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Majuscule wrote: I read The DaVinci Code after a friend of mine raved about it.

It was...okay. However, I think reading Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum made TDC seem simplistic. Someone has suggested Holy Blood, Holy Grail (not by Dan Brown, of course) as being, er, more detailed...


It was not great,too long drawn out. I read his other book Deception Point,a much better book.

There's lots of these books on the rounds these days. All bringing in big dollars,not a bad living.

Excellent book. All about the white house and the President. Would making a great movie. Go on out and buy it.

capt_buzzard wrote: Excellent book. All about the white house and the President. Would making a great movie. Go on out and buy it.


Exactly!! The book was written as if Dan Brown wanted Hollywood to make a movie out of it. And now it is. Tom Hanks is going to be the main character. I liked the book but thought that Dan Brown should have written it for the readers instead of writing for the screen.

The Da Vinci Code was Crap. Another few $$. Next he'll rewrite the Bible.

I just finished reading the DaVinci code and loved it. Once I got started I couldn't put it down. Can't wait to read all his other books.

I just tried reading Digital Fortress.

I knew Brown was a bad writer but DaVinci Code and Angels And Demons had enough plot intrigue to keep me reading. Fortress so far is just a showcase for what a bad writer he is.

"... Susan Fletcher's legs.

Hard to imagine they support a 170 IQ, he mused to himself."

At least he restricted himself to sub-200 IQs which keeps him in the bounds of possibility. Loose though the term is, as a mathematical function it predicts that there are only six people on the planet with an IQ of 190 or above. I wonder who the other four are?

Actually...

This IQ thing is somewhat circular.

It started by noting that if you compare children of various ages, those who can compete on even terms with older children vary on a bell-curve as the ages differ by more and more. The ratio of the ages was the quoted IQ and IQs fell on the bell curve with a difference of 15 points between standard deviations.

But you can't apply that ratio to adults. So they came up with the idea that since the measured competitive ability of children in tests was a bell-curve, the measured competitive ability of adults in tests would be one as well. So they scored adult IQs on the basis that the test results would be a bell-curve too, and stuck with the same 15 point standard deviation. That's where I came up with the 6 people out of 6 billion having an IQ of 190 and over, 190 being 6 standard deviations of 15 points.

But the bell curve only fits the measurements because the measurements are plotted against one. It's entirely arbitrary and yet it's also the definition. It's a circular argument. I'm sure it shouldn't be.

For example, there's lots of things that damage people's ability to compete in tests - medical damage to brains springs to mind - but no compensating thing that improves a brain's capacity to compete in tests. No un-damage happening on the same scale as the damage. You'd think that would skew the curve but no, it can't, because people are distributed along the bell curve and wow surprise, the distribution ends up bell-curved just as "theory" predicted.

If Brown only wrote that well, spot.................

Digital Fortress, I couldn't finish that book, koan.

I loved The Da Vinci Code and it created in me the strongest desire to go to Paris and see the places he wrote about.

Fortune smiled upon me and my desire was fulfilled.