Author Dan Brown condemns book burning across the globe

Celebrated author Dan Brown said the act of book burning was not an "intelligent response" during a speech at the annual Penguin lecture in New Delhi.

Brown said there were other effective ways to disagree with something than to burn books.

"I think people who burn books do so because they don't have an intelligent response. There are far more productive ways to disagree with something, whether it's my book or any book, is to come up with an alternative, either write your own book or state it publicly," he said.

Brown is the author of several novels including Angels and Demons, The Lost Symbol, and the record-breaking best-seller The Da Vinci Code.

The Da Vinci Code-the religion-themed mystery novel riddled with codes, keys and conspiracies-was published in 2003 and spent more than a year atop the New York Times best-seller list.

Revealing the secret of his success, Brown said that he wrote what made sense to him.

"As an author, I need to decide what makes sense to me, personally, and put it out there and say well, this is the way I see it. If you agree great, if you disagree, you can write me a nasty letter or write your own book or whatever you want to do. I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. But it is very difficult, the research process, to figure out what to believe and what not to believe. There's a lot of contradictory information," he said.

Brown's novels are published in 52 languages around the world with 200 million copies in print.