Ouch. Supporting Brown as the rope support the hangman, as they say.

Good point. Because we all know that there is a single kind of smarter and that people can be easily ranked by that.

Look, I freely admit that I not as smart writing-wise as most posters around here, but I vaguely recall from my struggles in writing class the concept of analogy: I don’t sneer at people who aren’t as facile with the tools of my specialty, so why must others sneer at lesser users of the tools of their specialty? Maybe not the clearest analogy (metaphor?) but I hope you can see my point. I am certain my claim is not a straw man like claim the “insuation that Tylerh is a man of the people.” How does a declaration of posessing a Ph.D. even begin to raise such a claim?

To clarify: I am not saying Dan Brown wrote a good book. But is there any evidence that was his goal? Dan Brown appears to have set out to write a popular book and succeeded wildly. Given how rarely any popular book is considered a good book, most of the comments on this thread strike my ears as more akin to junior high students desperately trying to sound cool around the lunch table than useful literary analysis.

yes. First, there are plenty of engineering tasks that don’t require facility with D.E.s Second, there are far better responses to someone struggling at their job than sneering.

Why do tylerh and decon misspell y’all the same way?

Because there are strong regional variations in how that colloquial second person plural pronoun is pronounced. “Y’all” is reflective of how I grew up prounouncing that word, as in the shopkeepers’ friendly parting, “Y’ aall come back now, yehear!”

http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/images/judgment-files/baigent_v_rhg_0406.pdf

And I rolled on the floor when reading Angels & Demons—the description of CERN is priceless (doesn’t the protagonist also get whisked over there in a Concorde or something like that?)

And heck, I could come up with a better conspiracy theory myself. In fact, I’ve got one, pulling together the occult, Freemasons, the Russian Mafia, Petrarch, hedge funds, trust law as implemented in Jersey law, and faked statues. Oh, and a hurricane and mistaken identities. That’ll show them.

The “expert” in question – Larry the Cable Guy – was in fact born and raised in Nebraska. The accent (and attitude) are completely bogus.

This is not entirely off topic, by the way. Like Dan Brown, Larry the Cable Guy has taken to heart the dictum of H.L. Mencken: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

Yes, but Da Vinci Legacy is, at least, an ORIGINAL piece of mindless drivel as opposed to plagiarized mindless drivel like AD and DVCode.

And no I didn’t update any of the technology. When the newest edition was printed, my editor wanted me to do an update of the 1983 original. But the time was very short and a number of things did not get properly updated.

However, NOTHING substantial was changed, nothing that affects the plot, the action etc.

What else was done in this hasty update? A few things, like people pay in Euros now and not in Lire like they did when I wrote this in 1983. The Last Supper has been restored. Stuff like that.

The Hero’s name was changed (too many sssss’s Curtis Davis … say it aloud… the change was to Vance Erikson, but the name change didn’t get transferred to the cover on the first printing. The change was made on the second and third printings so maybe the first ones will be collector’s items.

And at least having something on the back of the Clorox bottle to read serves some kind of social good, I think.

PP said: “These books don’t hold a candle to a piece of mindless drivel based on the same premise called “the da vinci legacy” by lewis perdue. it was originally published in 1983 and features a renegade scientist, beautiful girl, scientific mystery, set in Italy. It was re-copyrighted in 2004 to take advantage of Dan Brown mania. It was clearly re-written at that time to update the technology etc and makes the book so anachronistic that you cant read a whole page without wanting to annotate and edit the whole thing. Somehow it was popular enough to make a rack at the airport, and since it didn’t feature any bodice ripping cover, I read it. I kept going back to it to consume time and kill the boredom just as you might read the back of the bleach bottle if you are stuck on the toilet for too long.”