[spear]

I read the DaVince Code at the beginning of its popularity but before the public outcries of heresy and plagarism. Usually I don't read "manly thrillers" (if you can classify it that way, even though I grew up reading Doc Savage), but all of the volunteers at my park were reading it and passing it around, so I finally bought it on sale. During a tropical storm, after closing up the park, I lazed around and read it cover to cover. Now I am a fast reader, but with Brown's unusual use of two to three page chapters, the pages really seem to fly. Of course it probably helped that I had already read "holy Grail, Holy Blood" in college (love reading weird stuff, secretly always wanting to believe it, whatever stuff is being offered, but I am too much of a realist, and always wind up WTF? and tearing up flimsy evidence offered), so I was already familiar with the backstory as such. After I finished it, thought "that was interesting", then sold it on ebay. When then church types (yes I am a lapsed Catholic) started flipping out, I laughed so hard, I mean come on...its fiction! But it helped him sell books so more power to him.

Afterwards I read Angels and Demons for the heck of it. I felt it was the better of the two books, mixing symbolic deaths with reenaissance sculpture and architecture, to me it was more original and faster paced....if only he could of left out the whole anti-matter stuff, again WTF? Anyway finished the book and sold it on ebay.

As a curator, I obviously think most of his stuff is hugely off base. It both tickles me and saddens me at the same time that people get so worked up his stuff. But then again I refuse to see "historicaly" based movies because I will end up shouting at the screen stuff like: "that type of weapon didn't exist yet, and couldn't they have hidden the zippers better?"

To wind up, I think of Brown's work kind of along the lines of the pulp novels (except he wouldn't of survived being a pulp writer, they had to crank those stories out fast). You can like the works or hate the works it doesn't even matter. The fact that people feel that they have to constantly analyze or criticize his books have created more publicity and money for him than anything else could have done and he's laughing to the bank. I don't love him, I don't hate him, I'm just amazed at the amount of time and energy over the uproar (which now I am also guilty of).

Denise