Saturday Book Discussion: Guilty Pleasures
It's still Saturday, isn't it? (Checks time.) Sorry, I am brain-dead and fried, so no extensively researched, carefully harvested links list (hah!) with a witty, informative preamble (HAH!) to start off this Saturday Book Discussion. Not even a poll. Instead, I'm gonna go for something quick and easy and guaranteed to be full of LOLs:
What is your guilty reading pleasure?
You know, the series that is full of Suck and has been since book two (or maybe book one) but you can't stop reading it. The books that are so badly written they give hope to fourteen-year-old fan fic authors that they, too, can be published, but you read them with relish because they scratch your needy, shameless id. That author who is a trainwreck of Fail but you just can't quit him or her.
I guess I have to start, eh?
Well, I can own reading the first few books in John Norman's Gor series as a teenager, but I can't really count it as a "guilty pleasure" because even as a teenager I realized pretty quickly that John Norman was one skeevy, creepy bastard and I haven't read them in years. But as a teen, the Boris Vallejo covers lured me in.
I also read a lot of Piers Anthony when I was younger, and I still think some of his books didn't suck (though I haven't read any of them in years either, so I'm sure even the ones I don't remember being full of pedophilia, rape, and whatever else was cranking Piers Anthony's engine probably did).
But currently? I'll have to go with... Bond. James Bond.
I actually find Ian Fleming's writing to be pretty good, in a sparse, dry way, and the James Bond tales are much better than the movies and a lot less stupid. But not even a little bit less sexist, racist, and generally just oozing with smarmy dickishness. Really, sometimes Fleming isn't a whole lot better than John Norman. But I intend to keep reading them.
So, unburden your soul. V.C. Andrews fangirl? You read all twenty-seven-however-many-they're-up-to-now Gor novels and intend to read the next one? Still reading Anita Blake? I can't promise no one will point and laugh, but let's all be fair -- no mocking unless you've shared something mockworthy yourself.