Crase covers the gamut of best-sellerdom and pop culture – there are autobiographies (including Bill Bryson’s Down Under), gathered under the various headings of ‘Selective Memories’, ‘Self obsessions’, and ‘Sex, sex, sex’ (such offerings as A Round-Heeled Woman, Catherine M Etc), books on sport (with some autobiographical entries); thrillers, chick and lad lit, help and self help, short stories, prize winners, serious literature and, in a category all its own, The Da Vince Code (“the one we missed”).
I can’t do the writing justice, but here’s a sample so you can judge for yourself:
Renowned curator Jacques Saunière shuddered. The first page of a Dan Brown potboiler was no place for any character. “Count yourself lucky,” growled Silas the monk, as he chastised himself with his chalice. “I’ve got to hang around for another 400 pages of this badly written garbage.”
The phone rang in Robert Langdon’s hotel room. After his previous adventure with the Pope, nothing should have surprised him. But he was surprised. “I am surprised to be summoned to the Louvre in the middle of the night,” he said to himself.
Inspector Bezu Fache was as angry as his name suggested. “I don’t like it when the renowned curator of the Louvre is found dead in the gallery at the dead of night in suspicious circumstances,” he muttered. “So Monsieur Langdon. What do you make of Paris?”
“It is a very beautiful city, seeped in art and religion,” relied Langdon
earnestly. “And if I’m not very much mistaken, the pose Monsieur Saunière has adopted in death is highly symbolic.”
I have read only a quarter or so of the books summarised herein, and now feel no need at all to read the remainder.
But I do want to subscribe to the Guardian. – Alex
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