A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.
- The Economist
Rant | Bibliophilia
January 14th, 2010 § 0
Of Trinity and Cestus, and a little nostalgia
July 26th, 2009 § 1
Sixteen years ago, in Abu Dhabi, when I was all of eleven years of age and an amateur QBasic programmer, I sneaked into the storeroom of the small computer shop where I was learning the craft. Sifting through tens of shoeboxes holding floppy disks ( the 5.25″ variety), I found a disk innocuously titled ‘Trinity’. The name stood out – it sounded more interesting than ‘Lotus 1-2-3′ or ‘Wordperfect’ to an eleven year old. Holding it at the corners so as to touch as little dust as possible ( the storeroom was rather musty) I took it to Omar, my then instructor and mentor. He looked it for a couple of seconds before his eyes went wide.