The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. ~ Dante Alighieri
Hello, it's Miss Scatterbrain 'talking back' to reviews and comments on Dan Brown's latest book
Inferno. Telegraph crime fiction reviewer
Jack Kerridge observes that 'Dan Brown's take on Dante's
Inferno is the thriller-writer's most ambitious novel yet – and his worst.' Kerridge then presents
a review
which to me sounds fair enough.
1. Brilliant reviews offer something to
learn or in my case propels me to recognize who exactly has the
authority to call a worldwide pandemic
and be aware of what impact that could have on the planet, eg. how it takes only one person's advice and
recommendations for drug industries to either
hemorrhage profits or
revise operational tactics.
2. WHO ate chicken everyday during the 2003 avian outbreak and told everyone not to panic? That's right. The
top guy of the WHO who is a she.
Yes, girl power!
3
. Do you wonder if those who give bad reviews ever
wrote
anything themselves other than their own reviews?
4. I sometimes scan reviewers' background
or review repertoire; particularly
those who give interestingly mean reviews and say why.
5
. If it's Stephen King, well, I still think some bushel is left for analysis on his view that Stephenie Meyer could not write.
6.
V.S. Naipaul slams women writers, singling out the very Jane Austen.
My Jane Austen! Just where did he get his guts? From being described as the "greatest living writer of English prose"? I don't care. At least
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sounds kind despite writing to Newman that "Miss Austen has no romance."
7.
Inferno entertains
beside pointing readers to places they may want to visit in Italy. To me that's where I get
my money's worth. Plus, the bit on the World Health Organization was quite amusing when you think of how it is not "just fantasy, but impossible," in the real world. So asserts a Special to CNN.
8. As an English major, my ears jut out on an
aleteia review which questions the
use of the word "enormity." I have yet to read this part. The Oxford Dictionary defines enormity as 'monstrous wickedness' or 'dreadful crime.' So you don't use it to describe an edifice or a statue, eg. Michelangelo's
David.
9
. Did Brown possibly have 'enormous,' which means 'vast, immense, tremendous,' in mind when he penned "the staggering force of the cathedral's enormity'"?
10.
Some comments are a riot: "Da Vinci Code was a masterpiece / Digital Fortress was appalling..."
I'm going to buy a hard-cover Da Vinci and forgive a niece who stole my Digital Fortress.
11. It pays to go over comments for chances that another book may be mentioned which could make another read: "
Jonathon Holt's Abomination is a real find.
Clever, cultured, exciting and beautifully written."
12.
"I don't understand it. I write at least as
badly as Brown, and yet my novel isn't selling! How did he find an
agent?"
A cute joke perhaps.
13.
Here's a no-holds-barred piece of someone's mind - "I think that it is very important to take the piss out of the not
even semi-literate, nonsense disseminated by the incompetent Dan Brown,
Tom Clancy and all who sail in them. It is not a matter of envy..."
Is it not? Don't we sound like specimens headed for the psychology lab?
