To mark the release of Dan Brown's latest novel, the Telegraph collects twenty of the worst sentences from his previous works. I've never even cracked the cover of The Da Vinci Code, or any of the others -- a number of people have told me I ought to, but they always qualified their recommendation with "The writing is really terrible, but..." When it comes to fiction, there's no "but" that can convince me to read something that pretty much everyone agrees is written badly. So, until I saw this list, I hadn't confirmed that verdict for myself. And all I can say is -- wow, everyone was right. My favorite:

Deception Point, chapter 8: Overhanging her precarious body was a jaundiced face whose skin resembled a sheet of parchment paper punctured by two emotionless eyes.

As the Telegraph's Tom Chivers notes, "Its not clear what Brown thinks precarious means here."I also love this one:

The Da Vinci Code, chapter 5: Only those with a keen eye would notice his 14-karat gold bishop's ring with purple amethyst, large diamonds, and hand-tooled mitre-crozier appliqu.

Looks like somebody just learned some Churchy vocabulary!This isn't an exhaustive list, of course. If you're working your way through The Lost Symbol and you come upon some deserving passages, please share with the rest of us!

Mollie Wilson O’​Reilly is editor-at-large and columnist at Commonweal.

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