One night about five years back, I stopped over at a friend's house to drop off a movie I'd borrowed. Her husband greeted me at the door and said she would have come out to say hi, but she was too busy reading. "Oh, what's she reading?" I asked. "The Da Vinci Code. She said it's, like, the best book ever."I was shocked and appalled. Surely not! Not from my 19th century lit-loving friend, whose main criterion for a good book is that the author is no longer living, and has preferably been that way for at least 100 years. I talked to her on the phone the next day and she explained, to my relief, that she didn't think the book was well written (you know, good), she just thought it was interesting, and appreciated the way it subverted religion and revealed the lengths people will go to to justify and reinforce their beliefs, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (she was in a big anti-religion phase at the time)."Phew!" I thought. "Friendship crisis averted."Then just today at work, conversation turned to popular fiction. It started with Stieg Larsson, and that I am totally on board with -- even though the man doesn't so much write stories as explain to you what is happening in them, in Lisbeth Salander he created a character for the ages (hyperbole alert). I kept my scoffs to myself when co-worker A mentioned that she had looved Water for Elephants, finding it a wonderful break from her usual diet of James Patterson, though my nose may have begun to point ever so slightly upwards (full disclosure: I thought the former a perfectly cromulent, perfectly forgettable plane read, though I can't recall ever reading The World's Best-Selling Author).But then.Then co-worker B said it: "Have you read The Da Vinci Code? That is seriously the best book ever."I could have filled a terabyte hard drive with my sighs and eye rolls. Um. Except. Except I have never read The Da Vinci Code, or anything by Dan Brown. Normally I am strongly against literary snobbery (you have to be when you read as many genre books as I have been lately), but everyone has a weak spot, and mine is that book. Can't say why. The hype? The overblown controversy? The terrible movie? Tom Hanks' terrible, terrible mullet?The thing is, sometimes I will disparage this book aloud, in conversation, as if I know what I am talking about. Look, I even gave it a star rating. I am such a pretentious jerk sometimes.But I can't help feeling that the book deserves it.Facebook 30 Day Book Challenge Day 23: Book you tell people you’ve read, but haven’t.
