“I read The Da Vinci Code It was so convoluted. A mess! I don’t understand why it became so popular!” a writer exclaimed. Her face contorted in disgust. “What is wrong with people?”

The other writer and I smiled. “Let me tell you this,” I began. “I read The Da Vinci Code and loved it then. That was a long time ago. Then I read his most recent book Inferno recently and absolutely hated it. I didn’t like how the plot just flailed about and how the characters barely any motivation. I hated how the characters were so flat and were being tossed around from setting to setting. But I realized that my younger self—the one that loved The Da Vinci Code would have loved it.”

(Okay, maybe I didn’t say it that eloquently, but in similar words.)

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s like ice cream. How can I tell someone that the ice cream that they had all their life—the one from the supermarket. The one that was artificially flavored with mint that has been overprocessed and dyed bright green. Or the strawberries that has been preserved for a whole month into just tasteless red blocks. How can tell that someone that their ice cream love was a facade? I can’t. They love it, because it’s what they are used to. And even I show them organic, small batch ice cream, they will never change their mind. We are just educated.”

I let the words hang in the air as we nodded in silence. “I would never write books like that,” the third writer suddenly spoke up. “What a waste of time.”