Which books are your guilty pleasures?

[Satine]

Ok, so I enjoy great literature as much as the next person, but on occasion I'll pick up a book that is nothing but brain candy, just for fun. A while back, I picked up "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and "Shopaholic Takes Manhattan" by Sophie Kinesella and found myself cracking up throughout both books. Great pieces of literature they are NOT...but still fun to read.

Just wondering what kinds of 'junk' fiction other people read on occasion.

[Nocturnal]

I feel ashamed of myself, but I have read almost everything Stephen King has ever published...I even got the very obscure "On Writing", as if King as an author whose reflections of literature I cared for.

[Satine]

*pats nocturnal on the back* It's ok, buddy. The first step is admitting you have a problem... :)

See, I knew there were others out there. I'm not the only one!

[Nocturnal]

Come on people, don't be shy ;)
Although, on my defense, I would like to state that when I am done with "The Dark Tower" series I will call it quits regarding Mr. King.

[Satine]

You know, in all honestly, Noc...I don't think there's anything wrong with it at all. I mean, that's part of the reason I read magazines. I have a subscription to US weekly, my parents get it for me every Christmas. Dumb as you can imagine. Bunch of celebrity crapola. Waste of time to read. And I love it. I sit down every Friday and in about 30 minutes, I've read it cover to cover. I've seen which celebs are hooking up, breaking up...(I mean, Brangelina? HELLO!)...and I can pretty much guarantee that I'm DUMBER for having wasted my time. But hey, that's me. I think we all need to have that freedom to read whatever stupid trash we want sometimes. Am I right, or am I right? Or...am I right?

[Nocturnal]

Heh, as long as it doesn't become one's exclusive literary diet, so to speak, it is quite alright and harmless :)
But over the years I've grown seriously annoyed with Stephen King. I still think that some of his earlier works were quite decent but it simply is no longer my coup of tea. It's not that I have out-grown horror fiction, on the contrary, it's just that my standarts of "good horror lit" are now richer and higher.
Still, I actually found about T.S Eliot and Robert Browning because King quoted them at some point, and have learnt to love those authors much more than I ever cared for King. So it was not a waste of time :)

[novellover]

It would have to be the Harry Potter books. Never have I been so taken by a series/books. They're too incredible and I really think if others around here tried them, they'd agree they're pretty tempting and riveting, though I doubt is they'll ever achieve the literary stature of say an E. Nesbit book or a Roald Dahl creation. It seems their stupendous commercial success, particularly in the era of computer games and snazzy technology, will never let them ever get close to being branded classics. A classic for most people is a book that's read by a few chosen "classy" readers, not every Tom, Dick and Harry!!

[Scheherazade]

I do read type of books what Satine calls 'brain candy'. I enjoy reading books by Agatha Christie and Janet Evanovich, books by Wendy Holden, which are similar to those of Sophie Kinsella. Recently I have been reading some books by Jacquiline Wilson, who mainly writes early teen books. Soon I will be reading some of Roald Dahl's books. Oh, I have read all the Harry potter books, too (apart from the last one).

However, I don't feel guilty about it. I love reading and, at the right time, I will read anything. I said this somewhere else in this Forum, I think (there has been a discussion about the type of reading we do etc.): It is healthy and advisable for us to eat healthy food but a constant diet of steamed vegetables and boiled rice would make life rather boring. I don't think any of us neither can nor should say no to an occasional burger or pizza or a slice of double chocolate gateau or... ;)

I am glad that I can read and enjoy Crime and Punishment and then move on to something by John Grisham. And I hope I will never be well-read enough to lose that ability! ;)

[Satine]

Very well said, Scheherazade! I couldn't agree more. That's why the 'brain candy' term applies. Heck, there's nothing better than reading a classic novel that makes you really THINK about things, analyze the characters, revel in the writing style and storyline, etc. That's your 'meat and potatos' so to speak. Then, to pick up something totally 'frivolous' and love it just as much, but in a different way completely...it makes reading fun and interesting. I don't cross paths with very many people who truly love to read like I do, but the few that I DO come across tend to think that reading anything other than Dickens or Tolstoy is completely beneath them and a waste. I don't agree. Thanks for your input, I loved reading it!

[Nocturnal]

I don't cross paths with very many people who truly love to read like I do, but the few that I DO come across tend to think that reading anything other than Dickens or Tolstoy is completely beneath them and a waste. I don't agree.

I know where you're coming from and I agree but I sort of understand those people. I think they are just trying to react against what they feel is the degeneration and loss of quality of the literary medium, and like most reactions they tend to be somewhat fierce.
I am not approving that kind of attitude, just pointing out that there is a reason for that kind of behaviour aside from intellectual elitism or plain old snobbism.

