GUARDIAN readers are gathering in North London for the paper’s annual literary sneerathon.
From Islington to Primrose Hill people who think they are better than you because you enjoyed The Da Vinci Code will be sneering at popular books in a bid to raise money for George Monbiot’s psychiatrist.
Cafes and galleries will host a series of official events including the popular North London parlour game ‘I Sat Next to a Dan Brown Fan at a Dinner Party and This is What He Said’.
There will also be discussion groups where Guardian contributors who say they want to write a novel but won’t because they can’t will talk about how popular novels are killing literature by encouraging millions of people to read books.
Event director Tom Logan said: “We’ll have a panel of academics dismissing Dan Brown’s theories about symbolism in art and then we’ll play a game where someone reads out a paragraph from one of his novels and you have to guess which words were in italics.”
Stephen Malley, a Guardian reader from Highgate, said: “Popular fiction is just a load of stuff that happens. Proper novels should be a series of stilted conversations and semi-internalised dream sequences that reveal a series of interwoven themes about the need to rebalance globalisation in favour of the developing world.”
Emma Bradford, from Clerkenwell, added: “I actually enjoyed The Da Vinci Code but of course it was in much the same way as one would enjoy a Constable painting or a Steven Spielberg film or a Cornish pastie.”
