fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5933 ]

[ SECRET POST #5933 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5933 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Will be missing a Friday post this week (traveling!). Just a heads up!

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Dan Brown. OMG. Awful stuff.

Who do you think he's overrated by? Like i'd say he's high in the airport book crowd (and I'd ever say that's a fair rating), but generally people don't count that crowd as taste-makers.

There was such a to-do about that 'Da Vinci Code' and 'Angels and Demons' (plus movies); when they were new, you'd have thought he was the next best thing since sliced bread. My sis loaned me the Da Vinci one and it was just...so awful. The couple others I've looked at were the same.

That is when I decided to read him, haha. I guess I thought it was less about him and more about the fact that people love both bible and illuminati conspiracies. Like the people I knew who actually liked his work spent most of that era desperately trying to convince people to read his tech-thrillers, which they claimed were actually good. I just remember him writing exactly like the "men write women" twitter

I had never heard of him, and then suddenly he was everywhere, and i was just baffled.

Wouldn't be surprised if the Catholic church investigations shot his works in to the stratosphere. But I agree he's awful

I do think there was a certain amount of treating Dan Brown like he was a serious intellectual threat to Christianity as a religion, and generally a Thinker who had to be taken seriously. Which was and is ridiculous. So he was overrated to that extent.

i was saying this above, but considering the time period where in the us the catholic church was steadily seeing more investigations into its cadre of pedophiles, i could definitely see people taking dan brown too seriously.

I'd say he's overrated by all the people who bought so many books it's landed him on the NYT bestsellers list multiple times, and adapted into a blockbuster movie.

NYT bestsellers list isn't ranked by actual engagement (eta: although again, I do think considering airport books, his are right up with what would be popular; outside nora roberts airport books aren't good), and honestly neither are movie rights. If I had to guess, it was more than likely Sony picking up on the success of Disney's National Treasure, made in 2004, along with the ramping up of public knowledge of Catholic Church corruption, so they use Dan Brown's stuff a ready-made script outline for what was already popular outside Dan Brown's work.

Edited 2023-04-05 05:24 (UTC)

NAYRT but I do think that Da Vinci Code had legitimate smash-hit crossover popularity. It really was that big at the time. It was a craze. They weren't making a Da Vinci Code movie because of National Treasure they were making a Da Vinci Code movie because that book was everywhere. They even got Tom Hanks to be in it somehow, which is fucking crazy in retrospect.

I think you're totally right about Dan Brown's other books though.

i probably came in on the tail end of it, so i'm probably missing the early craze, true.

tom hanks, tho, he just makes weird popular stuff. like if you think about it...forest gump is weird.

I unmatched with a guy on a dating app last week because he said he was excited for Dan Brown's new book. It was petty and I still feel a little bad about ghosting him, but like... I have one life to live, and I don't want to spend it pretending to be interested in Dan fucking Brown of all authors.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, omg, dude. I do not blame you one bit. Do not have TIME for that crap.

NGL, that's pretty funny. I would've done that too, because everyone's got a right to their own personal taste... but I don't want to hang out with someone who's keen on Dan Brown, in case they ever want to talk to me about it and I'll have to lie to be polite.

His first book, Digital Fortress, is what happens when you optimize for suspense at the expense of everything else. Characters talk around the point because it wouldn’t be suspenseful to say what they mean. Exposition is rushed or neglected because it would slow the pace and reduce suspense. I think there’s something there a writer can learn from, but I’d never take it to such an extreme.

I haven’t read his later work, so I don’t know if he changed any.

I remember there was some plot point that a character (in Da Vinci) had witnessed as a tween, I think, and it had like - ruined her entire life and made everything hard and horrible and when we actually *were told* about the event, I was like....well, that was pretty weird and kind awful but...really? THIS is what ruined your life? So ridiculous.

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[ SECRET POST #5933 ]

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