Warning: do not read

Not the blog, silly. Of course you have to read this.

I'm talking about The DaVinci Code. Under no circumstances should you pick up this book and open it. I'm of the philosophy that once I start reading a book, I should finish. I mean it has to be really bad for me to stop halfway. Like when you pay for a movie and then walk out. I've only done that with a few books in my long illustrious reading career, and this is one of those times. If you need further evidence, google the phrase "Dan Brown is a bad writer." You will see many people that agree with me and express similar discontent. Here's why:

He writes like a high school student trying to impress the teacher. And not an above-average student either, because the exceptional students know that what they do is impressive enough; they don't have to add any padding. A good writer can make a point, or even hint at a point without saying it explicitly, and the reader will get it through their thick skull. Dan Brown doesn't do this. He states an obvious point, and then goes on to reiterate it in the same way 10,000 times within the span of one page. Example:

"They're dead!" Sister Sandrine stammered into the telephone in her Saint-Sulpice residence. She was leaving a message on an answering machine. "Please pick up! They're all dead!"
...
All three contacts were dead. And now, as she called the fourth and final number - the number she was not supposed to call unless the first three could not be reached - she got an answering machine.
...
"The floor panel has been broken!" she pleaded as she left the message. "The other three are dead!"
Sister Sandrine did not know the identities of the four men she protected, but the private phone numbers stashed beneath her bed were for use on only one condition.
...
"They are dead," the monk said. "All four of them. And they have played me for a fool. Tell me where the keystone is."
"I don't know!" Sister Sandrine said truthfully. "That secret is guarded by others," Others who are dead!
...
As Sister Sandrine fell, her last feeling was an overwhelming sense of foreboding.
All four are dead.
...

This is one page (145-146) of the paperback novel. I've left out a few sentences, and now going back and reading solely this excerpt, I laugh out loud. Apparently someone is dead.

Notice also the use of italics to re-illustrate the point. This happens so often in the book I get physically ill. And English teachers especially, please notice the poor sentence structure. This book alone makes me rethink that whole "being a teacher" thing because I would have to read crap like this every day. However, I would also have the chance to correct it, and possibly stop it, before the future Dan Browns have a chance to dumben down America - and the world - even more.

One final note - before the prologue, there is a page of "facts" proclaiming all the secret societies mentioned in the book to be real. Well, my copy of the Encyclopedia of Secret Societies states outright that Dan Brown is a moron and that one of the societies, The Priory of Scion, was not in fact founded in the year 1000 or whatever, but was made up in 1956 by some guy who repeatedly tried to form a secret society with this name and failed. He admitted all this in court in the late 20th century. I can ignore that except for the fact that Dan Brown tries spreading this fiction as fact, and millions of people believed him, probably because their brain rotted a little after reading his book.

I think I could go on for days about why his book is the Worst Thing I've Ever Read, but then I would myself start to sound like Dan Brown, and good god I want to avoid that. So I will simply close by saying:
Complete and utter crap. And no I will not see the movie because I don't like long-haired Tom Hanks anyway.