For Seller

By: Jens Hendrikkson

Now this book’s sales are approaching 50 million sales. At 20$ a pop, that’s about 1 billion dollars in sales. A billion dollars. People can hardly use the bathroom but we spent a billion dollars on this book. This should immediately suggest that this is a must read-novel, which creates an effect similar to that seen of a rolling rock. Once the rock rolls hard enough and gathers enough crushed people on its underside, its mass increases and pulls even more people in. Long story short, logically speaking for you physicists, if Simple Plan = Sold then Dan Brown = Sold X 100.

In Costco the other day this Dan Brown (who “buy” the way now magically has 4 books, all of which are best sellers) He got an entire table to himself for his paraphernalia books and his 6 versions of “the Da Vinci Code.” Last time Costco devoted an entire table to something was when they had samples for sausage rolls. And they were damn good sausage rolls. Right, on to the book. After all, that’s what it is.

Or is it? Confusingly enough, the new editions of “Da Vinci” have “Now a full length motion picture” on the cover, starring the raucous Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, who “buy” the way is the main character. (”Buy” the way, saying “buy” instead of “by” never gets old, especially for me.) Now this may not seem confusing at first, but imagine, if you will, the following scenario:

Cut scene to James Thompson, or “Jimmy” Thompson.

“Hey! Da Vinci Code! All right! Now in 37 languages in case I decide to go to the U.A.E. I can still read it! But wait…Motion picture…now…book…Which was first? I don’t even know!”

62 years later at the age of 89, Jimmy Thompson died of cardiac arrest because he hadn’t exercised for 37 years. Do you see a connection? Moving on.

The book itself could be condensed into about 20 pages of fairly interesting content, where Brown reveals all sorts of Blasphemous statements about Christianity that I won’t reveal here since that would spoil the 80 or so chapters of filler. People seem so perplexed and absorbed with this “startling” point of view or interpretation of several artifacts in History (such as Da Vinci’s paintings) that they can’t realize that this is a poorly written book. If you like Tom Clancy and Stephen King, expect to like Dan Brown because it’s the exact same type. The type that you can churn out in about 6 weeks, with no thought put in, (other than the research) no social commentary, no character development, and so on. The episode spins around faster than an episode of “24″ -albeit that’s a good show and it is predictable in its unpredictability… meaning you can predict what’s going to happen based on what you feel deep down, should never happen.

And then, to top it all off, as if our attention spans aren’t short enough, he gives one of those “not really over” endings that we all hate because we secretly realize that Brown couldn’t think of a way to end this epic novel. Speaking of end, The End. Oops, and no picture. I haven’t figured this out yet. But I can BOLD things, but it seems more effort than it’s worth.