Salon

Even the most highbrow among us need some time for mindless pleasures. There is huge competition on this market, with television, movies and computer games offering myriad ways to kill time. The web-based game "Smack the Pingu," where the player has to hurl a penguin as far as possible, has surely cost the Russian economy billions of rubles in lost profits. Books are usually seen as a more cultivated pastime; if one looks at passengers in the Moscow metro, they are usually browsing the television listings or playing with their mobile phones rather than reading books. Yet literature remains a major source of entertainment.

Intellectuals are often ashamed of their passion for entertaining books. Even when they confess to having read something of the kind, their comments are derogatory. "I've read the last Marinina," they will say, referring to mystery writer Alexandra Marinina. "How can one read such rubbish? She used to be much better before." This, of course, immediately implies that they are familiar with the whole oeuvre of the writer. Crime fiction, it seems, is the most popular genre in Russia and at the same time the most shameful.

Dan Brown's books exist in a similar category. Intellectuals mostly read them to scowl and criticize, to laugh at the author's preposterous hypotheses. No one failed to notice that "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons" were essentially the same book, with the same twists and subplots. Yet most people I know have read at least one of these two books to the end.

Then there are writers of fantasy, who usually cater to a younger audience. Good fantasy books, such as those of J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, are few and far between. But they have spawned an endless stream of imitations, which find their readers too; sometimes the original requires too much effort. For some obscure reason, fantasy is considered more acceptable among intellectuals -- perhaps because of their unrelenting desire to "get away from it all."

I don't read crime fiction; I get bored. Fantasy, even in its best specimens, tends to lose me. I have, however, found my poison: Michael Crichton. Apart from being the creator of "ER," the best television show ever, he has written excellent page-turners, such as "Jurassic Park," "Timeline" or "Prey." I lament the absence of a Russian Crichton -- but his type of science-oriented thriller seems to be alien to the minds of Russian literati. Finally, I am not ashamed of reading his books. Many "entertainment" authors are in fact much better writers than their incoherent highbrow colleagues -- at least they can tell a story. And don't we all deserve some rest and relaxation?