How meredith stopped worrying and learned to love the davinci code
I confess that I didn't get it. I read The DaVinci Code at last, and I was baffled. Dan Brown came to my school when I was a freshman. The DaVinci Code had just been published, but hadn't hit it big yet. We sat there, listening to him talk about antimatter and the Catholic Church. And we were all shifting in our seats, hoping he would finish up so we could get to the snacks in the back of the room. A couple kids had read his other stuff. They thought it was pretty good and that it was cool to have an author come, but none of us saw The DaVinci Code's success coming.
And after overcoming my initial, snobby horror that a man who wrote like this used to teach English, I paused. While The DaVinci Code will certainly never go down in my top ten books to read, it certainly isn't bad. I suppose most of my distaste had to do with my notion that bestselling books ought to be well written. But then I thought about all the books that we're supposed to read, like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I slogged through and despised. I love reading, I grew up doing it, and I've read some pretty heavy things. This is probably the root of my book snobbery. But just because I didn't think The DaVinci Code was inspiring or particularly good as a book, rather than entertainment, that doesn't mean other people can't. It's okay to enjoy the books you read.
What I'm really trying to say is, sometimes we're too snobby for our own good. Shakespeare wasn't considered high art in his time. And now (often sad) high school students must read his iambic pentameter and thinly veiled sexual references. And while maybe Dan Brown isn't as clever with his words as Shakespeare was, I can't dismiss him outright. Maybe future generations will look back on Dan Brown as Shakespeare, or they'll look back on it like they look upon the author of Love Story. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's well written, but sometimes that's okay. So I chilled out and accepted The DaVinci Code, and encourage everyone else to be okay with it, too.
But please stop buying it. Check it out from the library. Dan Brown doesn't need any more money, and it'll take you all of two days to read the book.
Top 10 Books to Read This Summer:
1. The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
2. Middlesex
3. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
4. Crime and Punishment
5. The History of Love
6. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
7. The Passion
8. The Tipping Point
9. All The King's Men
10. Naked Lunch
And after overcoming my initial, snobby horror that a man who wrote like this used to teach English, I paused. While The DaVinci Code will certainly never go down in my top ten books to read, it certainly isn't bad. I suppose most of my distaste had to do with my notion that bestselling books ought to be well written. But then I thought about all the books that we're supposed to read, like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I slogged through and despised. I love reading, I grew up doing it, and I've read some pretty heavy things. This is probably the root of my book snobbery. But just because I didn't think The DaVinci Code was inspiring or particularly good as a book, rather than entertainment, that doesn't mean other people can't. It's okay to enjoy the books you read.
What I'm really trying to say is, sometimes we're too snobby for our own good. Shakespeare wasn't considered high art in his time. And now (often sad) high school students must read his iambic pentameter and thinly veiled sexual references. And while maybe Dan Brown isn't as clever with his words as Shakespeare was, I can't dismiss him outright. Maybe future generations will look back on Dan Brown as Shakespeare, or they'll look back on it like they look upon the author of Love Story. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's well written, but sometimes that's okay. So I chilled out and accepted The DaVinci Code, and encourage everyone else to be okay with it, too.
But please stop buying it. Check it out from the library. Dan Brown doesn't need any more money, and it'll take you all of two days to read the book.
Top 10 Books to Read This Summer:
1. The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
2. Middlesex
3. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
4. Crime and Punishment
5. The History of Love
6. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
7. The Passion
8. The Tipping Point
9. All The King's Men
10. Naked Lunch
posted by Meredith at 8:00 PM
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