Dan Brown’s first new novel since The DaVinci Code was announced yesterday. Inevitably, it involves a global cult and a race against time to unlock a secret formula.
Details of the plot are likely to remain fiercely guarded until much nearer the publication date of September 15, but intrigue centres on whether Brown’s vast and conspiracy-crazed international fan base can divine any clues about the novel from its title: The Lost Symbol.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article6134742.ece
I’m presently reading Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons”. I failed to read “The DaVinci Code” prior to the movie release and therefore have been unable to remain reading it.
I have the unfortunate problem of not being able to stick with a book if I see the movie first. Add to my experience with the “DaVinci Code” that right after viewing the movie I was in Paris for two weeks, inundated while moving through the Louvre’ on several occasions with “DaVinci Code” paraphernalia.
(With over 60,000 works you cannot see the Louvre in one visit.)
Dan Brown’s “DaVinci Code” swept up this amazing museum, former home to French royalty and present home to great works of art, in ways that I still find amazing.
I was in Europe the following summer when J.K. Rowling’s last installment of the Harry Potter Series came out. In my estimation Dan Brown is only second to J.K. Rowling for the kind of effect an author and her/his work can and does have on readers and non-readers across the globe.
And yet there are Americans–writers and readers who find Dan Brown’s works and his writing banal, bland and some have even ventured to say, “Plain out bad.”
I presume others from around the world have voiced these or similar criticisms, but since I live in America I hear these.
And of course similar attacks were launched against J. K. Rowling, and most recently concerning Stephanie Meyer, author of the much celebrated YA Twilight Series of books.
I have not read the Harry Potter Series nor have I any of the Twilight Books. My 21-year old spent the decade between 10 and 2 reading and savoring all of the Harry Potter Series.
The last installment debuted when she was finishing up her studies in Bilbao, Spain. She not only purchased a copy while we visited London before returning home. She also had a copy that she had pre-ordered waiting for her when we arrived back in the States.
Completing this last in the line of 7 installments, she closed the book on a chapter in her life that I’m certain she will forever cherish.
Much in the same vein, but in a shorter time span, my 16 year-old tore through 3 of the 4 books in the Twilight Series last summer after completing her required reading list for sophomore English. She did this while we on vacation despite being dyslexic.
Having digressed let me say that I now make sure to read books that have been turned into movies before seeing the movie adaptation, even if I have to wait to view the movie on DVD. Movies do for me, at least American made movies, destroy all ability for me to imagine.
It seems my children learned this long before me. My eldest and middle read all the Harry Potter Books and Twilight books prior to seeing the movie adaptation.
And even my 10-year-old was careful to read the books of “The Spiderwicke Chronicles” before the first movie debuted as well as Neil Gaiman’s, “Coraline” before the 3-D movie came out.
And so it is with Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons”, I find myself in the interesting and wonderful position of having slipped within less than 150 pages of the end when reading that the sequel to the “DaVinci Code” will be released September 15, 2009.
Hmmm.
Do I now have the impetus to go back and read the “DaVinci Code”?
I doubt it.
But I will finish “Angels and Demons”. The trailer to “Angels and Demons” appeared on the movie screen this weekend as I, and my husband sat waiting to see a movie. Having stopped mid-way the 500-page book I was spurred on to finish the book.
Why had I stopped?
First I am in the middle of final edits of my novel, “The House” due out this fall too. Believe me, there’s no competition between my story and Brown’s “The Lost Symbol”.
Yet however Brown has linked this book with the “DaVinci Code”, his writing for me symbolizes, signifies and exemplifies one aspect of writing critics seem to ignore, or do not recognize.
Simplicity.
And if ever a writer provided evidence of how one might write a novel that could be quite easily adapted to screen, Angels and Demons does that. It rolls like scenes on a movie screen.
I highly recommend this book to beginning writers who have been much influenced by movies, and less so by reading books.
Is Dan Brown’s writing in “Angels and Demons” fancy?
No.
The simplicity of his writing is at times downright boring.
And yet that is the artistry.
On contemplating why I stopped reading in the middle of the book, I wonder if it might have been so I could employ some of his techniques in the editing of my novel.
You know those places where we as writers tend to get complicated and writerly, saying much but signifying nothing? I do that a lot.
Reading “Angels and Demons” has shown me how an entire book can be written with utter simplicity–with what some have called bad writing–but clearly readers differ.
Have you read “The DaVinci Code”? If so, what did you think of it? And why?
Have you read “Angels and Demons”? What were your opinions? And why?
Please, no spoilers. I’ve yet to finish.
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