facts.
Has anyone else read any of his books, what do you think? How did he become so popular?
---
### Author:  [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/2 "2005-02-15T09:29:20Z")
> [@Stryfe](#):
>
> Has anyone else read any of his books, what do you think? How did he become so popular?
Because his roots infiltrate everything you can see.
---
### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/3 "2005-02-15T09:30:49Z")
> [@Snooooopy](#):
>
> Because his roots infiltrate everything you can see.
So, all your base are belong to Dan Brown?
---
### Author:  [@Made\_in\_Macau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Made_in_Macau)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/4 "2005-02-15T09:40:51Z")
I waded through Da Vinci Code on holiday - crap.
‘Alseep, she is awoken by the shrill of the phone’
Sheesh.
:rolleyes:
MiM
---
### Author:  [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/5 "2005-02-15T09:43:02Z")
I call it meconia- baby poop. :rolleyes:
---
### Author:  [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/6 "2005-02-15T09:47:21Z")
> [@ouryL](#):
>
> I call it meconia- baby poop. :rolleyes:
That is, too poorly developed to qualify as shit.
---
### Author:  [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/7 "2005-02-15T10:00:40Z")
> [@ouryL](#):
>
> That is, too poorly developed to qualify as shit.
Fantastic analogy and much better written than Mr Bown could have done.
---
### Author:  [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/8 "2005-02-15T10:03:38Z")
I managed fifty pages of the Da Vinci Code, before giving up on his painfully-lumpen writing.
Message to Brown: Umberto Eco sounds erudite _because he is_. You’re not. You don’t have his imagination or even vocabulary. Give up. Please.
---
### Author:  [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/9 "2005-02-15T10:39:16Z")
Someone at the office picked up all three of his books at Costco, and we took turns passing them around. We all liked Angels and Demons, although there were a few :rolleyes: moments. The Davinci Code was ok, but we were already joking about how it was the same story, only with easier clues.
By Digital Fortress (the whole process took place over about a month), we gave up on him and were only reading for the sake of mockery (and man, there were some howlers). The man has only one story in him (the books all have the same first chapter, for Og’s sake), and it gets less interesting with each telling. Before I even started reading the third one, I was asking my co-workers, “so the trusted friend turns out to be on the other side at the 3/4 mark?” “Yep.” “The object everyone’s chasing turns out not to be what they thought it was?” “Yep.” “There’s an assassin with some trait that sets him apart from society?” “Yep.”
---
### Author:  [@Antonius\_Block](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antonius_Block)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/10 "2005-02-15T10:39:32Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#):
>
> Message to Brown: Umberto Eco sounds erudite _because he is_. You’re not. You don’t have his imagination or even vocabulary. Give up. Please.
Preach it, brother.
Dan Brown - and his legions of supporters – love to play “move the goalposts” in any debate regarding the fiction / non-fiction nature of his books:
> [@](#):
>
> **Dan Brown adherent** : This book of his is so _well-researched_!
>
> **Me** : Actually, he gets a large percentage of his crucial historical and geographical facts wrong, such as the following …
>
> **Dan Brown adherent** : Oh, lighten up! It’s just a novel, you know! You can’t expect him to get his facts right!
>
> **Me** : Well, taken just as a novel, I’d have to say that his sentence structure is abysmal; he displays a very poor vocabulary; his chapters are written like a bad movie screenplay; his stereotypical characters display no depth, and rely on ludicrous exposition (given their supposed areas of expertise); he has no sense of character description or character development…
>
> **Dan Brown adherent** : Who cares about those things? I’ve just learned so many important facts about the Catholic Church reading his books!
>
> **Me** : If you’re going to treat what he says as “facts”, then you’ve got to allow people to point out the massive errors…
>
> **Dan Brown adherent** : Lighten up! It’s just a novel!
>
> [and so on, and so on…]
---
### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/11 "2005-02-15T13:38:57Z")
I don’t consider it good writing, but I don’t hate it as much as others on the board do. If I have nothing else to read, I’ll read one of his books, but I usually skim a lot of the pages.
---
### Author:  [@Slacker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slacker)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/12 "2005-02-15T13:47:58Z")
I thought _Da Vinca_ was OK, and _Angels and Demons_ was OK+. Good “blow through it in 2 days” reading when there’s nothing on TV.
Both did sound like a terrible movie though, and I’m assuming the actual movie version of Da Vinci will be a long 2 hours.
---
### Author:  [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/13 "2005-02-15T14:04:20Z")
Yes, Yes, you are preaching to the choir!
[I started a thread similar to this one not so long ago…](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=273854)
If you read more than one of his books you’ll find that they’re all the same. Very boring read.
---
### Author:  [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/14 "2005-02-15T14:47:41Z")
Same issues, better writting. [Holy blood, holy grail](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440136482/qid=1108479621/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-1130757-6992710?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)
---
### Author:  [@monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monster)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/15 "2005-02-15T15:15:44Z")
I read Digital Fortress while on vacation because I had already finished the two books I brought to read. After the very first reference to the bad guy’s partner, I turned to my husband (who had already read the book) and said
Do these “brilliant minds” ever figure out that the “partner’s” e-mail is an anagram of his own name? I mean, that’s gotta be a clue or something. I’m not brilliant, but I saw it right away.
---
### Author:  [@av8rmike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/av8rmike)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/16 "2005-02-15T16:37:05Z")
I read _Digital Fortress_ for the entertainment value as well, and so I can joke with my NSA-employee friends about their work. They take the same view as **Antonius** ’s friends; that Brown should either claim his books are complete fiction or actually get his facts right. But I guess he’s not one to let those pesky “facts” get in the way of (he thinks) a good story. :rolleyes:
---
### Author:  [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/17 "2005-02-15T16:57:08Z")
I saw the “illustrated version” of the _Da Vinci Code_. I’m thinking that all it is is one photo of a steaming pile.
Robin
---
### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/18 "2005-02-15T17:38:48Z")
I tried to read _The DaVinci Code_ twice. Both times, I tossed it aside before I finished the first chapter. It’s just too painful.
---
### Author:  [@Mal\_Adroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mal_Adroit)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/19 "2005-02-15T17:42:35Z")
**Stryfe** , I too was awarded with _Angels and Demons_ as a “present” by an enthusiastic Deebie. Literally could not get past page one. This was bad prose that screamed to be put out of its misery. And I \*wanted \* to like Dan Brown- secret societies and age-old conspiracies are the shiznit to me, but . . . I dunno, I would never look down my nose at anyone who genuinely loves Dan Brown, because I’ve been there. It’s not hard to endure a _kinda_ bad writer like, say, Robert Ludlum, because his plots are so fantastic. People just have different thresholds.
It’s obvious that Brown’s storytelling powers are prodigious. Which is why I’ll be more than willing to see the movie in the hands of such a capable director as Ron Howard.
---
### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2005, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167/20 "2005-02-15T17:44:09Z")
Oh goodness. I’m sure the book is awful, but this degree of awfulness is making me curious. (The last thing I finished was _Atlanta Nights_, so perhaps there’s a theme here.) Maybe I’ll pick this up from a library sometime. No way am I paying for it.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dan-brown-crap/290167.md?page=2)