I was at a book convention on a panel with some of my fellow authors a while back when one of the questions thrown our way was, 'What books do you hate most?'

I could feel the writers by my side stiffen at that one. Please don't subject authors to questions like that, in public and in private. It's unfair, impossible to answer in any meaningful way, and frankly irrelevant.

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I'm no different to anyone else. There are things I like and things I dislike. I'm fond of most forms of music, but can't get on with opera, a couple of Britten pieces apart. I eat most food but I've never been much impressed by desserts. And books? There are books I like and books I love. But books I hate? No. If I start a book and don't get on with it I simply stop reading. How hard is that? I'm with Kurt Vonnegut who once said, 'Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.'

There are many good reasons why authors should focus on what they like, not what they don't. Firstly, publishing is a business and I'm in it as a professional. I take my work and that of others -- whether it's to my taste or not -- very seriously. Livelihoods and reputations are built and destroyed on an annual basis. I don't feel comfortable -- or even particularly qualified -- when it comes to passing public judgement on the work of my fellow authors at the best of times, certainly not at the drop of a hat.

One reason is I'm acutely aware that my taste is just that -- <em>my</em> taste. Pretty eclectic and out of the norm for most readers too. I read a lot of non-fiction and older books. I'm no expert on trends in modern crime, no authority on the general run of fiction out there. I'm just one reader with a penchant for the stuff I like. At the moment I'm reading John Julius Norwich on Venice and also torn between  a book on Venetian architecture, some Robert Aickman stories and, if I could only find it in the house, rereading some sections in Suetonius's <em>Twelve Caesars.</em> Have I made my point? If I find something to my taste that's my business and frankly pretty unimportant too. It would be unprofessional -- unless I was also a book critic, which I'm not -- to think otherwise.

It really is childish in the extreme to think that, because you don't like something, it is therefore irretrievably 'bad'. Take Dan Brown. I've tried reading him but I don't get very far. I find his use of English awkward. It grates with me so much I don't feel inclined to carry on. But millions and millions of others don't feel this way. Many, perhaps  most, are people who don't read much at all. Any way you look at it, writing books successfully for people who don't normally buy them -- which is what mega bestsellers do -- is a hell of an achievement, one that's beyond most of us. And if I did get in the habit of slagging him off in public wouldn't it look rather like sales-envy, never an attractive proposition in any creative field?

Authors have to get up every day and invent something to fill the blank page staring at us. To do that we need to have a reason, some motive, some driving impulse, to concoct a story out of nothing. Personally I have to feel connected to my work, engaged with it, <em>positive</em> about the reasons why I'm doing it and what I hope it will one day achieve.

I could sit here every morning griping about how someone else had got better sales or reviews or signed some mega-deal somewhere. I could trawl through the negative, sniping nasty comments on Amazon and elsewhere -- we all get them, and some are astonishingly personal and vicious. I could fume over how the Internet has 'empowered' a small army of embittered self-appointed critics who can't wait to rubbish in a minute work that has taken someone a year or more to finish, yet still these idiots lack the courage to put their own names to their rants.

But why let such pointless sentiments drag you down? That snide poison will surely one day find its way into the book you're writing and infect it with a sourness any acute reader -- and they're the ones we're all after -- will come to recognise.

Let me put it another way. Which makes you happiest? Talking about something you love? Or something you despise? The answer's obvious to me. Pointless, bitchy negativity harms the person who spouts it most of all. Given how many books there are out there -- and the impossibility of ever reading but a fraction of them -- doesn't it make more sense telling people what they should read, rather than yelling at them about what they shouldn't?