What are
your literary
guilty pleasures?
I’m not a big fan of the concept of the “guilty pleasure”–being one of those folks who believes that they almost never involve anything to be guilty about. However when it comes to some of the books I’ve bought and read over the years I feel a certain amount of shame is probably warranted, especially when you consider all of the “great” books I know I’ll never ever read.
But there’s something about some C-List celebrity autobiographies that is simply too compelling for me to resist. Most often it springs from my weird desire to see how they justify or explain away their most notable public humiliations and/or failures. Do they cheerfully acknowledge them? Pretend like they never happened? Offer a staggeringly deluded/compellingly thoughtful defence? It’s the exact same reason I’ve actually sat down and listened to the audio commentary for Cannonball Run (in which the late director Hal Needham went the pretend-like-you-made-the-funniest-film-of-all-time route).
So, I own and have read a lot of these books, some of which I have no problem displaying on my bookshelves, while others I keep hidden away from judgmental eyes.
Do you have a literary guilty pleasure? It can’t be any worse than reading the life story of the guy who allowed this to happen:
Joan Rivers’ book…sooo funny!
“Fight Club”…!
Little House on the Prairie Books. Betsy-Tacy books. Gordon Korman books pre-1990. Great Brain Books. Sign on the Beaver. Childhood favorites.
And when I feel like being a grownup, Uncle John Bathroom Readers.
P.S. to Ray Butler: using a classy dust jacket is the BEST IDEA.
CRUEL SHOES! Alexa, truly you are a woman after my own heart.
I don’t dig that term either, but my guiltiest pleasure is probably schlocky mysteries. Sure, I’m currently reading through the whole Agatha Christie oeuvre, but blink and you might miss me grabbing a copy of a “Murder, She Wrote” tie-in mystery (with brilliantly trashy names like “Gin and Daggers,” “Manhattans and Murder,” etc.)
Jackie Collins. Pure trash. But I can’t not know who gave whom a blow job and who died in a car wreck because of said blow job and find out if the man who fell in love with his priest got a blow job out of it. It’s too damn compelling.
Other guilty pleasures: Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes (his earlier low-brow stuff is brutally funny and brutally retarded). Also, I enjoy text messages.
Celebrity Autobiographies, especially if they are full of gossip. Cybil Disobedience by Cybil Shephard is great. Shelley Also Known as Shirley by Shelley Winters. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. I normally read prize-winning prestige novel and other highbrow things, so when I’m on the bus, I cover these books with the dustcover from a Jonathan Franzen novel and no one knows my secret.
Classic children’s literature, actually, like “The Secret Garden.” I also looove spooky kid’s books like those by Neil Gaiman or “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” and this weird old book about haunted dolls called “Behind the Attic Wall.”
I’ll also re-read any 70s/80s YA books like Lois Duncan, Judy Blume, etc. with glee…
Oh my gosh YES kiddy lit! So…I’m an elementary ed major, which gives me a ‘get out of having shelves full of kid’s books free’ card, but the card doesn’t work when you’re sitting in your Books for Reading Instruction class and go, “Eee! Oh my GOSH yes, A Search for WondLa! Oh, oh, don’t forget The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making!!!” And such glee. :p
I’ll admit it… I read, nay, DEVOURED the Hunger Games trilogy.
It was fun. I’m only a little embarrassed.
Okay, that’s a lie. I’m a lot embarrassed. SAFE SPACE! /cringe
I really like the Wheel of Time series despite my more literary-minded friends repeatedly telling me how terrible it supposedly is. Also the Chronicles of the Raven trilogy. So I guess my guilty pleasure is sword-and-sorcery fantasy books.