Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Anyone read Dan Brown? (DaVinci Code Author)

The only one I have yet to read is Deception Point. I though D.C., Angels & Demons and Digital Fortress were all great. Just great stuff. Ken Follett is another author I really like. Read Hornet Flight, Code to Zero and am thinking about picking up Whiteout. Has anyone read these and know of any similar authors?

Im reading the davanci code right now. What is the digital fortess about?? My mom is reading angels and demons. She said it is pretty good so far.

I liked A&D better than DaVinci Code. Digital Fortress was printed in 98 so some of the computer stuff in it is funny to read now. This is from his web site about the book...

Chillingly current and filled with more intelligence secrets than Tom Clancy, Digital Fortress transports the reader deep within the most powerful intelligence organization on earth--the National Security Agency (NSA)--an ultra-secret, multi-billion dollar agency which (until now) less than three percent of Americans knew existed.

When the NSA's most classified technological wonder--an invincible code-breaking machine--encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls in its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power.

The NSA is being held hostage... not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it will cripple U.S. intelligence.

Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides she finds herself fighting not only for her country, but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

With a startling twist that leaves the agency scrambling to avert the biggest intelligence disaster in U.S. history, Digital Fortress never lets up.

From the underground hallways of power, to the skyscrapers of Tokyo, to the towering cathedrals of Spain, a desperate race unfolds. It is a battle for survival -- a crucial bid to destroy a creation of inconceivable genius... an impregnable code-writing formula that threatens to obliterate the balance of power. Forever.

Just, please, don't take DC seriously (or Dan Brown, period). It's entertainment, only. The stuff presented as "fact" is there to add to the entertainment value, and bears no resemblance to the real history of the Catholic Church.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Dan Brown's writing is complete drivel. Far from literature, but an entertaining, yet dumbed down, read that is one gimmick after another.

I'm inclined to agree, just not with quite as much conviction

I've read a couple of his books and found his writing to be relatively mediocre. Not bad but not good. His books are hardly intellectually stimulating, certainly not an intellectual excercise of any sort, and he relies on telling his readers what to think moreso than giving the info and letting them reach a conclusion on their own. And he really needs to lay off the italics key. The hint-dropping italic sidebar crap is annoying as hell and only makes me think he can't write well enough to get his point across without blatantly obvious and/or looked like he thought his readers wouldn't be smart enough to get the point on their own.

I find his premises and information to be interesting but would have to agree that the novels themselves are 'dumbed down' in order to appeal to the masses. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing because at least people are reading something even if it isn't the most intellectually-stimulating thing in the world.

I do find his novels interesting and not bad reads. But they would be several notches below Michael Crichton on the "Information made Entertaining"-scale in my book (no pun intended). They're like a mix between Crichton and, oh I dunno, R.L. Stine.