JZ, let me save you some pain. (I found a post I wrote a few months ago about Angels and Demons.)

Four pages in, and he's already using paragraphs to describe Our Hero, rather than letting the reader figure it out by how Our Hero acts.

I've made it to page 6 so far, where I found this sentence, and I quote (Our Fair Hero has received a Fax with Shocking News): "Instantly the breath went out of him. It was like he had been hit by a truck."

I swear to you I'm not making that up.

How does crap writing like that make the bloody best-seller list? HOW?!?

Photos of the publisher with that goat in Tijuana. JZ is me, in re "Bridges"

I loathe Bridges of Madison County for its content rather than its form, because not only does it glorify and romanticize adultery and lying, it makes it seem like PINING AWAY for 40 YEARS is a good thing, a romantic thing, a desirable state.

Feh. Either leave your husband and go be with the other dude, or Get. Over. It.

Wrod. Totally. (And he probably wouldn't have looked so great if she wasn't ABSOLUTELY FUCKING MISERABLE in the first place.) Answer to AFM should never be a man, right? Uh, I guess I'm not over it yet...maybe I need the lecture about the pining, huh?

I don't think I'm going to be able to resist seeing a movie that stars both Ian McKellen and Audrey Tautou no matter how awful a book it's based on. Maybe I can concentrate on their performances like I did on Morgan Freeman's in that crappy Stephen King movie.

edited to specify Dreamcatcher, as "crappy Stephen King movie" really doesn't narrow the field down much.

I loathe Bridges of Madison County for its content rather than its form,

I have just the opposite reaction to The DaVinci Code. The ideas were interesting, and in the hands of a competent prose wrassler I think it could have been a terrific book. Alas.

How does crap writing like that make the bloody best-seller list? HOW?!?

Because many people care more about the story than about the craft or whatever, and the book is entertaining.

And now I feel the need to check out DaVinci Code to see how it measures up.

Don't. For your own good, really, don't. (To be fair, I only read about a third of it, over DH's shoulder while he was reading it on the train, but I was still cringing in pain at every sentence. I had originally planned to read the whole thing just to see what all the fuss was about, but the glimpses I got convinced me otherwise. Wretched, eye-gougingly bad writing.)

Because many people care more about the story than about the craft or whatever, and the book is entertaining.

See also: James Patterson, current holder of my "world's worst book" title. Like JZ, I read the whole thing, because I couldn't *believe* the writing was that bad the whole way through.

And now I feel the need to check out DaVinci Code to see how it measures up.

TDVC has a lot of bad writing. I have a high tolerance for bad writing if there are enough redeeming features and, with considerable skimming, got through it to see how it would end. On the whole I was glad I'd read it (mostly because my dad wanted to discuss it with me) and it wasn't eye-gougingly bad, ala Night Travels of the Elven Vampire.