A-Z of Things That Annoy Me: D

A-Z of Things That Annoy Me

D

Dan Brown

Tempting as it is to use "David Honey" as my D on Things That Annoy Me, I'm not convinced that a sustained personal attack on one of the few people I actually like is not a sound way to construct friendships. Instead I have elected Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code and other equally suck-cessful* books.

Now, firstly, and seemingly as usual, I have a confession. You see, I've never read a Dan Brown book all the way through. (I have sat through the Angels and Demons movie adaptation but only on a plane). I have read the beginning of The Da Vinci Code a couple of times. The first time it was recommended to me, and I started reading it, but was distracted by (probably) a much better book, because I then gave it up until the start of uni, when my deconstructive reading abilities were far superior.

The Da Vinci Code is just not a good book. It is just poorly written. Yet, it is enormously popular because the majority of people are stupid enough to fall for hype.

But it is true, I haven't read any of them all the way through. So perhaps instead of this being a full criticism of Dan Brown (who in truth doesn't really annoy me to badly) I am actually merely using his name as a famous example that can be applied to many other rubbish authors.

Because what really annoys me is that: quite a few people don't read very often these days, so it dismays me when the only thing they do read is rubbish like that found in Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer (Twilight) or Christopher Paolini (Eragon).
It's not really a surprise that people can't get into reading if the books they read have no quality writing, depth or point.

No wonder you don't like reading if the one book you pick up in a year is Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.

And actually the worst of it, is the crisis that book publishers now face is all their own fault.

See, what they are driven by (and indeed, it seems, virtually every company is driven by) is profit in the short term. So if hypothetically HarperCollins releases something like Jedward's autobiography, sure, a few delusional Jedward fans might buy it and attempt to read the mindless drivel no doubt contained within the waste of trees.

But probably what will really happen, is that their young minds will become bored, and that is foremost because Jedward are boring and unskilled in the writing of compelling prose. These poor Jedward fans (soon to be Justin Bieber fans, and then soon to be heavy-drinking and mass-drug-consumption fans) will assume that they didn't enjoy reading Jedward's autobiography because reading is shit.

But reading isn't shit. Jedward are shit.

They will have missed the point that it isn't reading that has bored them, but the rubbish in the pages that they happened to have chosen.

So in the future they don't read. They stop buying books. They stop buying HarperCollins books. For the sake of £11.99 (and a giant Mars bar for only £1 extra) HarperCollins has disinterested a reader for a lifetime. They have fucked themselves over.

Now that annoys me.

*I think you'll agree this is a stunning example of low-brow word play.