OT: Dan Brown books

[JasonC23]

I'm looking into getting The Da Vinci Code for my wife for her birthday, and I have a couple of questions for this most intelligent of message boards.

1. In what order were Dan Brown's books released?

2. Are any of them related (ie, characters appearing in more than one, plot lines intersecting across books)?

Thanks, all!

[Samdari]

Angels & Demons has the same protagonist as The Da Vinci Code and was released before the recent blockbuster.

Deception Point is unrelated, and not as good (IMO) as Angels & Demons.

I have not read Digital Fortress, as the reviews I read were not positive. I have not read The Da Vinci Code, as I am waiting for paperback.

EDIT: From what I understand, Digital Fortress is also unrelated to any of the others.

[JasonC23]

Thanks, Samdari!

[QuikSand]

Did anyone else think The DaVinci Code was vastly overrated?

After somehow mentioning Eco's Foucault's Pendulum to someone, he breathlessly told me that I had to read The DaVinci Code. I did. Um, okay, fine... it's a semi-passable mystary story with a fair amount of religious and anti-religious nonsense tossed in for good measure. I didn't find it to be particularly provocative or interesting at all.

But, five million readers can't be wrong, I guess.

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

But, five million readers can't be wrong, I guess.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh yes they can! Books are as much a slave to popularity as anything else in this world; maybe even more since the advent of the Oprah Book Club.

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Did anyone else think The DaVinci Code was vastly overrated?

After somehow mentioning Eco's Foucault's Pendulum to someone, he breathlessly told me that I had to read The DaVinci Code. I did. Um, okay, fine... it's a semi-passable mystary story with a fair amount of religious and anti-religious nonsense tossed in for good measure. I didn't find it to be particularly provocative or interesting at all.

But, five million readers can't be wrong, I guess.

Looks like it might be time for a quik reboot; it seems his memory is getting corrupted.

[Samdari]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

But, five million readers can't be wrong, I guess.

People can and do read bad/mediocre books just as they buy Britney Spears albums and watch reality tv.

[SackAttack]

The LA Times ran a story a month or so ago on the DaVinci Code and how utterly wrapped up in it some people are getting.

A curator for a museum (which one, I can't for the life of me remember) was quoted as being mystified when people walked up to him and asked "Is this the room where such and such happened in the DaVinci Code?" Apparently it was such a common occurrence that they've devoted an entire exhibit to examining the differences between the book and reality.

[Celeval]

FYI, Da Vinci Code is out in paperback.

My take - Brown is not a particular good writer stylistically, is horribly forumlaic in his plots; but he is a pretty good storyteller. I've read A&D and DVC - have the other two but haven't picked them up yet.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I just finished Digital Fortress while on vacation a couple of weeks ago.
Pretty average "techno-thriller" and reasonably light on the "techno" at that.

The Amazon.com reviews are pretty brutal, and while I wasn't as disturbed by some of the inaccuracies as those readers, their criticisms seemed to match what I read pretty much spot on.

[Samdari]

Originally Posted by Celeval

FYI, Da Vinci Code is out in paperback.

Hmm, I have not been able to find it. Amazon lists 9 editions, the only paperback in French. Of course, I bought the two books I read in airport bookstores, having taken a couple cross-country trips recently, and they claimed DVC was still only in hardback. Probably not the most reliable of sources.

[Shkspr]

DaVinci Code is not, repeat, NOT out in mass market edition (at least in the US). The original release date was June 1, but the publisher has postponed the PB edition until it falls off the bestseller lists.

[Celeval]

Hrm... my mistake then. I should do my research before listening to my co-workers.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Did anyone else think The DaVinci Code was vastly overrated?

After somehow mentioning Eco's Foucault's Pendulum to someone, he breathlessly told me that I had to read The DaVinci Code. I did. Um, okay, fine... it's a semi-passable mystary story with a fair amount of religious and anti-religious nonsense tossed in for good measure. I didn't find it to be particularly provocative or interesting at all.

