I wonder if I am the only person in the world who thinks Dan Brown’s books are exceedingly tedious?  When one male family member told me “You have got to read ‘The DaVinci Code,’ it’s brilliant!” I tried, really, I did.  As one who will read the ingredients on a packet of cereal if there is nothing else to read, I found myself in trouble with this book.  I persevered for about six chapters, bored and tentatively optimistic that improvement might occur.  I then decided that life is just too short to plough through mediocre milge when I could be reading Amy Tan or my Norton Anthology.

Other male family members, bar an eccentric son, read the book and begged for more.  So I trawled the charity shops and found ‘Angels and Demons’ for a pittance.  Avidly they read, enthusiastically they praised, while I got stuck into re-reading the plays of Tennessee Williams.

Then, my darling Tom Hanks, a truly gifted actor whom I admire, took up that boring Langdon man’s role and lo – ‘Angels and Demons’ hit the cinema screen.  Oh, how it is making money, lots of money.  It was written before that Code book, and because of the hype and my love of Tom, I decided to try to read this book.  By the time I reached the bit about antimatter sitting on columns in bean cans, or some-such, I was fit to be tied.  So I slung it on the floor in a tantrum of literary despair and got out my copy of ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran, to calm my soul.

A male birthday was looming and off I went, against my better judgement, to purchase the NEW Dan Brown.  Which is when I discovered the clever marketing that smells of greedy, cynical exploitation.  Nice money if you can get it.  The city bookshops are selling ‘Angels and Demons,’ it has gone to the top of the UK best seller list.  It has been titivated up, and now sports a posh new dark and mysterious-looking cover.  It is selling like hot cakes on the back of the movie.  The exploitative element lies in this: you can order a copy of the NEW Dan Brown for half price if you buy ‘Angels and Demons.’  Cynical or am I too innocent of the ploys of clever marketing?

The answer has got to be “Yes, I am!”  I am also a softie concerning the needs of the loved ones who actually enjoy reading tedious, boring, mind-numbing, non-eventful sludge that is a Dan Brown novel.  Yet even I did not succumb to this deliberate, cynical attempt to part me from my hard-earned cash.  I perused the shelves of those book stores and found an excellent volume of quotations from the great Winston Churchill and a book about bird watching by Rory McGrath.  Both these books have much more intellectual stimulation and entertainment value than any Dan Brown erroneously-described “page turner.”

I just know the NEW book will soon find itself a best seller, but equally quickly, will be found languishing among the bodice-rippers in many local charity shops, within weeks of publication, I expect.    At that point, I may buy it, not to line the pockets of the author, but to help the charity.  That way, the loved ones will get to “enjoy” what they like, I will have saved money, the charity will have benefited and MOST important, I have not paid full price for rubbish.  Am I alone with my criticisms and perspective?  Will there be demons coming for me?