Reader\'s Digest Australia & New Zealand - June 2018

HAVE BESTSELLERS BECOME DUMBER?

46 || June• 2018

including Stephen King, Danielle Steel

and Harlan Coben, rank at or below

the sixth-grade level.

It would be easy to lump in he New

York Times list’s reading-level decline

with the rise of knee-jerk argu ments

that intellect in the US is at an all-time

low, but I don’t think this is fair.

Writing doesn’t need to be com-

plicated to be considered powerful

or literary. The winner of the 2014

Pulitzer Prize for fiction, The Gold-

inch, was also a bestseller and has a

in the 1980s, the Bourne books; and
in the 1990s, the Jurassic Park sequel,
he Lost World.
But if we break down bestsellers by
genre, we ind that there has been a
long-term shift within these guilty
pleasures. Thrillers have become
‘dumber’. Romance novels have be-
come ‘dumber’. There has been an
across-the-board ‘dumbification’
of popular fiction. Among current
authors who have written at least
five number one bestsellers, most,

AGATHA CHRISTIE

Her novels are direct

and unadorned, even

when the hero is a fussy

Belgian. Her language

couldn’t be simpler, but

her plots continue to

fool readers generation

after generation.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT

EXPRESS: “It was five

o’clock on a winter’s

morning in Syria.”

MICHAEL

CONNELLY

There’s nothing in the

pages of his crime

novels but simple,

get-going writing.

No froufrou, no

distractions, just the

facts, making him

perhaps the best

procedural writer in

the business. Ever.

THE BLACK ECHO:

“The boy couldn’t

see in the dark, but

he didn’t need to.”

JANET EVANOVICH

Her books are short,

sharp and funny. That’s

rare in any kind of

writing, and she’s

prolific in a variety of

genres.

ONE FOR THE MONEY:

“There are some men

who enter a woman’s

life and screw it up

forever.”

STEPHEN KING

It’s his ideas and

imagination that are

superior; his writing,

while uniquely his, pulls

readers from page one

with its accessibility.

THE DARK TOWER – THE

GUNSLINGER: “The man

in black fled across

SIMPLE AND SATISFYING

Reader’s Digest editors have rounded up some of their favourite

writers who keep it simple, along with first lines that let you sample

their less-is-more literary styles.