I did finish the book about angels and demons that had no angels and demons in it.
Six hundred odd pages, the longest thing I’ve read in years. So, now I’m into Cultural Amnesia which I bought in a book shop in Grand Central in New York almost a year ago.
It has  more than 800 pages, not that counting pages is that important.

Back to Dan Brown for a moment, for me he was a compelling writer
which does not necessarily mean a great one.  No prizes for literature here. 
DAN is … What did I do there?  for me he was then he is Present tense because
I am sure he will write much more; past tense because I’m sure that I’ll not
read any more from him. Brown is more of a plotter than a writer
throwing out pieces of a puzzle and then fitting
them together for the reader.

WHO IS JANUS? If you fit things together for yourself as a reader then you must
know that Janus would have to be the camerlengo, but how would that kind of person
be able to recruit an assassin, a terrorist?  Would readers feel the action so strongly as to care nothing for this detail? There are so many other details that we don’t need,
and this little story within is omitted.

My reason for buying, last October in New York, the longer Clive James book was
that it seemed compartmentalized.  It seemed at a glance to be personality sketches or short biographies, but NO. I cannot pick up the book, read short from something long
and return any time in the next few years.

It is not a puzzle, but the pieces DO fit together, and I should have started
at the beginning as I did not. Months before from this book, I’d read of Louis Armstrong.  More recently I went directly to a section on Terry Gilliam which is followed by one on Josef Goebbels. There is a reason for the sequence though the two men are nothing alike. James takes the topic of torture from Gilliam since there is a mild-mannered torturer in Gilliam’s film Brazil, and then there is more on torture than on Gilliam.

I highly recommend and endorse this book, though I have no idea
if I might ever complete it.