But, five million readers can't be wrong, I guess.

Vastly, vastly overrated. The DaVinci Code is a decent introduction to the secret bloodline conspiracy, but most of it is flat-out cribbed from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, only without Baigent's flare for story. I was terribly disappointed.

But then again, I'm a Freemason, so maybe I know a bit more about the topic than most.

[3ric]

Originally Posted by Shkspr

DaVinci Code is not, repeat, NOT out in mass market edition (at least in the US). The original release date was June 1, but the publisher has postponed the PB edition until it falls off the bestseller lists.

Corgi Books has released it in paperback in the UK, I bought a copy last week...

[Shkspr]

Here's the problem with Dan Brown's work. He's a thriller writer. All four books are competent, written with maybe a bit of a nod to movie deals, but his niche has always been the Clive Cussler/Preston-Child/Michael Crichton genre of breezy thrillers with a little bit of research to back them up. You never hear anyone say anymore that Clive Cussler is a hack because, well, we KNOW what type of books he writes, and if we like his stuff we read it and if we don't like it, we stay away. His books have an expected sell-through and everyone's happy.

I read a galley of Angels & Demons back when it first came out, and enjoyed it, but there wasn't a whole lot of promotion attached to it and it was a modest midlist seller. Digital Fortress and Deception Point were less successful - the trade edition of Digital Fortress looks like a print-on-demand title, the cover's so bad.

DaVinci Code got a 1/4 sheet advertisement in USA Today the day the book streeted, and a followup ad that weekend in the NYT Book Review. The print run had to be less than 30,000. I suspect that the cover of the book and the ads were what managed to get the first shipment into people's hands, but it wasn't until the third shipment blew out of stores or so that the DaVinci Code meme really began to spread out into the marketplace.

What sold those second and third shipments (still probably less than 100K units)? Word of mouth from the book's CORE audience, the avid readers who like a little history and a little mystery but mostly want something that will fill up that week's hole in the reading pile. On THAT level, the book is excellent.

Then, if I remember correctly, the Washington Post article hit that went into more depth on the revisionist Christian aspects, where we learned that the stuff that Brown had put into the book wasn't just stuff that HE had made up, but some that had been kicking around crackpot circles for centuries. Lost a little in that revelation were the facts that a) while Brown's plot points resembled some of the work of Baigent, Pagels, etc., he still made up a great deal of plot to craft a novel, and b) the disclaimer at the front of the book about all descriptions of artwork, documents, and architecture being true (one of the really fun things about Brown's work) obscures for many the fact that THE REST OF IT IS MADE UP.

So what you've got now is the first step in taking what is at its heart a breezy summer read and by confusing what is true and what is fiction and what lies somewhere in between, Middle America is convinced the book is a lot deeper than it is. We're convinced that the work stands beside Eco and Pears and Perez-Reverte (and Gaiman, come to think) when it really doesn't. And because the controversy touches Christian values of faith, practically every congregation in America is talking about it now to the point that Christian publishers have put out not one but three books this month that take Brown's book apart theologically as though it were fact.

Which it isn't.

[Desnudo]

I thought the Da Vinci Code was very good until about 2/3s of the way through and then the story simply falls apart and becomes a bad version of a Tom Clancy novel. The potential problem with books like these is that the line for suspension of disbelief versus disbelief is very thin and I ended up in disbelief once the story became more focused.

It is fiction so who cares about accuracy? That's like complaining about a Hollywood movie not accurately potraying some real life event. If you want historical accuracy go read a history book.

[Samdari]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

I thought the Da Vinci Code was very good until about 2/3s of the way through and then the story simply falls apart and becomes a bad version of a Tom Clancy novel. The potential problem with books like these is that the line for suspension of disbelief versus disbelief is very thin and I ended up in disbelief once the story became more focused

Wow, that happened to me with both A&D and Deception Point. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 2/3 - 3/4 of both of those books, and then something so ubelievable happened that the experience was ruined for me.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by Samdari

Wow, that happened to me with both A&D and Deception Point. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 2/3 - 3/4 of both of those books, and then something so ubelievable happened that the experience was ruined for me.

