Trashy Book Amnesty

[Alatar]

Just spotted this on the BBC's website!

We like to pretend to have read great literature to sound clever. But what about those well-thumbed novels we HAVE read, but are less keen to mention? Time to 'fess up.

At 3.1m characters, some 560,000 words and 1,400 pages, it's tempting to lie about having read War and Peace. After all, what are the chances the target of your fib has ploughed through the Russian masterpiece themselves?

Why do so many of us lie about our literary conquests? It's down to a conquest of a different kind - psychologists say many people hope that pretending to have read heavyweight books will make them more sexually attractive.

According to a World Book Day survey, 1984, War and Peace and Ulysses are the favoured white lies.

If these are thought to have the power to impress, what about books we do read but are too embarrassing to own up to?

So, what are yours? I personally have no shame, so there's nothing I read that I'm embarrassed about.

Most trashy? Probably the later Raymond Feist Fantasy novels like "Rise of a Serpent King".

[Lalaith]

Oh, dear.

Well, I went through a certain period in my life (teens) where I liked romance novels. I was particularly fond of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss books, like A Rose in Winter.

[River]

The worst book I've read is War and Peace. Seriously. Just don't do it. It's not worth it. I only talk about it when the topic of bad books comes up. I'm only proud that I did not let that book defeat me.

Deception Point by Dan Brown was also pretty crappy. Actually, so were The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. But the pages turn, and that's all I wanted for those airplane rides.

There was a cheesy romance novel being passed around my circle of friends once. That was good for a chuckle. There've been a few other anonymous (as in, I can't remember the titles) paperbacks I've flipped through on climbing trips when books get traded around. There was one that was being used as TP at the same time I was reading it. Whole chapters were missing but somehow the story still hung together.

I've read some Star Wars book.

S thinks I should be ashamed of Harry Potter. It is a minor source of conflict between us.

[sauronsfinger]

Wait a minute River ---- I really liked "Angels and Demons" and cannot wait for the motion picture.

I used to love Stephen King novels until I realized that he had three really great book in him that had to get out, a few other good ones and then turned to writing crap like "It" for the yearly contractual obligation. But I truly love "Salems Lot", "The Stand" and "The Shining".

[vison]

Dear me. If I was to list all the trashy books I've read, the internet would crash, I'm sure.

I regard "trashy" as a type, like Diana Gabaldon's output. I read the first one because a friend recommended it very, very highly, telling me it was a cut above other Romance novels. Uh, no, it wasn't. And since I read the first one, I was drawn on inexorably to read the second one and it was worse. I tried the third one, whilst on a cruise ship, and did not fling it into the sea although I wished to. I understand she has written more, but I do not Go There. However, when I was younger I devoured this stuff, the more sex scenes the better. The rauchier and more frequent the better. I never actually descended to Danielle Steele, but I tried a Jackie Collins thing once. Got to about the 3rd chapter and died. Dead as a doornail.

I once read a Stephen King book. Yes, I did. Mr. King might very well be a good writer, but someone needs to go over his books with a Great Big Red Pencil and eliminate most of his prose. The bare bones could be good. Actually, thinking it over, I've read 2. "Misery" being the second one, and it was sorta okay in an over-the-top silly way. The other one featured green aliens who sucked the life force out of people by putting them in jars and hooking them up to something. A nifty premise, but so awfully dumb and, again, over-the-top, after I struggled to the end I wondered what deal with the Devil I was going to have to make to get the 3 or 4 hours of my life back.

Then there are books I thought were "bad", and I am as One with River on War and Peace. Portrait of a Lady is "bad", too. It falls into the "awful" category.

Then there is the category of "light-hearted and fun but not serious literature" or, books that no one seems to have heard of but me, like Rachel Maddux's "The Green Kingdom". Jean Auel's books are fun, at least the first 3 or 4 were, but the last one was so awful one wonders how anyone could publish it. I guess there is a contract issue. Will the 6th one appear? One hopes so, but one is reluctant to fancy it will be as fun as the first ones. I just want to read the part where Ayla and Jondalar build a nuclear reactor.

Georgette Heyer is definitely up there as Queen of the Fun and Lighthearted book. Brilliant stuff. A bunch of other English and Scottish authors whose work is relatively unknown here, Jane Duncan of the "My Friend the . . ." series being one. Not great literature but nice.

Well, then, I read a fantasy novel once. About some guy with a Ring . . .

[Elentári]

Lalaith wrote:

Well, I went through a certain period in my life (teens) where I liked romance novels. I was particularly fond of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss books, like A Rose in Winter.

Good old Kathleen - The Wolf and the Dove, anyone?

