Banging on the status symbols, laying out the ready cash

[venta]

Continuing my apparent obsession with people called Brown...

Anyone who did not enjoy The Da Vinci Code should take themselves along to the Radio 4 website and listen to the first six minutes or so of Front Row.

Once they've got over the introductory bits, they launch into a review of The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's latest. At least, they would if they could stop giggling long enough.

People who enjoy levelling accusations of intellectual snobbery at Radio 4 arts programmes will no doubt do so, but it made me laugh.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Apparently there's a series of puzzles on t'internet tied into The Lost Symbol - if you like logic puzzles and crypto stuff.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I do - but sadly I have massive amounts of work to do at the moment, so probably ought not to go investigating!

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

You may enjoy Language Log on the subject (read through entries linked at the bottom of that one)

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

Oh excellent, that made me laugh too!

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Oh that was excellently mean....

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha! I love it: "available from shops that do not normally sell books, and shops that normally sell good ones".

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I was a bit irritated by the intellectual snobbery when I started reading Dan Brown books just to see what they were like, but after reading the other two I pretty much agreed. The same plot! Every single time!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Don't knock it :) Mills & Boon have founded an entire publishing empire on that premise...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Boy meets girl. Girl initially dislikes boy, but is nonetheless strangely drawn to him. They kiss, then have a falling out, then make up, and have sex in the closing chapter.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup :)

I tried to write one, once. It's very hard. In fact, completely impossible if your characters aren't total idiots.

Since they have to meet and be strangely attracted, manufacturing circumstances to keep them apart for 150 pages is quite hard. And tends to mean it'd all be over by chapter 2 if they just sat down like sensible grownups and had a conversation.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

If you read some of the ones from the 60s and 70s, some of the sexual politics is very suspect indeed - lots of women falling in love with someone who's effectively raped them.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I know :(

To be honest, even the more recent ones I have issues with as the blokes are often such unpleasant characters (agressive, boorish, domineering, and totally egocentric). They blithely assume the women will find this attractive and, lo and behold, apparently they do. Grr.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

They blithely assume the women will find this attractive and, lo and behold, apparently they do

I gather this often works in real life, too, although only on some women -- maybe those who've been conditioned by reading M&B books.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Or even if the bloke's a bit of a wimp, the girl doesn't fall for him until he shows his 'dominant' side.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

You only tried to write one. I used to have to review the damn things as we had two of their top authors living locally (and I'm told one was a millionairess on the back of it). You try writing something constructively critical when all you want to do is underline the malapropisms.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Did you see the 20 worst sentences according to the Telegraph?