“Today’s corporate weather-makers hate “book-lovers”, as they sneeringly refer to them. They despise curious readers committed to the range and quality of what they buy, such as those who bother with books coverage in intelligent magazines or newspapers. Instead, extra resources will now go into snaring the fitful attention of affluent but apathetic semi-readers who, deep down, believe that, in the deathless words of Philip Larkin’s “A Study of Reading Habits”, “Books are a load of crap.” Ah, but those non-readers made an exception for The Da Vinci Code. So let’s have much more of the same brain-shrinking junk.”