What makes a bad book? Evans (I think) once told us that bad books are those in which everything happens for the purpose of plot, that any development of character, theme, mood etc. is incidental and subordinate to the Story. The Hollywood Syndrome, if you will, where "if there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last." [Anton Chekhov] I wonder sometimes if this isn't just snobbishness (snobbery?), because while it's true that a lot of bad books fit this mold, what of classic hard-boiled American fiction, Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Cain et al.? Not to mention top tier SF writers who produce largely plot-driven books which critics would still consider objectively "good".

I ask because I feel like I was on shaky ground last night in a conversation about Dan Brown, specifically the fact that one of my friends is rather inexplicably on her second round through his books. Was one round of the vapidness (vapidity?) insufficient? Or am I just not allowed to offer an objective opinion that his books are bad because she thinks that they're the best things since Marble Slab Creamery? No matter how much hair-pulling you engage in, there's always the brick wall of "but I like it", and all you can do is bite your tongue and pray that people will experience enlightenment like Saul on the Damascan Road.

I freely admit that in some subjects (specifically: books, TV, movies) I'm awfully hardnosed, but surely one has to have conviction in some matters; if you stand for nothing you will fall for everything, etc. What I need is some kind of Grand High Authority, a catalog that I can flip through. It will have the following categories:

1) Books that you May Read Once, and Quickly, perhaps when No Other Books are Available, and Never Again
2) Books that you May Read if You are Stranded On A Desert Island with No Other Reading Material Available and Even Then Think Twice
3) Books that you Should Under No Circumstances Touch With a Ten Foot Pole
4) Books that Should Never Have Been Written and Whose Authors Should Be Roasted Over A Slow Fire for Inflicting Such Dreck on Humanity

etc.