If a 10/10 is Joyce's Ulysses and a 0/10 is Fifty Shades of Grey, what are Dan Brown books?

>while high in subject matter
Yes such deep subject matter. Dan Brown is known for his meaningful stories littered with complex characters such as Edmond Kirsch, a billionaire inventor, futurist and atheist.
>topics rarely touched in pop culture like Renaissance art, the work of Dante and Lithurgical history
These topics are always touched in pop culture and I highly doubt that he presents any meaningful information on the matter.
>His fans are salt of the Earth folks, usually middle aged working parents
This is now a reason why an author is good? Because you like his fans? That is the most retarded reasoning ever, only a fan of Dan Brown could concoct such infantile retardation.
>bringing up ledditors for no reason at all
You my friend are a bonafide troglodyte.

The terrifying thing is, there are people who actually think like this

2/10

His books may not have the deepest characters and they are littered with painfully predictable twists, but I always learn something from reading his books, and he knows how to hold your attention.

The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word renowned. Here is the paragraph with which the book opens. The scene (says a dateline under the chapter heading, 'Prologue') is the Louvre, late at night:

>Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.

I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative. So this might be reasonable text for the opening of a newspaper report the next day:

>Renowned curator Jacques Saunière died last night in the Louvre at the age of 76.

But Brown packs such details into the first two words of an action sequence — details of not only his protagonist's profession but also his prestige in the field. It doesn't work here. It has the ring of utter ineptitude. The details have no relevance, of course, to what is being narrated (Saunière is fleeing an attacker and pulls down the painting to trigger the alarm system and the security gates). We could have deduced that he would be fairly well known in the museum trade from the fact that he was curating at the Louvre.

The writing goes on in similar vein, committing style and word choice blunders in almost every paragraph (sometimes every line). Look at the phrase "the seventy-six-year-old man". It's a complete let-down: we knew he was a man — the anaphoric pronoun "he" had just been used to refer to him. (This is perhaps where "curator" could have been slipped in for the first time, without "renowned", if the passage were rewritten.) Look at "heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas." We don't need to know it's a masterpiece (it's a Caravaggio hanging in the Louvre, that should be enough in the way of credentials, for heaven's sake). Surely "toward him" feels better than "toward himself" (though I guess both are grammatical here). Surely "tore from the wall" should be "tore away from the wall". Surely a single man can't fall into a heap (there's only him, that's not a heap). And why repeat the name "Saunière" here instead of the pronoun "he"? Who else is around? (Caravaggio hasn't been mentioned; "a Caravaggio" uses the name as an attributive modifier with conventionally elided head noun "painting". That isn't a mention of the man.)

Well, actually, there is someone else around, but we only learn that three paragraphs down, after "a thundering iron gate" has fallen (by the way, it's the fall that makes a thundering noise: there's no such thing as a thundering gate). "The curator" (his profession is now named a second time in case you missed it) "...crawled out from under the canvas and scanned the cavernous space for someplace to hide" (the colloquial American "someplace" seems very odd here as compared with standard "somewhere"). Then:

>A voice spoke, chillingly close. "Do not move."

>On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly.

>Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils.

Just count the infelicities here. A voice doesn't speak —a person speaks; a voice is what a person speaks with. "Chillingly close" would be right in your ear, whereas this voice is fifteen feet away behind the thundering gate. The curator (do we really need to be told his profession a third time?) cannot slowly turn his head if he has frozen; freezing (as a voluntary human action) means temporarily ceasing all muscular movements. And crucially, a silhouette does not stare! A silhouette is a shadow. If Saunière can see the man's pale skin, thinning hair, iris color, and red pupils (all at fifteen feet), the man cannot possibly be in silhouette.

is this pasta?

I'd rate Fifty Shades of Grey higher than Dan Brown. Fifty Shades of Grey is shameless fap material and that's okay. Dan Brown stories are pseudohistorical wank that actively make people even more ignorant about real history.

I just realized that Dan Jones (summer of blood, english peasant revolt author) and Dan Brown are two different people... I was thinking that everyone just hated dan jon's history books...

wow

Dan Brown is to history what J K Rowling is to literacy.

some user back in day made a few threads about the use of "renowned" in that sentence, so this pasta might be a result of that.

www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/

Here's the butthurt redditors now. Keep your jealousy to yourself

Whoever wrote that doesn't even get what bad writing is though, theyre all shit examples of shit. This is more depressing than the actual bad book

The book isn't bad. Grow up

LOL are you his nephew or something? Hop off his dick lad.

>If a 10/10 is Joyce's Ulysses

My Mom and Pa likes his books and I've had good conversations with them about stuff like the Divine Comedy and Catholic history because of them. I'm sick of seeing snarky sophomore dweebs shitting on them because they're not fucking Proust.

> If obesity was bad for you why are so many people fat?

That's a really stupid analogy

...

I really, really hope you all are just taking a somewhat ironic anti-reddit vote by ... whatever the fuck is going on here... Jesus. I hope this all is a joke, or one person larping as a cunt-dick Dan Brown supporter

>Dan Brown
17/10. Your points of reference are all fucked up.

i liked it, good pacing and plot

Same, I honestly think hes good at intricate plotting and sort of simple, readable charcterization. Absolutely no worse than the average published book. He's just become this punching bag for losers. They type in the exact same tone as the depressed 'atheists' on a Christopher Hitchens youtube clip, I notice

I think The Vin Chi Code was the last book I ever binge read. I can't remember a thing.

I take it Harold Bloom wrote this. Thanks for at least including the pic but in the future could we attribute the source in the actual body of text? Thanks.

I think it's fair. user is saying that popularity doesn't equate into quality.