da Vinci Code

[fredly]

Am I the only one in the world to think it's a very bad book ?! Frankly, I don't understand the fuss about it, I found it so badly written and so uninteresting that I gave up after a dozen pages. Surely I'm not the only one !! Or have I missed something here ?

No, I think over various Book Club threads a lot of us have agreed with you Fredly.
It's so bad it's not even good IYSWIM.

i read the first chapter when staying at a friends house

its utter tosh couldnt bear to read more

will watch the film on dvd though

I read the first few pages and gave up! Am planning to give it another go though, when ive run out of decent books to read!

I've had it laying around for months, and am going to start reading it today (not prompted by the film, just don't have any more books to read) on my way home on the bus....

It is such a byword for awfulness that ds has taken to trying to shield me from the movie ads - "Mummy, there's something you don't want to see".

I bought it as a holiday no-brainer when it first came out before any of the publicity and must admit I did find it a page turner. Have since realised that this is a completely embarrassing thing to admit but hey ho ....

I think I got abotu halkfway through it! It's since sat on the window sill for about 3 months. I keep meaning to finish it but it was crap. I am really wondering if the film will be any better. The book is dire, but Tom Hanks rarely makes a bad film.

ahhh, good to know I'm not alone !

ROFL bink ds knows all about what I think of The Da Vinci Code too. And Michael Howard, come to that, although of course he is now very much Last Year.

Borrowed it from my friend who raved over it - just did not hit the spot for me. I did persevere to the end, but wish I hadn't bothered.

Would still like to see the film though.

Oh it's awful - so badly written it hurts.
My copy had spelling mistakes too...

I read it and loved the tragic page-turneriness of it. I'd read the Holy Blood etc as a student and wanted to see how much he'd ripped off them.

Agree with Pruni. I read it practically at one sitting but I'm not sure whether that was because it was gripping or whether I just couldn't wait to get to the end.
The most hysterical bit is where it takes them pages and pages to solve a code and it's obviously written in mirror writing. Which I assume is just a devious way to make the reading masses feel good about themselves because I assume everyone who read the book worked it out, not just clever old me

Now one book I am sorry I wasted my time on is The Code of Four.
Same crap but bigger words.

Didn't mind it (enjoyed Angels and Demons so not all bad) but it was just sooooo predictable - not only the mirror writing but every supposedly clever twist.

found angel and demons better.... and the code of four is interesting but not well written.

I did enjoy both books but agree that angels and demons was much better.... actually had a real story to it... I'll see what I make of the 3rd Robert Langdon... the solomon key.

I enjoyed both the DVC and Angels and Demons. I though A&D was weird because of the time frame - it mostly took place in a few hours of time, whereas it took a couple of days to read, and they became very far-fetched. DVC was a bit tedious towards the end, but OK. His other two books were not good.

DH was at school with the author, Dan Brown. He was fairly unremarkable then, apparently. He was in SIL's year and she pipped him at the post for the last place on the creative writing class (she's a very nerdy scientist, btw ).

Fredly is not alone. The DVC code is a sort of penance, rather than a book. The "puzzle" is trite, the characters drab, and every "fact" in the unravelling is presented as an absolutely true statement, even though people who try to unravel religious symbolism are far from unaminous on any interpretation of anything.
It is also very respectful of the Catholic church, and it tell you a lot about these people that they contrive to be offended by it. Opus dei comes out looking silly rather than evil, and one of them even has silly ideas like thinking that the wholesale rape of children by other parts of the Catholic Church was more than a mild error of judgement.

I found it a bit of a sub John Grisham who is not my cup of tea anyway but the subject matter appealed more than the usual fraud/legal conspiracy stuff.

They did take an awfully long time to crack each bit didn't they?

And some of the suggestions of conspiracy were contradictory to well-known (not just nerdy) historical things that annoyed me. I know it's fiction and everything but if you're going to ignore obvious things you might as well make the characters start flying or have gnomes appear.

Utter drivel. Pants.
Psuedo intellectual nonsense and not even well written psuedo intellectual nonsense. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse is another offender of the same nature. Total pish.