The Da Vinci Code

[altariel]

33 pages in and nobody told me it was funny! Many examples, even this early on, but this is my favourite:

The car sped onto a wooded section of Rue Castiglione, which served as the northern entrance to the famed Tuileries Gardens - Paris's own version of Central Park.

What other examples could there be? The Eiffel Tower - Paris's swift retort to Blackpool? Stonehenge - Salisbury's very own Foamhenge?

Comments

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

Versailles -- France's pale imitation of Disneyland. :D

[altariel.livejournal.com]

:-D

Disney World - Florida's comeback to Eurodisney.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

"The hot desert sun blazed down on the Great Pyramid of Giza. Dan (who had recently journeyed to Las Vegas), was impressed; the great stone monument, he mused, was almost as magnificent a sight as Luxor Casino itself."

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Beautiful sentiments.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

I thought it very fitting that when Stephen King wrote The Stand, he put his Anti-Christ's base in Las Vegas.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I love that in 'The Stand'!

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

You're a right little Pollyanna, you, finding the good in everything.

If you're wearing gingham and skipping, stop it right now.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

If you're wearing gingham and skipping, stop it right now.

Aw, do I have to?

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Aw, do I have to?

[rolls eyes]Oh, all right, carry on then.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

*tugs forelock* Thank'ee ma'am!

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

I figured you already knew.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I haven't got round to reading it until now.

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

hardrada's comments, along with those of a few others here (and the fact that certain easily-pleased readers in my family thought the book was "awesome") told me all I needed to know. Well, that and I read Angels and Demons so I already had a good idea of what I would be in for. Writers like Brown rarely have an incentive to improve.

I honor you for actually picking the thing up and reading it. It's like...I dunno, taking one for the team or something.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I honor you for actually picking the thing up and reading it. It's like...I dunno, taking one for the team or something.

It's not a book I'm going to spend hours on, I'll admit (two hours reading has got me a quarter of the way through), but there have been some classic bits of prose.

[aervir.livejournal.com]

What about the Radcliffe Camera -- Oxford's local miniature version of the Capitol? And the Bodleian as a carbon copy of the Library of Congress?

Dan Brown is a real goldmine for TEH FUNNY. I got The DaVinci Code as a Christmas present, and it certainly was a most entertaining read, perhaps not exactly in the way intended by the giver, but still...

And it will get even better and better, believe me.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I laughed so hard at the opening chapters I nearly put my back out again. Can't wait to see where it'll go.

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

The Eiffel Tower - Paris's swift retort to Blackpool?

*falls over*

[altariel.livejournal.com]

:-D

[executrix.livejournal.com]

The albino hunchback assassin on page 3 was a high point from which there was really nowhere to go but down.

I did keep expecting another Igor to turn up though. I'm sure Sam Vimes could have done something with the case.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It does read like a Pratchett! Only, you know, not intentionally.


albino hunchback assassin on page 3

He got a fantastic bit:

Andorra, he thought feeling his muscles tighten. Incredibly, it was in that barren and forsaken suzerain between Spain and France, shivering in his stone cell, wanting only to die, that Silas had been saved.

That's, like, poetry.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Faith an' Andorra!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail years ago, so I even know the plot. I can't wait to see what masterpieces of exposition will deliver it to me.

[crossbow1.livejournal.com]

Copenhagen, Denmark's attempt to recreate Slovang (http://www.aeimages.com/pictures/PCH/PCH-020.03.html). (check out the “minitaarn” in the background. Copenhagen, just to out-do us, built the Rundetaarn (http://www.kultunaut.dk/perl/sted/type-nynaut/nr-8942) even bigger. Bastards.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

God that's brilliant.

[copracat]

Curse you! Now I'm thinking it might be worth reading. Stop making it sound like an attractive book

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It really is a very bad book indeed. This may not lessen its attractiveness, however!

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Must of the best humor, it seems to me, is unintentional. Clearly, this novel is the print equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space!

I look forward to reading more of your well-deserved mockery lucid commentary on this particular best-seller.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

They just used a piece of soap to escape from the Louvre. Wow.

I think Plan 9 probably had more loving care put into it, to be honest.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

They just used a piece of soap to escape from the Louvre. Wow.

I don't know what's more amazing: that it would be a bar of soap which saves them, or that anyone sane would actually want to leave the Louvre! :D

If you like satirical commentary on Really Bad Books, you might want to check out Slacktivist. He's doing a hysterical running commentary on that best-selling piece of fundie Rapture porn, Left Behind. I don't know which is more mind-boggling: that a book so badly written was actually professionally published, or that it would go on to become a multi-million copy best-seller. Suffice it to say, the excerpts Slacktivist has posted from Left Behind make The Da Vinci Code look like Shakespeare by comparison!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Great link, thanks! I must read Left Behind one day.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Only if your a masochist! The quotes the Slacktivist posts are stomach-turning enough; I can't imagine the level of nausea reading the whole book would invoke.

(I think the title is a hint from the authors as to where the book should remain when you encounter it on your local bookstore's shelves.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

(I think the title is a hint from the authors as to where the book should remain when you encounter it on your local bookstore's shelves.)

:-D

I'm just... intrigued by the whole thing. I won't buy it tho', I'll wait till I see a copy on someone's shelf somewhere, and skimread it in the loo.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

For some reason this hilarity triggered Fifties memories:

The Alhambra - Spain's imitation of a picture palace
Mecca - the Arab world's botched attempt at a dance hall

oops, I feel a fatwa coming on....

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Love 'em. Mecca could be a bingo hall too now.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it... I can see why cinemas ended up being called the Alhambra, the Regal and various others, but where did the Roxy come from?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Good question. Some kind of jazz thing going on?

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

I know very little about this book, other than it's a bestseller, but those quotations are certainly... interesting :). I could buy the original one if it's meant to suggest the protagonist's not-well-travelled-ness, but 'suzerain'? What does Andorra rule over?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think this book might well out-pestilence Pestilence.