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rabid1stDan Brown makes me LOL.
..."his eyes went white, like a shark about to attack."
I, almost, want that on a t-shirt.
When The Da Vinci Code came out, we librarians were reluctant to purchase it, because Angels & Demons had been so very poorly written. Angels & Demons had also languished on the shelves. So, we all debated the wisdom of sinking anymore taxpayer money into this guy. But, alas, we did and the rest is bestseller and movie history.
Literary critics and English teachers, however, still recoiled in horror at the clumsy prose and repeatedly urge us not to buy any book by Dan Brown. We don't listen, because, contrary to popular belief, librarians are not very stuffy when it comes to books. We read lots of junk and only ask that a book have SOME redeeming qualities...not necessarily literary ones. For example, Dan Brown was wickedly popular...a redeeming quality for sure...after The Da Vinci Code, and so, we purchased his books by the truckload.
But today, I stumbled across a Telegraph Article about what a terrible writer Dan Brown is...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6194031/The-Lost-Symbol-and-The-Da-Vinci-Code-author-Dan-Browns-20-worst-sentences.html
...play along by finding all the things that are wrong with this snippet...
A voice spoke, chillingly close. "Do not move." On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly. Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils.
Rae
who found the article above while reading a take on Raymond Chandler's Twelve Rules for writing mysteries...http://badlanguagemcr.blogspot.com/2010/09/twelve-notes.html where Chandler basically lays out why both of us dislike Agatha Christie. The blogger hates RTD, but not for the right reason.
..."his eyes went white, like a shark about to attack."
I, almost, want that on a t-shirt.
When The Da Vinci Code came out, we librarians were reluctant to purchase it, because Angels & Demons had been so very poorly written. Angels & Demons had also languished on the shelves. So, we all debated the wisdom of sinking anymore taxpayer money into this guy. But, alas, we did and the rest is bestseller and movie history.
Literary critics and English teachers, however, still recoiled in horror at the clumsy prose and repeatedly urge us not to buy any book by Dan Brown. We don't listen, because, contrary to popular belief, librarians are not very stuffy when it comes to books. We read lots of junk and only ask that a book have SOME redeeming qualities...not necessarily literary ones. For example, Dan Brown was wickedly popular...a redeeming quality for sure...after The Da Vinci Code, and so, we purchased his books by the truckload.
But today, I stumbled across a Telegraph Article about what a terrible writer Dan Brown is...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6194031/The-Lost-Symbol-and-The-Da-Vinci-Code-author-Dan-Browns-20-worst-sentences.html
...play along by finding all the things that are wrong with this snippet...
A voice spoke, chillingly close. "Do not move." On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly. Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils.
Rae
who found the article above while reading a take on Raymond Chandler's Twelve Rules for writing mysteries...http://badlanguagemcr.blogspot.com/2010/09/twelve-notes.html where Chandler basically lays out why both of us dislike Agatha Christie. The blogger hates RTD, but not for the right reason.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-19 07:49 am (UTC)But I still read it and Angels & Demons. What can I say? I'm not much of a book snob...or maybe I should say I'm a book slut. I'll try anything once. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-19 10:08 am (UTC)And I don't hate Agatha Christie, and I don't think that a lot of Chandler's points apply to her, so ner.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-19 05:09 pm (UTC)Though, to play fair myself, I must add that I have only read three Agatha Christie stories. They all pulled a murderer out of nowhere. Also, in one of them, the last one I ever read, the murderer appeared for exactly two paragraphs at the beginning of the tale. He had no relevance whatsoever and I had the worst trouble going back to find him.
Though, I do agree that pink-eyed silhouettes are creepy. As is a person who is chillingly close while 15 feet away behind a sealed gate. Though, I suppose it would depend on his level of innate chillingness.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-19 05:16 pm (UTC)p.s. some of them are pretty feeble admittedly - probably because she worked to a contract of 3 books a year.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-19 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-19 05:25 pm (UTC)I disagree. You would have to come back with a set of examples and appropriate quotes to convince me, and I think that might be too much Christie reading for you. I would agree that her plots were more memorable than her (non-recurring) characters, if that helps. Anyway, here's a list of some of her highlights:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/15/top-10-agatha-christie-novels
(I don't agree re the last two - I think she was in decline by the 1950s.)