Author’s Wing: It’s OK to like Dan Brown
Bucks Local News
You might not think it, but it’s tough working at a book store sometimes. You have the occasional angry customer, the fresh smell of Starbucks Coffee on their breath, a loudly crying kid running up and down the aisles, pulling down books like leaves off a tree, and you also have to keep the books […]
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You might not think it, but it’s tough working at a book store sometimes. You have the occasional angry customer, the fresh smell of Starbucks Coffee on their breath, a loudly crying kid running up and down the aisles, pulling down books like leaves off a tree, and you also have to keep the books you read closely guarded. Not only from customers, but from fellow employees as well. It might seem like a moot point, but if I let the world know that I read and enjoy Dan Brown, I’d be ostracized, continually made fun of for liking that man’s work. Just because I don’t read Vonnegut every hour of every day, or that I don’t crack open a 100x read copy of On the Road, does that make me any less of a person than you? I can’t count how many times a customer has asked me what I was reading and when I told them Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code, it was like some sort of taboo. They’d stare at me down their nose like I was some sort of lesser being in the presence of greatness. The same thing would happen with my friends. “Surely Hamilton,” they would say “since you work at a bookstore you’re reading the works of Plato and Aristotle.” And when I’d disappoint them with my answer, it was almost as if they wouldn’t believe it.When did books become a thing where you needed only to read the classics to enjoy literature? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed the classics I’ve been exposed to: Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Ragtime, and many others, most of which have been forced down my throat in school but all of which I’ve enjoyed. But there have been others which were like pulling teeth. The Scarlet Letter, for instance, I actually had a good time with, but let’s be honest, twelve pages on a river can bog you down some and if you don’t have the patience, especially at that age, you’ll just get the Spark Notes and pray for a B. I just don’t go actively searching out some of the greatest works of our time. I liken it to movies. I’ll go see an indy, artsy, or old movie like Rear Window and have a good time, but I’d much rather prefer to see giant robots battling on a highway, some super powered hero throwing punches that knock out buildings, or two teenage boys trying to sleep with drunk girls. And there are a lot of people that would agree with me. Books seem to have this aura of intelligence about them that seems to scare people off. If you’re not reading the classics, you’re not reading. I think it’s just the pacing for me. I need books that grab me within the first 100 pages and don’t let me go. I want to read about giant sand worms on some far off planet, or space ships destroying an alien world by the hands of a little boy! I want some excitement in what I read because that’s what I’ve grown up with. There’s no better feeling than to actually have my hands sweat a little from gripping the book so hard. And if that makes me less of a person, well then, so be it. There are some of you I’m sure that are saying I should just watch a damn movie, but the thing is, I love to read. I love the world books bring me into.

Movies can’t create intricate worlds like a book can. Look at Harry Potter as an example.. The books are fantastic because they have this whole world fleshed out that the movies just can’t come close to. By turning reading into a thing where if you don’t read classics, you’re not really reading, you’re killing the medium. In a society where instant gratification is found in everyday life, having people take the time to sit down and read a book is a great thing, especially if they’re young. Does it really matter what they’re reading, if the whole point of reading is to really just escape from everyday life? A lot of people would say it does, but to me as long as you’re cracking a spine on a book rather than cracking open a bag of chips to watch The Hills, I say it’s alright.