I can't really remember many books that I would call trashy, or be rather embarrassed to mention. Perhaps I've blocked them out! I read a lot of different stuff when I had my first Saturday job at 15 in my local library - got the pick of the new titles, of course, and had plenty of time to read all the blurb and decide if it was interesting to me. I know there were some I struggled to finish, like Clive Barker's "Weaveworld", which was wierd...but talking of formulaic writing. David & Leigh Eddings spring to mind with their "Belegarath the Sorceror" and "Polgara the Sorceress" duo, which are basically the same story told in the previous Belgariad and Mallorean pentologies, first from the father and then the daughter's viewpoint. Talk about milking it for all it's worth!

[axordil]

Stephen King writes marvelous short stories and novellas, some of which are hidden within 200000 word puff pastries.

If we're talking guilty trash pleasures...man, I've read some bad, self-indulgent SF, some of which was by authors other than Heinlein.

[Frelga]

...but talking of formulaic writing. David & Leigh Eddings spring to mind with their "Belegarath the Sorceror" and "Polgara the Sorceress" duo, which are basically the same story told in the previous Belgariad and Mallorean pentologies, first from the father and then the daughter's viewpoint. Talk about milking it for all it's worth!

And that's beside the fact that the second pentology is pretty much the same as the first.

[Impenitent]

Ha! I've read loads! LOADS! But...I can't remember the names or authors - not just of the trashy ones, either. I have to read a book a number of times before I remember author-and-title.

However, I do remember type; and I remember reading lots of bodice-rippers as a teen. And Georgette Heyer's aren't bodice-rippers but I've read most of them, too - but then, I think they're good, not trash.

I've read some sucky sci-fi, and I've read some really, really bad fantasy (Dragonlance, anyone? )

I guess that's it: trashy bodice-rippers, trashy fantasy and trashy sci-fi. Lots of them. Can't remember names, though.

Oh! Also one really, really bad crime fiction book by an Australian author, set in my own backyard of bayside Melbourne. It was so bad that when I finished the book I closed it and threw it summarily in the bin.

Thing is, no matter how bad the book - the plot, the writing, the premise, the characters - I have the perseverance and the reading addiction which prevents me from stopping half-way through. No matter how bad, I'll finish it.

Even that dreadful crime fiction book! I wish I could remember the author and title, just so I could bad-mouth it!

EDIT: Wait! I read three Dan Browns! Quite a few of the original James Bond books! and I read the Twilight series! All pretty bad, when it comes to Literary Standards. I don't regret reading them, though. Well, maybe the Dan Browns.

[Lalaith]

Oh, yes, The Wolf and the Dove.

And I've read at least one Diana Gabaldon book, too.

As well as Stephen King, though I did like his fantasy novel. (The Dark Tower?)

And Dan Brown. <groan> I only managed The DaVinci Code. Ugh.

Oh, I KNOW! The Left Behind Series.

And Dragonlance.

(All of those hours I could have back!)

[Rebecca]

Probably lots for me, but at the moment I'm going to have to agree with those who said Stephen King. I like Dean Koontz (even though a large number of his books are "trashy," too ), so I tried to read a bunch of books by Stephen King. The Cell was just dreadful, Misery was ok (but ick! one of the few times I actually preferred the movie over the book!), It was way too long and weird, and I'm sure I read a few others. Most of the time he rambles on about the stupidest details that I really don't think are relevant to the story. But even his shorter ones I didn't like, so that wouldn't be the only fix.

But yet, he wrote The Stand which is pretty high up there in my list of favorite books. I've read it enough times that I can just skip over the way-too-rambly parts, though.

[Aravar]

In fantasy I'll own up to Dragonlance, and Eddings beyond the Belgariad. I do quite like bothe the Belgariad and the Malloreon, as well as the original Dragonlance and the Twins books. But I don't think I'll venture beyond that again.

I do have a soft spot for Wilbur Smith's books set in Ancient Egypt, as well as the connected modern book the Seventh Scroll. I've never managed to get into his other stuff.

War and Peace is a good read. Pride and Prejudice with guns. What's not to like?

[solicitr]

OK, I'm having a lot of fun with Eric Flint's 1632 and its sequels. The premise here is that some space-time anomaly takes a West Virginia coal town and zaps it out of the 21st century into the middle of the Thirty Years' War- and these heavily armed rednecks and UMW members get to impose truth, justice, and the American way on the Holy Roman Empire's religious hatred and rampaging mercenary armies, helped along by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. I'm up to the point where their new steam-powered ironclads built along the lines of CSS Virginia are headed for the Baltic, their Cris-Craft with homebuilt rocket launchers having been sunk (after destroying most of the Danish fleet)......

Wonderful dumb fun.