Anarosa

it really dissapoints me how connor and anarkos can be so judgemental of the people who hail the book as absolutely amazing, when in fact, they are doing the exact same thing, except in a different direction. for example. my brother rants and raves about how my southern babtist grandparents steryotype against other religions, while the entire time he bashes every devout christian he meets. Just like you are telling the original post on the thread (i cant remember her name) to talk about the book on its merits, and not on the person who posted the review, but at the same time you are calling her (or anyone who liked the book) a complete idiot.
you are both hypocrites.

im not saying i loved the book, and im not saying i hated it.
what im saying is, im dissapointed in your narrowmindedness. and i post this as my opinion on this thread. not as an insult to anyone who posted.

ps - when whoever said that anyone who read and liked the book must be illiterate. i have only one thing to say to you. do you know the meaning of that word? you cant have read and liked the book if you cant read.

oh yeah, and dont say that just because someone is 15, or otherwise younger than you are, that they couldnt possibly have as much knowledge as you do. you'd have hated it if an adult said that to you when you were her age. im sure when einstien was 15 he had to deal with many adults who thought they were better than him simply because of their age. dont become on of those adults.

by the way. im still in middle school. and that doesnt mean a damn thing

Anarkos

People who think that all forms of judgment are exactly the same irritate me. There is nothing wrong with judging things. People do it continually. The issue is whether they have good grounds for making such judgments.

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Torpy

I must say that the Da Vinci Code was one of the best books I've read in quite a while. Despite being a Christain, I am not offended by the book in any way due to the fact that I'm open to new ideas. However, it doesn't mean that I believe the theory - many facts are incorrect and some pieces of key information that would eradicate some of the doubts I have are missing.

I believe the book is reasonably well written, but there are too many short, simple sentences in there for my liking and sometimes it doesn't flow as one would expect a bestseller to. However, in places, the writing style complements the plot, which, I find, is the best aspect of the book, and so I wouldn't deal out too much criticism to Dan Brown in this regard.

Stewart

As a group of pigs once famously said: "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The same can be said of readers.

The twelve year old coming to The Da Vinci Code may come to the book and think its the best thing since Teletubbies (who were more literate) and that is purely because their language skills are still developing and they have not done a body of reading in their short existence.

That's not to say that adults will immediately make better readers of such a book because part of the book's popularity is that it is easy for those who we would generally class as "non-readers" (or heathen). So, for those adults who read little to nothing it would be no surprise that they can find the book to be exceptional - like the twelve year old they have little reading experience.

The adult who reads within comfort zones can be a better judge of a book's worth although these people tend to read genre fiction after genre piece and genre work is rarely anything more than cheap titillation. The reader may notice that one book is better than another but they are more likely to apply their appreciation of a book more to its plot than to its overall composition.

And for those that read widely (contemporary, classics, world, bestsellers) their judgement is all that I would trust. They have a wide and varied body of work strengthening their ability to read and they are likely to understand chracter, plot, themes, etc. and so, when coming to The Da Vinci Code they will definitely find it to be inferior as they have read so much and so widely that such a novel would pale in comparison and easily offer up its weaknesses to be seen.

The pigs got it right.

im not saying i loved the book, and im not saying i hated it.
what im saying is, im dissapointed in your narrowmindedness. and i post this as my opinion on this thread. not as an insult to anyone who posted.

ps - when whoever said that anyone who read and liked the book must be illiterate. i have only one thing to say to you. do you know the meaning of that word? you cant have read and liked the book if you cant read.

oh yeah, and dont say that just because someone is 15, or otherwise younger than you are, that they couldnt possibly have as much knowledge as you do. you'd have hated it if an adult said that to you when you were her age. im sure when einstien was 15 he had to deal with many adults who thought they were better than him simply because of their age. dont become on of those adults.

by the way. im still in middle school. and that doesnt mean a damn thing[/quote]

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Stewart

Shouldn't every piece of fiction be seen as entertaining? I certainly think so. It's just that it pales in comparison to so much more of the entertainment sitting on the shelves.

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Anarosa

whos to say that i havent read widely. you couldnt possibly know whether or not i've read classics, or anything else for that matter. so stop assuming.

and i really didnt care for the book at all. thats not what bothers me.

i completely agree that Dan Brown had no idea what he was doing when he wrote that book.

But everyone is intitled to their own opinion. it just bothers me when some people always think that their opinion is the right one. obviously people believe what they believe, but when it escalates into insulting someone's intelligence. then i think its alittle out of hand. You wouldn't tell a Buddist they were an idiot just because you were a Christian, would you?

Stewart

Who's to say you can even read after that comment. I quoted you and made a point; I did not use your name or say you weren't widely read. That must be a chip on your shoulder, though, or you wouldn't say it.

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Anarosa

looks like im the one who was assuming.

sorry if i thought that was what you meant.

i do see you're point though.

But you shouldnt make the same mistake and assume that there is a chip on my shoulder.

although i do admit that i've had to deal with alot of adults in my life that refused to take me seriously because of my age.

sorry about the misunderstanding

Anarkos

Well, yes. That includes Connor and I being entitled to hold the opinion that claiming that Dan Brown is a master of prose is retarded.

