what may or may not be hard reality

I don't have any desire to read the book (despite owning it) nor any desire to see the movie. (And it's also a video game now. Merchandizing, much?) That said, I present two conflicting view points from the only two people I know who have read the book.

First, I spoke with a friend, Stephanie, about the book. We didn't go into plot or anything like that, just the writing style. I've never even cracked open the book and from what she told me about the style, I don't want to. She tells me that it was written with narrative and then every few pages (I am giving Dan Brown the benefit of the doubt because Stephanie said it was easily every page or every other page), a journal-entry style writing was used. I don't much like books written in journal style (the only reason I hated the book Dracula by Bram Stoker was for this) and if it's true that even parts of The Davinci Code are written like this, I am not going to like it at all.

The second opinion I have is from my own wife. See now Michelle has a friend who is a minister and they discuss religion (despite neither Michelle nor I having specific religious beliefs). When the hype for the movie really started buzzing, Michelle and her friend started having more discussions and she decided to read the book. And she loved it!

Her point of view is quite different though. Rather than taking the point of view that Dan Brown's writing style made her feel like a moron, she took the view that the writing and the "clues" were so easy that it made her feel "like a friggin' genius". She read the book (to date the only book she has actually finished reading cover-to-cover every single word of) in less than three days. She loved it. Really loved it. And now she wants to see the movie and buy the video game.

In all, I still don't think I'll read the book or see the movie. It sounds to me like the writing (of both) is so dumbed-down as to assume the audience has no education above the 5th grade. (With all apologies to my wife, may she never know I said that. :) I just don't like things that assume I'm stupid to start with. Give me a little credit please.