Give Dan Brown a break.
Life has been busy recently – but mostly in a good way. I haven’t had much time to review things as I have to actually read or see or play things first in order to review them. I have been sacrificing my free time for this site and have been forcing myself to play Batman: Arkham Asylum on PS3 and Red Alert 3 on my laptop. A lot of this has been rudely interrupted by work at quite annoyingly regular intervals, so it has been a struggle.
I am also reading Dan Brown’s new book – so you don’t have to. It’s actually ok. Pretty clunky writing-wise but no worse than his other books. I would write more but might as well save it for the review. If you enjoyed his other stuff, then you will like it. Probably. The end could be crap, so I’ll reserve my opinion. I was looking at reviews on Amazon and the literary snobs are having a field day. Lots of them are writing in to say how crap it is and this poorly written literary clap-trap shows the sorry state of education and blah blah blah. They seem to be under the impression that if they rubbish the book, it makes them seem more intelligent and literate. It doesn’t. There was a professor who tore apart Brown’s writing but he still came to the conclusion I did – the writing is pretty poor but it’s good fun.
I hate this kind of snobbery because it shows ignorance and massive insecurity. Dan Brown, like Clive Cussler or Wilbur Smith, writes entertaining mindless fun. It’s not meant to be classic literature, it’s meant to be exciting and page turning. It is a different genre and the prose is unlikely to be top-notch when compared to Grahame Greene or George Orwell or Charles Dickens or Shakespeare or Hemingway. If it isn’t your thing fine, don’t read it. But don’t think for a second that anyone hearing you bleat on about how awful it is will leap to the conclusion you want – that you must be really bloody clever. They just think you’re a dick. Like people who don’t play the lottery but let everyone know that it is because only an idiot would gamble with those odds. I don’t play the lottery but I don’t try and belittle others for it. I just can’t take the crushing disappointment week after week.
I may come across as mildly hypocritical here as I’m always having a go at reality TV and celebrity obsession. The difference here is, and I’m being almost scientific here, you might learn something from a Dan Brown book, whereas celeb stuff and reality stuff is just shit. So there you go.
Ok, I’m starting to rant. I am trying to quit smoking and am replacing it with coffee.
Next entry: Why mothers who take over coffee shops and let their annoying sticky little children run around shouting and do nothing, piss me off. Or maybe not. We’ll see how it goes.
