{"id":1934,"date":"2013-11-09T22:21:21","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T16:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=1934"},"modified":"2013-11-09T22:21:21","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T16:21:21","slug":"how-is-dan-browns-inferno-like-doomsday-preppers-hint-fun-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/11\/09\/how-is-dan-browns-inferno-like-doomsday-preppers-hint-fun-factor\/","title":{"rendered":"How Is Dan Brown&#039;s &quot;Inferno&quot; Like &quot;Doomsday Preppers&quot;? Hint: Fun Factor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m juggling the reading of about six different books right now, for various reasons, including Stephen D. (I think the &#8220;D.&#8221; is important here) King&#8217;s <em>When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence<\/em> (which I should really blog about before the money runs out and we can&#8217;t afford our laptops to read blogs anymore, but I&#8217;m guessing there&#8217;s some time for that), Cormac McCarthy&#8217;s <em>The Road<\/em> (rereading to make sure I know what I&#8217;m talking about in class), and Dan Brown&#8217;s new novel, <em>Inferno<\/em>. I have my reading quirks, as I imagine others do, and am mainly reading this one during my daughter&#8217;s swim lessons, when I sit in the bleachers at the YMCA pool and have to kill some time. Brown should get some kind of odd trophy or award, which is usually reserved for films: The So-Bad-It&#8217;s-Good Award. Although even that label doesn&#8217;t quite do him justice. The writing is awful. Simply awful. Clumsiness, corniness, and sloppy language abound. But . . . the book is fun. It&#8217;s preposterous and diabolical and fun. I realized it&#8217;s a little like that <em>Doomsday Preppers<\/em> show on the National Geographic Channel: full of conspiracy theories and clumsy people trying to prepare for the apocalypse, but fun in its own weird way. Although I can&#8217;t stop imagining Tom Hanks with that creepish haircut as the main character, Robert Langdon, from the risible (I&#8217;ve been waiting to use that word) film version of Da Vinci Code.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1935\" title=\"Inferno-cover\" src=\"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Inferno-cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"258\" height=\"385\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m juggling the reading of about six different books right now, for various reasons, including Stephen D. (I think the &#8220;D.&#8221; is important here) King&#8217;s When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence (which I should really &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/11\/09\/how-is-dan-browns-inferno-like-doomsday-preppers-hint-fun-factor\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,10],"tags":[55,66,71,85],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-booksfilm","category-cormac-mccarthy","tag-book-reviewing","tag-cormac-mccarthy","tag-dan-browns-inferno","tag-fiction-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}