No secret that I hate Dan Brown–I’d rather read…um…just about anything than push myself through another one of his books. It’s been hard for me lately wandering through bookstores/book aisles in dept. stores–all that evasive maneuvering to avoid The Lost Symbol takes a toll.

So I rather enjoyed this article that bluewoad sent me today, listing the 20 worst sentences from Brown.

How they limited themselves to 20 must’ve been difficult. I imagine the process started off a lot like The Spanish Inquisition skit from Monty Python, “Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…. Our *four*…no… *Amongst* our weapons…” Buncha writers sitting around brainstorming the “Top 3 worst Dan Brown sentences.” Which quickly becomes 5, then 10, then they had to stop at 20 because they only have so much print space.

Actually, the piece’s writer, Tom Chivers, states:

It’s not a definitive list. It couldn’t be: he has published five novels, each around 500 pages long, and the arguments over which are the worst bits will go on for a while.

It was quite the list, and one that had me literally LOLing.

Earlier in the article, Chivers quotes one critic of Brown:

Geoffrey Pullum says “Brown’s writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad.”

Now that’s how you write a sentence–clever, 100% accurate and intelligent use of vocabulary.