I have been listening to Dan “Da Vinci Code” Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol.
I am getting really frustrated with it. I’m not going to stop until it’s finished, but I just want to smack the guy. I understand that the book is supposed to be suspenseful. I get it. I understand that the whole thing is a mystery. I get that too. But give me a fricken break Dan! In almost every single chapter a character learns a piece of the puzzle. That’s expected, right? In just about every case the character keeps it to himself for the next three chapters or so. I continuously find myself saying, “Well I’m glad some one knows what’s going on.” In one case character A shows character B something on a computer. It completely changes the way character B behaves for the rest of the book. I’m 90 or so chapters removed from that action and I still don’t have any idea what character B saw. At least some one knows what’s going on, right?
I am also pretty sick of feeling like I am being patronized by a smart ass teacher. Brown has a way of having one character reveal supposedly hidden information to another character by making the second character piece together the clues. The first character ends up looking like a grade school teacher trying to lead a kid to the answer to a math problem. That’s all well and good when you have no idea what the teacher character is getting at, but when you can see the damn answer 10 miles away it gets really annoying.
I’ve completed three of Dan Brown’s novels. Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code were both excellent. (Like a lot of people who read both, I kinda liked A&D better, despite the fact that Da Vinci sold 10-20 gazillion copies. I also read the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the one whose authors accused Brown of stealing when he wrote Da Vinci. Let’s just say, I see their point.) I read another one that I think was called Digital Fortress and I didn’t really like it. It was okay. Nothing special. I figured out the ending long before the characters did. That made the ending anti-climactic to the point of shear boredom. Sorry Dan. I started reading another one… I can’t recall the title… the one about finding aliens in the ice near the North Pole… and I just couldn’t get into it and eventually put it down and forgot about it.
The Lost Symbol isn’t bad, it just seems like this time he’s trying WAY too hard to keep up the suspense. We’re the audience Dan, ya gotta give us some of the information or we’re just going to get bored and go home. Also, not every obscure nugget of historical information is unknown to all of us. Some of us know about some of the things you talk about. Stop treating your PHD characters (and thus your readers) like first graders learning about addition. We, the readers, do occasionally know some shit without you guiding us to it. Oh and I’m on chapter 103 or something like that… still no idea what the historical significance of that knife is, although at least two characters know all about it. Still don’t know what Bellamy saw in the jungle, although at least two characters do. We’re the readers Dan, we need the info. Oh, and the whole drowning sequence that you’ve used twice in this book? You’ve used that before too. Stuff like that makes me start thinking of adjectives like, “Hack.” Sorry Dan.
Okay… now that that’s done…
My home town is trying to destroy my High School! Tewksbury is having a vote this weekend on whether or not to build a new high school. It sounds like it’s one of those issues that the towns folks are really rallying around. There was a town meeting this week to decide if the question would be placed on this weekend’s ballot and people were getting the word out all over the place. Now that it is on the ballot signs are up everywhere. There were even people holding signs on main street this morning…
Where do I stand on the issue?
I could care less.
I don’t live in Tewksbury, I could give a rats ass what they do with the building I went to school in 20 years ago. I don’t have any particular rosy fondness for my high school days. Frankly, as long as the money they use to pay for the high school doesn’t cost any teachers (specifically my big sister) or cops or firemen their jobs then go ahead and build whatever the hell you want.
It’s fun to take a real political stand like that once in a while, isn’t it?