[Satine]

I understand what you're saying, Nocturnal...but the thing is, times are changing. Writing styles are changing and evolving. I'm a teacher, so I'm surrounded with a lot of the 'new' stuff that's out there. The way I see it, whether we like it or not, that kind of thing is our future. The Harry Potter series, for example, is so widely debated as to its validity as real 'literature'...and yet, millions upon millions of kids are reading these books. Those kids who are reading them are going to grow up and pass that kind of thing on to future generations. So, I try to teach my kids about a healthy balance between the two. Here's an example of what I mean:

I teach music, and I focus a lot on music history. My kids learn about Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven, and I KNOW they get frustrated with me because they hear the music and say "What does THIS have to do with Usher? 50 cent?" Now, do I LIKE Usher? 50 Cent? Nope. Can't stand them. But the reality is that my KIDS are going to listen to it whether I like it or not. It's my job to make them understand that without people like Beethoven and Haydn and Mozart, there would never BE and Usher or 50 Cent. When you make those kinds of connections, they are much more willing to accept the past as it ties into the future.

Same kind of thing applies to literature. Does that make any sense? I think more people need to have an open mind and be a little more accepting of mainstream lit, because fighting it often turns people off to the 'classics.'

[Nocturnal]

That's why I shall never have kids :P Seriously now, I know what you're saying and it is quite true. All I am saying is that there is always a reaction, a certain feeling of...Academia to be preserved, so to speak.
I know some people around my age (early twenties) who are great writers and one of the things that bothers them the most is the awful feeling that they are writing "for the great voids to be", as a friend put it.

[Padan Fain]

Guilty pleasure? Michael Savage. I know he is a bit over the top, but I get a kick out of him.....

[Wendigo_49]

My guilty pleasure would have to be Atlantis series by Greg Donegan. It's so bad that he put a quote which says "You'll wonder if it is real" on the cover from another pseudonym(Robert Doherty) he uses. Even so, I still pull them out every once in a while to read.

[mono]

Wow, this thread makes me feel like an all-work-and-no-play type of reader.
As a child, I had a fairly decent balance of reading children's classics, but also some comics now and then. Nowadays, it seems that I restrict my play in literature, and I have never noticed it; perhaps I have picked and critiqued my taste too sharply.
In recent years, I have indulged myself in easy reading like Stephen King, but could not really call myself a big fan. Otherwise, I often get a brain-candy-like pleasure from reading certain poets, like E.E. Cummings, Arthur Rimaud, Charles Bukowski, and many other contemporaries, finding Romanticism (perhaps my favorite era of poetry) more difficult to read, but beautiful.

[underground]

I feel ashamed of myself, but I have read almost everything Stephen King has ever published...I even got the very obscure "On Writing", as if King as an author whose reflections of literature I cared for.

that was the first (and maybe only) stephen king's books i've read. i'd heard of him all the time but never really read any of his books. then i read on writing and discovered that he's an obnoxious, irritating, offensive jerk and decided i might not want to read any of his books after all. maybe if i ever completely run out of books.

eh, i don't really have any books that give me the guilty pleasure. all the books i've read so far that gave me pleasures didn't make me guilty. :p
except for maybe the princess diaries series by meg cabot. i have to be in hiding when i'm reading it, but only because it's pink. i read the first two volumes back in high school, and now i just have to keep up with it. it's a pretty good series, actually. i've read cabot's other books and other chicklits in general, and in comparison to a typical chicklit heroine, the character princess is pretty intelligent and decent so far. can't go wrong with a book that has the words "phalanx" and "speciou" in it. :p

[subterranean]

Some titles in the Harlequin series..Can't remember what are they...

Sohpaholic and Sophaholic goes a broad as well..



Just wondering what kinds of 'junk' fiction other people read on occasion.

[C. Henrique]

Recently I guess I could mention The Da Vinci Code. Actually I'm able to read almost anything, and I try not to have any prejudice. Da Vinci Code, for example, was a pretty entertaining reading. Besides it was filled with knowledge and many information about art masterpieces. The narrative was kind of cinematographic, that's why I think it may turn into a good movie, for they just filming right now.

[Satine]

Speaking of movies, I'm interested to see what they do with C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" which is being released in December. I hope they do it justice...usually movies go one way or the other. It will either be amazing or horrible.

[lavendar1]

When I tire of all the stuff I need to read, I pull down a gothic romance by Victoria Holt or Phyllis Whitney. They've got predictable plots, perhaps, but sometimes in the face of reality's unpredictabilty, they work for me.

