Dan Brown and JK Rowling

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but have only just got around to it...

Dan Brown’s newest novel, The Lost Symbol, created a massive furore upon its release, quickly becoming the fastest selling adult book of all time. Apparently they counted the last Harry Potter as a kid’s book, since it sold over 5 times more copies in its first day, even though Harry Potter is as likely to be on the parent’s bookshelf as the child’s.

This brings me onto my main point: Britain is fast becoming a nation of people who are familiar with only two authors, Brown and Rowling. Brown’s new book isn’t even meant to be that good (I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste my time reading it), and Harry Potter, I would argue, is hardly a stimulating read. Once you’ve read one there’s little more to be gained from the franchise, other than some forced plot twists and romances.
I think that particularly the films demonstrate this: however much they’ve improved since the truly awful first instalment, they still don’t hang together very well. Neglecting the fact that the film is never as good as the book, most films adaptations manage to keep a sense of flow.

I don’t really mind either author... other than the massive overrating they both get by the public. Even when critics give them mediocre reviews people still buy copies in their hundreds of thousands. Dan Brown has achieved this by cynically designing his books to give people exactly what they want, JK Rowling merely got lucky with her setting, which is fair enough really.

I just wish there were more variety on people’s bookshelves.