No offense to anyone else''s tastes, but after reading the first couple dozen pages of this I got so sick of the cliches and sloppy writing I couldn''t finish it. And I''m an English major, so my opinion is super-awesome. Or something.

Is Da Vinci Code a literary masterpiece? No. Neither was Shakespeare''s work but it''s still kicking around.

This sounds like a really terse and defensive statement but I really don''t care one way or another. The longer I toil in academia, the less I care about what academics think.

Anyways, Teabing is the guy they run to around the middle of the book for help, he''s the eccentric grail specialist. Let''s try and avoid spoilers here people.

As for Dan Brown''s writing, he''s pure schlock but can be fun once you get over it.

I''m happywith these casting choices, I think McKellen is gonna steal the show.

It''s good to see McKellen and Molina both getting recognition for a change, albeit in The Da Vinci Code. Both of these men are fine actors.

As for Dan Brown, Barnes & Noble owns his soul. As a former manager from the store in Lexington, Kentucky, I can attest to this fact. Man we kept selling the heck out of his stuff . . . and honestly, as I too have a degree in Engrish, I cannot understand the reading public''s fascination with his writing. The subject matter is another story, and I''m guessing therein lies the true interest.

I actually tried reading the prequel, Angels & Demons, which is a prequel in the sense that the main character, Robert Langdon, is in it and doing the whole decoding bit, I guess. I got to page 30, or so, and just couldn''t get into it--and I love books, movies, and games that have similar elements. No, it was the writing.

So, I''ll go out on a limb here and say (as professionally as I am able since I do have a degree in the subject matter) that the writing is drivel, is riddled with one cliche after another, and not worth my time.

That being said, any book published in 2003 which still sits firmly on the NY Times bestseller list (at #5) must have something going for it. It really is the story, and not the writing.

Stephen King: ""It is the tale, not he who tells it.""

This place is great! Usually I get fruit, pies, and small children thrown at me when I suggest Romeo and Juliet isn''t about true love and Dan Brown isn''t brilliant.

Anyway, for those of you interested in my comment on Romeo and Juliet... compare the dialogue of the two leads (R+J naturally) over the course of the play. Shakespeare wasn''t an idiot. When he has Romeo talk about yanking out Juliet''s eyes and shoving stars into her skull, he means for that to be way over the top. Romeo''s like that all through the play even when he''s talking about his earlier girlfriend, before he meets Juliet. Juliet starts out with beautiful dialogue, great word choice, great metaphors... but as she ""falls deeper in love"" with Romeo, her language starts to mirror his in its absurdity.

It''s like the pair of high school kids that make out during lunch to prove that they''re in love, to one another, everyone else, and themselves.

Well, I hold a degree in English which makes me extra-super-awesome, and you''re wrong.

As to the casting choices, and I''m just guessing here, I bet they rank their priorities with marketability ahead of remaining faithful to the text.

I''ve read some of Dan Brown''s stuff, and what got to me is the way he blatantly lies to people about things that are ridiculously easy to check. Like in one of his books, he bases a conspiracy on the words ""Novus Ordo Seculorum"" that appear near the floating eye pyramid on the back of the US dollar. The phrase means ""New Secular Order"" and it''s a really cool conspiracy take on something we''ve all seen and never really thought about or understood.

I did at some point while reading yank out a dollar bill and look at it, just to get the cool factor. Bad move.

What it really says is ""Novus Ordo Seclorum"", or ""A New Order for the Ages"", Seclorum apparently being related to Seculorum. But knowing that, the book suddenly looks like it''s based on a serious misunderstanding. The main character, who is incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable in a field involving antiquities and symbols, is transformed into a guy who can''t be bothered to fact-check something that takes a minute or less to find on the Internet - and the author just waves hands and ignores it! Geez...At least *invent* something. ""We found an original engraving for the US Dollar, and you know what it says? Novus Ordum Mundi! The New World Order!"" And so forth. Not this cheesy stuff.

After that, when I read his stuff, I was looking to poke holes in his statements, and I discovered that he lies a lot, and not well either. Takes some of the interest out of his work.

I keep reading ""Teabing"" as ""Teabag.""

Whew! It''s not just me...

Shakespeare wrote the same 5 plays about 154 times. Dan Brown''s doing the same thing with 1 story. Both are insanely popular with the general public of their respective times. Meh, we all gotta pay the bills which usually means cow towing to the lowest common denominator: easily amused people.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is WRONG! Remember 9/11! Death to Saddam!

Well, yes, Shakespeare wrote the same thing over and over, but that''s what people in his day wanted. They didn''t want to hear a new story.

Well, in college, we learned that the artist''s intent is pretty much irrelevant - What matters is the completed work. For example - D.W. Griffith''s Birth of a Nation - by all accounts, he didn''t set out to make a racist film that would be used by the KKK as a recruiting tool. But that''s what happened. He was stunned by the reaction and his career never really covered it.

One of my professors said the critic''s job is to look at a particular work and assign meaning where there is none.

So, while Shakespeare may not have intended to write multilayered works to last the ages, he has.

Mixolyde, touche.

Duffman, my college teachers taught virtually the opposite. Were you learning about art history, or the artform itself? We were taught what the author was doing and how they worked their craft, not so much how it was interpreted afterwards.

Generally speaking, writers write for very different reasons than readers read. So yes, the audience might not interpret a work as the writer would expect, but that does not mean the writer did not have an intent.