A woman won a $1m literary prize. Three men turned up to collect the check.

[d_r]

@Nightflyer

As for Patterson’s literary merit… I did read one of his books to see what all the fuss was about. I wasn’t impressed; I’d call it very light reading. But the same could probably be said of other fiction I read and enjoy, too. Sometimes all you need is a little fun, to help take your mind off things for a while. I don’t think that’s such a horrible thing.

I’ve been ploughing through the Erle Stanley Gardner Perry Mason novels (which I’d previously avoided since I didn’t especially like the TV character from 60 years ago). These are pretty light reads, but surprisingly deep in some ways: Gardner, a lawyer himself, loathed police and prosecutorial overreach, and the books are full of commentary on this (alongside classic 30s-40s wisecracking) that feels like it was written for today’s environment. Fun novels were a great delivery mechanism for the message, and since Gardner was the bestselling US fiction writer of the 20th century he had a huge audience.