I can guess the exact moment in Deception Point that caused that to happen for you because it happened for me too. At that moment I knew I wouldn't enjoy the rest of the book, but read it anyway just to finish it.

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Did anyone else think The DaVinci Code was vastly overrated?

After somehow mentioning Eco's Foucault's Pendulum to someone, he breathlessly told me that I had to read The DaVinci Code. I did. Um, okay, fine... it's a semi-passable mystary story with a fair amount of religious and anti-religious nonsense tossed in for good measure. I didn't find it to be particularly provocative or interesting at all.

But, five million readers can't be wrong, I guess.

Oh I agree- he can tell a good story, but the writing was just awful- cliche ridden crap. Digital Fortress is even worse- my god, the man is a poor man's George Lucas..

[IMetTrentGreen]

i dont think you guys are appreciating how much went into writing those puzzles and that whole chain of mystery, not to mention the reseacrch

its a fiction novel, not a textbook. to those of us who didnt know about the marovengians and whatnot beforehand, it was an interesting story

[Peregrine]

Did anyone else think The DaVinci Code was vastly overrated?

After somehow mentioning Eco's Foucault's Pendulum to someone, he breathlessly told me that I had to read The DaVinci Code. I did. Um, okay, fine... it's a semi-passable mystary story with a fair amount of religious and anti-religious nonsense tossed in for good measure. I didn't find it to be particularly provocative or interesting at all.

Amen, Quik. I just didn't find it to be that well written or very interesting. Then again, I don't read many mass-market novels, maybe that's what they're all like these days.

[bbor]

I rather enjoyed Davinci code...you just had to take it for what it was....His other Books i found amazingly bad,it almost led me to belive that someone had written Davinci code for him.

[Ryche]

DaVinci Code struck me as very 'clever', but it left me feeling a bit flat at the end. Loads of twists and turns, but either you could see them from a mile away or they were extremely convoluted. At least it was a quick, easy read.

[Sharpieman]

What most people don't know is Dan Brown really didn't do any of the research for this book. All he did was make a story out of findings from a threesome of authors who wrote "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." HBHG is much more dry from page to page but is non-fiction and I find it much more interesting. The book was written back in the early 80's and if anyone wants to learn more about this subject in the DaVinci Code and/or like history a lot pick up HBHG.

[Shkspr]

Originally Posted by Sharpieman

What most people don't know is Dan Brown really didn't do any of the research for this book. All he did was make a story out of findings from a threesome of authors who wrote "Holy Blood, Holy Grail."

I think that's an astoundingly naive and unfair statement to make, especially considering the number of times Brown has acknowledged the debt of Baigent et al. in this work. That said, the amount of work that was done to build the string of puzzles and codes that form the backbone of the story is what really gives the book its interest. The climax of the book and final revelations of the plot are the things most clearly pulled from the Baigent book (which was itself based on earlier texts) are the weakest parts of the story.

[Sharpieman]

Originally Posted by Shkspr

I think that's an astoundingly naive and unfair statement to make, especially considering the number of times Brown has acknowledged the debt of Baigent et al. in this work. That said, the amount of work that was done to build the string of puzzles and codes that form the backbone of the story is what really gives the book its interest. The climax of the book and final revelations of the plot are the things most clearly pulled from the Baigent book (which was itself based on earlier texts) are the weakest parts of the story.

Well, I guess it was kind of naive because I didn't really read the Brown book. What I really meant to say is that the DaVinci Code "climax" and actual "fact" of it is based on the Baigent book. Sorry.

[Shkspr]

'Salright; it's just that in the beginning of chapter 60, one character pulls a copy of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" off a shelf and hands it to another character, saying, "Here's basically the best known summary of what we're talking about."