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" I&amp;#039;ve never read a novel by Nicholas Sparks for the same reason I&amp;#039;ve never seen a movie starring Ashton Kutcher: because I&amp;#039;m stupid, yeah, but I&amp;#039;m not that stupid. But the problem with avoiding stupid books is that you end up avoiding the books that people actually read. This makes you feel out of touch. Like one of those elitist wimps whom fat guys on the radio are always making fun of.  So I read some of them: Relentless, by Dean Koontz (Bantam); Long Lost, by Harlan Coben (Dutton); and First Family, by David Baldacci (Grand Central). And it hurt. Since I&amp;#039;m never going to do it again, and since I don&amp;#039;t recommend that anybody else try this shit at home, here&amp;#039;s what I learned from reading these stupid books. 1. The world is batshit insane. One of the complaints that gets leveled against contemporary literary fiction is that nothing happens. Rich girls stare out windows and think sad thoughts. Old men stare at rich girls and think sad thoughts.  On the other hand, in Koontz&amp;#039;s Relentless, the nation&amp;#039;s most prominent book reviewer (huh?) is a serial killer in a bow tie, and major plots hinge on the ability of dogs to teleport. Coben&amp;#039;s significantly more credible effort features the diabolic interplay of cord blood and Islamic jihad, while Baldacci busies himself with a First Lady who is also\u2026 well, I don&amp;#039;t want to ruin it.  2. The world is not only batshit insane; it&amp;#039;s after you. According to Koontz, the people most relentlessly after you are: a) the media (need I say more? Koontz doesn&amp;#039;t) and b) the intellectuals, specifically Rousseau, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and Tolstoy. It&amp;#039;s not that these people are going to kill you; it&amp;#039;s that they&amp;#039;ve made the world safe for the unspecified liberal elites who will. What&amp;#039;s a dummy to do about this? Nothing much.  3. Women are\u2026 &amp;quot;smart,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;witty,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;graceful.&amp;quot; They are also, quite inexplicably, in love with you, you old coot. In fact, nearly everybody who is in any way good or human is in love with you. Even though your jokes suck. Even though you are kind of an ass. Also, you may &amp;quot;sleep together,&amp;quot; you may describe the way in which &amp;quot;your heart pounds against your rib cage and your pulse races and your knees go weak\u2026 &amp;quot; But no fucking allowed. It&amp;#039;s about love, man.  4. Stupid books take almost as long to read as not-so-stupid books. The chapters are short, the dialogue is &amp;quot;snappy,&amp;quot; and still things go on forever. There&amp;#039;s a reason only very special episodes of CSI stretch past the hour mark. These books are interminable \u2014 imagine a poorly produced thriller starring Tim Allen or Jim Belushi that lasts something like 12 to 15 hours. This is the point where I&amp;#039;m supposed to find something positive to say about these books. That&amp;#039;s how it works. You&amp;#039;re supposed to get all counterintuitive and say that Sarah Palin is so freakishly stupid, she&amp;#039;s actually some kind of genius. Here&amp;#039;s what I can say: The Coben is not quite as bad as the Baldacci, which is not as god-awful as the Koontz.  It seems it&amp;#039;s widely considered bad form to call stupid things stupid. But that&amp;#039;s mostly what these books are. They&amp;#039;ll cost you $25 a pop, waste a half day of your life, and leave you neither smarter nor happier, just kind of bored and a little depressed. That&amp;#039;s no way to spend a summer. Screw these books. Take a walk. RELATED STORIES:   PLUS: Three Summer Books Worth Reading on the Beach   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/reviews/a5939/dean-koontz-david-baldacci-0709/>