I also dislike the notion that everything is just opinions and opinions can't be proven so I can't claim that I'm right and others are wrong. That's just plain silly.

Opinions may be entirely subjective, or based on objective facts. Some opinions may be more well grounded and more well reasoned than others. Some, indeed, may be so well extablished that they cannot reasonably be faulted, and others may be so well disproven that to advance them is just plain stupid.

Of course I think my opinions are right; if I didn't, I wouldn't hold them, would I?

There's a difference between thinking that one's own opinions are right (which is true by definition; if you didn't think something was right, it would not be your opinion) and thinking that all other opinions are wrong, and, most importantly, telling others that their opinions are wrong.

In this case, I feel that my opinion is very well grounded, and that the contradictory opinion is very poorly grounded. Given that this is a forum about writing, and that presumably this means that most people here wish to improve their own prose, I see no reason to be quiet about this.

Dan Brown's use of the English language is appalling. His sentence structures are ugly, and he often pens atrocities which are either grammatically plain wrong or outright nonsensical. Thus anyone who wishes to write well in the English language should not model themselves on Dan Brown.

Admittedly, I've probably been overly abusive and harsh. I'm the same to myself. I can be quite a cunt. No excuses there.

However, I will restate: Plotting, themes and character aside, Dan Brown's work is appalling. He simply does not understand the simple mechanics of the English language. Given that I haven't read the whole book - due to my inability to plow on through his semantic and syntactical miscarriages - I can't pretend to comment on the plot, themes, characters or the controversy (although the assertion that Jesus was married etc is plain wrong and entirely unsupportable on the evidence). However, it does not take a thorough reading of his work nor literary greatness to know that he skipped his remedial English classes at school.

You are probably right in that I have been overly cuntish. Oh well. I should try to be more tactful.

However, my argument is simple:

P1) Dan Brown does not understand the very basic mechanics of writing.
P2) If you compliment an author who does not understand said basics of writing, you probably don't understand them yourself.
P3) People compliment Dan Brown's writing style.
C1) These people do not understand the basic rules of writing in the English language.

P4) If you wish to be a writer, then you need to understand said rules.
P5) If you post on this forum, you probably want to be a writer.
C2) These people probably should take steps to correct their lack of understanding of basic grammatical rules etc etc.

Simple!

Yes, because even though I am Christian, I cannot prove my religion to be objectively true and others to be objectively false. If, however, a Buddhist advanced a terrible argument for why my religion was false, then I would happily explain to him just how bad his argument was...

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My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

Astra

did it ever occur to u that brown could be a writer like u all when blademaster-whatever-sorry, but i don't remember ur name-started saying how he has no love for writing. i liked it, though i do agree with the hole cliche thing. i also admit that the beginning was a forceful journey, but the rest really kicked off. Brown, i hope that guy is wrong about u writing possibly just for money. if u are-if ur even reading this(idoubtit)-u will so be a dead #*$!*%@#!u-no-wat to me. I hope we can just calm our butts down. this is supposed to be a friendly forum. if some of u keep critiquing so brutally whether it's a "terrible, gold digging, best seller" or each other, maybe u don't belong here. And I mean that only due to what i've seen from ur responses.

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blademasterzzz

Blade.

It's a fact that he writes for money. He said himself that it was just a "novel". Clearly, he does not hold literature in high regard. It also bothers me that most of the people arguing that the book is well written cannot be bothered to spell "ur" correctly throughout their argument, but go off if we make one single mistake in our posts. And I am not even an English-speaking person.

I read a lot of post I do not choose to comment on.

I don't usually insult people, just writers. The readers seem to take it as a personal affront.

I've written my share of good comments. I adore many books, and I say so. It is just that negative comments always leap out, blending out the positive ones.


And above all, this is a writing forum. At least it was several years ago until it became filled with teenagers bitching about their life.

Anarkos

Did it ever occur to you that people might take you a little more seriously if you wrote you defence of our Mr. Brown according to some semblance of the usual rules of English spelling and grammar? You know, so we can actually read it with resorting to guesswork?

And if you think we're being overly harsh or unfriendly, never, ever submit your work to an editor, agent or publisher. They will make me at my worst seem angelic.

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I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

Anarosa

not all teenagers bitch about their life blade

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But Johnny is no more

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blademasterzzz

I know, I'm a teenager. Fact remains that several years ago this forum was quite slower, but at least the lounge was full of intelligent and philosophical discussions. I don't know, maybe I'm just being nostalgic. I don't think people should share their personal problems on forums unless it's serious (and maybe not in that case).

And again, it bothers me that now people are defending a badly written book as highly intelligent and well written. If they would acknowledge it as somewhat enjoyable pulp, fine by me. But it's just not a piece of literary mastery as some people seem to believe.

In order to be a good writer, people have to recognise the level of English (or any other language for that matter) displayed in books they read.

Talia_Brie

Ha!

Anarkos, no one cuts like you, mate. That's too well done.=D>

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