Of why harry potter and dan brown books sucks

[aidiore]

There was a time when Henry Miller in his crappy offcie at the postal service of U.S, haunted me with the irracional complications of a pretty simple life...and that was a good time....

then...from the darkest pit of nonsense...one british b...mmm...lady...rose and give us a new light...a new wind...and then you took that book into your hands...i took that book...and my eyes start bledding...that was because the childlish, bad written, characters horribly "constructed", history of a magician...

and dont get me started with that moron of dan brown...my FSM those books sucks...

[Zankou 2.0]

There was a time when Henry Miller in his crappy offcie at the postal service of U.S, haunted me with the irracional complications of a pretty simple life...and that was a good time....

then...from the darkest pit of nonsense...one british b...mmm...lady...rose and give us a new light...a new wind...and then you took that book into your hands...i took that book...and my eyes start bledding...that was because the childlish, bad written, characters horribly "constructed", history of a magician...

and dont get me started with that moron of dan brown...my FSM those books sucks...

Which literary black hole did you crawl out of?

[fueledbycoffee]

This is why you don't confuse literature with pop fiction.

[Zankou 2.0]

This is why you don't confuse literature with pop fiction.

Excuse me? Just what are you implying by that statement?

[aidiore]

i have to agree with you...usually the people dont consider a book of these a real master piece...instead they say like: its fun to read...nothing else...but with this things (they dont even deserve to be called books) they have overreacted and took the "fun to read thing" to far...


Which literary black hole did you crawl out of?[/quote]

a hole filled with henry miller life, the clever garcia marquez, the spice of tolstoi, and the bitterness of nietzsche...thats the place that made who i am...

and i hate to see our young ones to be the morons followers of these things...i admit it...i read the firsto two of those books...and they suck...but it was fun to read...but not enough to create these cults around them...its not worth it...

[fueledbycoffee]

This is why you don't confuse literature with pop fiction.

Excuse me? Just what are you implying by that statement?

That Dan Brown is the Tom Clancy of religious conspiracy thrillers. JK Rowling is considerably better but exists to sell a fuckload of books, like Dan Brown. I think Harry Potter is in the grey zone between Literature and pop fiction. However, there's no question about Henry Miller. And if anyone even suggests that Dan Brown is as good as Henry Miller, I will stab them with a Super Star Destroyer.

[aidiore]

just stab them????...if anyone will even consider saying that im going to take his skin with a knife really slow...and then make them swim in pool of alcohol

[Zankou 2.0]

This is why you don't confuse literature with pop fiction.

Excuse me? Just what are you implying by that statement?

That Dan Brown is the Tom Clancy of religious conspiracy thrillers. JK Rowling is considerably better but exists to sell a fuckload of books, like Dan Brown. I think Harry Potter is in the grey zone between Literature and pop fiction. However, there's no question about Henry Miller. And if anyone even suggests that Dan Brown is as good as Henry Miller, I will stab them with a Super Star Destroyer.

Angels and Demons was one of the best books I have ever read, and Harry Potter is even better.

How can you possibly insinuate that JK's only goal is to sell fuckloads of books? She wrote the books because she enjoyed writing. If she was only pandering to the masses, the books would have turned out different.


And, the two books I have read by Dab Brown were also very well written. The theme has nthing to do with my appraisal of the book.

[WelshRarePasta]

Who cares if the purpose is to sell lots of books? Does the author's purpose in writing have any correlation to the quality of the book? I can think of at least two famous, and undoubtedly literary, authors whose sole purpose in writing was to make lots and lots of money (relatively speaking for their times) and managed to do alright:

Shakespeare
Charles Dickens

And, just for the record, I don't actually care that much for either (I'll take One Hundred Years of Solitude over Hamlet and anything by Pratchett rather than A Tale of Two Cities anyday).

However, wanting to make money as an author is no crime... writing absolutely nonsensical drivel might be, but who's the smarty now? I suspect Dan Brown is loafing on some beach in the Mediterranean with a cocktail with umbrella in one hand and a fine topless SoEuro babe (or whatever his preference might be) at the other. Money-grubbing hack of a literary whore he might be, but stupid is unlikely.

[Capellini]

Ok, I consider myself extremely well-read, and HIGHLY discriminating, and I consider Harry Potter to be literature.

Dan Brown, not even close.

[aidiore]

my god...is like saying that their adaptations are even movies...with they are not

[WelshRarePasta]

You aren't alone there! I have a literature degree sadly enough (and not that that comes even remotely close to meaning anything), and I'm generally not ashamed to say that I quite like Harry Potter The Potter stories are well written, have strong cultural resonance, are quite consistent with the History of Ideas.

However, there will always be those who insist that stories written for children can't possibly be literature. Oh well, what can you do?

[Capellini]

You aren't alone there! I have a literature degree sadly enough (and not that that comes even remotely close to meaning anything), and I'm generally not ashamed to say that I quite like Harry Potter The Potter stories are well written, have strong cultural resonance, are quite consistent with the History of Ideas.

However, there will always be those who insist that stories written for children can't possibly be literature. Oh well, what can you do?

You can smack them. They are generally people who are unwilling to add television to literature as well, which I also think is outdated thinking. There have been a few television shows which exhibit a quality of writing advanced enough to count as literature.

The question is of course, 'what makes something literature'. Harry Potter is an interesting example because, while they started as children's stories (and there is such a thing as children's literature), the maturity level of the work grew with the maturity level of the characters, and regardless of that, their popularity transcends age groups in such a way to show that they are stories with significant resonance.

Anything that raises the intellect of the reader, that challenges them in some way rather than panders, is literature (in my book, at least).

[pieces o'nine]

Angels and Demons was one of the best books I have ever read, and Harry Potter is even better.

[snip]

And, the two books I have read by Dab Brown were also very well written. The theme has nthing to do with my appraisal of the book.

I read the da Vinci code when my friends started raving (very apt phrase, IMO) about it. As I zipped through it one night, I amused myself by picking out which bits were lifted from which authors on the 'heresy' shelf in my library. If I had never encountered any of that material before, I might have been much more impressed. He seems to be very good at penning ripping yarns which capture popular imagination, while letting someone else do the research heavy lifting. And I was stunned -- *stunned* I say -- to find nary a mention of any of those other writers in the acknowledgements nor any sort of bibliography.

That he understands his primary market very well and writes to please them is not a strong criticism in a capitalist country...

On my other favorite board, some of the polyglots had a field day tearing apart his Babelfish-quality 'foreign' phrases in their native languages (at least in the English editions).

[WelshRarePasta]

I think most people generally use the term literature to apply to what they like... or, there is a school that seems to insist on contrarily dismissing anything labeled literature as elitist and intellectual (not that I've ever quite figured how intellectual became a dirty word in American english).

I quite agree that TV and Film must be admitted into the pantheon of literature, whatever it might mean. Well constructed stories, challenging dialogue, themes which engage complex emotions and thought-processes are not limited to hardcover books on the 'serious' table at Barnes and Noble.

On the TV front, I'd nominate Dexter and Carnivale as literary-quality television. There are others, but those two shows really impress me... and I'll never forgive the bastards for cancelling Carnivale ;(