I have a hard time articulating what I mean when I say ‘bad writing’ but The Telegraph does an excellent job pointing out the factual errors and just ugly prose in the various Dan Brown books. 

Some of my favorites- 

“14. Angels and Demons, chapter 100: Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers glorified the four major rivers of the Old World – The Nile, Ganges, Danube, and Rio Plata. 

The Rio de la Plata. Between Argentina and Uruguay. One of the major rivers of the Old World. Apparently. “  

Seriously? A major, overwhelmingly popular author can’t spend two minutes on Google? Anyone, anywhere could look this up and see the error. 

“19. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 83: “The Knights Templar were warriors,” Teabing reminded, the sound of his aluminum crutches echoing in this reverberant space. 

“Remind” is a transitive verb – you need to remind someone of something. You can’t just remind. And if the crutches echo, we know the space is reverberant.” 

Yet another victim of the “said is evil” school of writers. Just use ‘he said’, I promise, it won’t hurt. 

“4, 3, and 2. The Da Vinci Code, opening sentence: Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery. 

Angels and Demons, opening sentence: Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own. 

Deception Point, opening sentences: Death, in this forsaken place, could come in countless forms. Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him. 

Professor Pullum: “Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence”. “ 

HA! 

I know I am a book snob, but I have a difficult time grasping how people can read this stuff and call it fantastic. It drives me up the wall that all this awful writing is topping the NYT bestseller lists while some of the best writing goes completely unnoticed. Don’t even get me started on Twilight… oops, too late! 

“I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly” 

Good know you can go to hell without thoroughly going to hell… I think I’ll partially go to hell, you know, maybe go 40% to hell… or something. 

“Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars- points of light and reason… And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything.” 

GRAH! I think I’m going to puke now… is this a Harlequin Romance? No, it can’t be, the prose is too purple even for that! The whole passage is cheesy, cliché and just wrong. It makes me want to sing- ‘blinded by the light…wrapped up like a duce…” and the ’stars-points’ bothers me, shouldn’t it be star-points? Also, brilliancy is kind of a stupid word. Just reading this passage makes me so glad I skipped this series and even more disappointed in the readers of the world. 

“When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn’t see it as an omen —just unavoidable. I’d already said my goodbyes to the sun. “ 

Um, what? This sentence makes me NUTS! Who said the rain was an omen? Right… no one. Way to not use the weather as a device to set the mood. After all, that would be cliché wouldn’t it? Instead, have the main character blatantly talk about how rain isn’t an omen. That’s some crazy misdirection, now I’m all a flutter! 

And finally, the following passage is the final one that I read when skimming the book at B&N, before deciding there were a few thousand other things with which I’d rather fill my time, like reorganizing the OED using the last letter of a word rather than the first or mowing the lawn with a pair of sewing scissors.   

“Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn’t have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself — and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close.  

Who describes themselves as ‘ivory-skinned’? Then proceeds to emphasis the point by using ‘translucent’, ’sallow’ and ‘pallid’- how many times did you use shit-F7 while writing this thing Ms Meyer? I never realized having blue eyes was an excuse. An excuse for what exactly? Brainless vanity? 

When I finished putting my clothes in the old pine dresser, I took my bag of bathroom necessities and went to the communal bathroom to clean myself up after the day of travel. I looked at my face in the mirror as I brushed through my tangled, damp hair. Maybe it was the light, but already I looked sallower, unhealthy. My skin could be pretty — it was very clear, almost translucent-looking — but it all depended on color. I had no color here.  

‘Communal bathroom’? I didn’t realize bathroom needed an adjective. Also, ‘day of travel’?! What the hell is that? I’m sorry, did we revert 150 years for a second and I didn’t know about it? If her skin was pretty because it is translucent-looking then no, it doesn’t depend on color. It depends on the lack of it, and she already said she didn’t get color from the sun in the previous paragraph so why is she complaining that she has no color here? IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE! 

This passage also works as a lovely starting out point for the rampant sexism in YA books, but that’s another post.  

Guess which I kind I got wrapped up into?

Our Fearless Leader’s kick ass girlfriend, who, incidentally, deserves her own special nickname on this site… let’s see…I’m not creative so lets go with Awesome Chick, A.C. for short.

Anyway, she and I have bonded over ghost hunts and whatnot, but our main draw is books. Oh yes, we love the books. So she joined this challenge and invited me along. It is complex and detailed, so I won’t go into it here, but the goal is to read a lot of books in widely differing categories between September and November. Points are given when certain tasks are completed. The points mean just about as much they did on that old comedy show, “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” which is to say, nada. But the challenge, the books, the marathon reading… it is too strong a force to resist.

Naturally, this lead me to scrutinizing other book challenges. Which, also naturally, lead me to decide to participate in many of those as well… at the same fucking time! I should never complain again- I bring all my stress on myself.

Anyway, so as part of my challenge experience I am going to- what else? Blog about it. It started yesterday and I have already emptied my bank account buying books to fit the exacting criteria of these challenges. Sigh. We’re having an imaginary Christmas this year I think (I got a pogo stick!).

So, to recap the last two days reading- I haven’t finished anything except a few kids books, the rediscovered Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, which are just as delightful now as they were when I read them twenty (!) years ago.

I’ve started the following books-
The Court of Air, by Stephen Hunt
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World by Arthur Herman
Redemption Alley by Lilith Saintcrow

If I manage to finish one of these before starting another, I’ll be highly surprised.