clarification

[rivendellrose]

For the record, since there seems to be a bit of confusion on this - I am not against anyone else liking Dan Brown or Angels and Demons. More power to you. I just don't like it myself, and take a perverse pleasure in reaming books that I don't like, particularly if I have to read them whether or not I like them. It's a habit leftover from school, where at least if I hated a book I had to read for class, I could write a nasty essay about it.

And I don't know how people are getting the impression that I don't like it because it's trashy literature. I enjoy trashy literature. This is just not my kind of trashy literature. Give me an urban fantasy, historical romance or cheap sci-fi novel any day. Thrillers and mysteries are not my thing, and in general I get bored by even the good ones.

Comments

[windrose.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on how one defines trash. There's compulsively readable and fun trash, and then there's badly written, "the stupid hurts my head" trash. Dan Brown falls into the latter category for me because I'm a huge science nerd, and bad science in books drives me batshit insane. Ditto bad history, which again Dan Brown hits out of the park.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Good point. For instance, early in college Laurell K Hamilton was total fun-trash reading for me. And then, slowly... her books turned into the "help, my brain is melting" kind of trash. Or maybe I just got sick of them. But I'm convinced that they got worse as the series went on. :P

[arionrhod.livejournal.com]

Laurell Hamilton went the way of so many once-decent authors - she started taking herself and her work too seriously and making it a big old Mary Sue self-insertion. I read Circus of the Damned when it was first published and adored it as good, almost campy vampire fic with a racy component. But you're right, she changed. It all went down hill after Blue Moon, I guess it was (I NEVER liked Richard), but I came back for Obsidian Butterfly because of my secret love of Edward. Alas, her stuff now is just so much Sherrilyn Kenyon garbage, all the stuff that was unique and fun about it has drained away.

Dan Brown... I can't tell you how many levels of pure wrong that man's writing is. He wrote one about... well, a subject with which I am intimately familiar and have far more knowledge about than he, and not only were his guesses incorrect, they were ridiculous to the point of being ludicrous and show that he can't fake a good story. :P

Sigh.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Glad it wasn't just me thinking that she'd once been good. I can't actually remember how far I read... maybe the sixth Anita Blake book and the first of her fairy books (because I'm a total whore when it comes to books about the Sidhe). But by the end it was like "okay, either I was delusional and this was never good, or this has gone so far downhill that it's unrecognizable.

I can only imagine, re: Brown and his information. I'm no specialist in anything he's writing on in Angels and Demons, but a lot of his info hits my basic "that doesn't sound at all right" buttons. Which I suppose would be fine if he weren't stuffing all his weird ideas into the names of things that are actually real. :P

[ryunohi.livejournal.com]

I support your need to rip apart books that you don't like. It's one of my favorite pastimes. And I have read Angels and Demons, and I winced all the way through and then complained to people afterward.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one with that habit. ;)

I have a feeling it's going to be one of those books that will be good to have read, if only so I can say "yes, I've read it, and I didn't like it."