No, I haven't read Divergent,

and that is perfectly okay. You see, Divergent and its other series books are not "up my alley" as they say. I want to be crystal clear with this: Veronica Roth has done something tremendous, and her books must be good. You simply don't garner the following she has without tapping into something powerful in the reader's mind.


The reader's mind. Just not mine.


You see, gentle reader, I am not the target audience. And rather than diverge (you see what I did there?) off course and into a hoity-toity discussion on literary merit, substance, endurability throughout the ages and epochs of all time, let us all stop and appreciate what Roth has accomplished:


She made it awesome, once again, to read.


Let us consider the timeline, starting at present and moving backward in time and space:

Divergent

The Hunger Games

Twilight

Harry Potter

That is over a decade of fans wanting to read the next installment. Waiting. WAITING. ON BOOKS! TO COME OUT!!! I can still recall visiting my local Border's Bookstore (shed small tear here...) at 11:something p.m. to grab my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, waiting in line for an hour, standing next to kids and adults alike dressed in long robes and funny hats, and then driving home to read it. Actually, I was delivering it to my lovely wife who was nine months pregnant and desperate for distraction. I believe she finished it in one hour flat. Potter is her thing, you see.


Back on point: Divergent is not my thing. Neither was The Hunger Games if we're keeping score. But really, we are not. I love the idea that all the pockets of readers out there have their thing, and that they fight over it, and call the other things lesser things. That we get hoity-toity and territorial about our things. For the record, I am a Tolkien man. LOTR is my thing, and all other things listed here pale in comparison to hobbits and Nazgul and seeing stones and old kings with weird names. Avada Kedavra that, Voldemort.


No, I haven't read Divergent. I may, if only to see what all the fuss is about. And there is a bunch. But that's okay. And the next time I swing by and arrogantly point out that your taste in literature isn't as good as mine, it's also okay to fire back. After all, one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.


Or a fighter of taste in books.