[Koa]

I cant find the courage to face the Shopaholic thing (which one of my best friends adores for some reason), but I read a book by Sophie Kinsella which got me so hooked that I just read it cover to cover in one night (and god it had been ages since I had last done something like that!) and what's more shameful it got me crying for at least half of it like a brainless girl watching her favourite soap opera...:rolleyes:

I've read some Stephen King but never got that thrilled about it, I havent read many recent bestesellers cos they more famous they are the less I feel inspired to read them, but I think some of them might be a good read just for fun...

[RococoLocket]

Aww, I don't have my glasses on so I misread the title of this thread as "Which books are your quilty pleasures?"
I really liked that title :(

I don't read any trashy literature ... at least I don't think I do. My Boyfriend lent me a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel if that counts?

[Miss Darcy]

For me, it's Harry Potter. Light reading...you can take in a hundred words a minute without really thinking about it. Or maybe more...I'm only estimating...

[EAP]

I feel ashamed of myself, but I have read almost everything Stephen King has ever published...I even got the very obscure "On Writing", as if King as an author whose reflections of literature I cared for.

Why do you feel ashamed of yourself?

And King's a author whose reflections on Literature are pretty incisive. Certainly more than the morons who are considered the literati darlings these days. Have you, by any chance, read 'Danse Macabre?'

[subterranean]

Hi, considering the thread title (which books are your guilty pleasure?), what make you feel guilty reading Davinci Code?




Recently I guess I could mention The Da Vinci Code. Actually I'm able to read almost anything, and I try not to have any prejudice. Da Vinci Code, for example, was a pretty entertaining reading. Besides it was filled with knowledge and many information about art masterpieces. The narrative was kind of cinematographic, that's why I think it may turn into a good movie, for they just filming right now.

[shortysweetp]

i would also have to say that my guilty pleasure is stephen king but I recently read a few books that my mother in law lent me and i liked those. I think one was by Luanne Rice it was pretty good easy reading I really liked the one I read called "Angry Houswives Eating BonBons" by Lorna Landvik Its about a group of housewives that form a bookclub in their neighborhood. http://www.stanthecaddy.com/thestore/p/0345442822

Also Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees.

[Natalie]

The Secret Life of Bees is so great - I will even admit it's not a guilty pleasure for me - it's just a pleasure. I heard she has a new one. I would read it.

Stuff like The Nanny Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada and Confessions of a Shopaholic are all guilty pleasures for me. Love that stuff!

But also can appreciate the finer literature for sure. :-)

[Satine]

LOL, Natalie...those Shopaholic books are shameful, aren't they? I've read two of them! Never read The Devil Wears Prada but I've seen it. Any good? Maybe I'll pick it up.

[rachel]

When I was a kid I picked up my first Nancy Drew and somehow I missed the pat answers, the embarassing judmentalism"he had a scowl and shifty eyes'' and the way Nancy and her friends were so sterotyped it could make you gag.
But I didn't care about that. I wanted to live in the house with a handsome lawyer dad that thought I was brilliant, so brilliant he gave me cases when I had absolutely no training, I wanted to be loved and catered to by Hannah Gruen instead of the nanny i had who used the back of the brush on my behind when she thought me naughty and was so regimented in her time I lived in segments of minutes.
I mostly wanted a car like Nancy's and the neverending money to keep it nice with no discernable means of income and I wanted a Ned that would always love me, fall all over himself for me but who I never had to marry since I would always be eighteen.
I wanted to be in haunted houses and do all the fun things she could do and still be back in River Heights by sundown so the fam wouldn't worry.
I look back now and cringe....yet if the night is rainy and the wind is howling and I feel like a hot chocolate and a book to fit the mood I once in a while find myself hanging out with Nancy Bess and George for a little while. And then I go back to editing and reading the classics and all that. But I don't tell anyone. Well not up until now that is.


"I told them how good you are at solving mysteries, and they'd like you to come out to Twin Elms and help them." Helen paused, out of breath." Nancy Drew-the Haunted House.

[mono]

When I was a kid I picked up my first Nancy Drew and somehow I missed the pat answers, the embarassing judmentalism"he had a scowl and shifty eyes'' and the way Nancy and her friends were so sterotyped it could make you gag . . .
I also loved the Nancy Drew series as a child. Truly, it seemed like a lot of "brain candy," but it read a lot more realistically than some of the other mystery novels I read as a child, like the whole Goosebumps series by R.L. Stein. :D I never quite read the whole Nancy Drew series, however, as I cannot even think of how many books that comprises.

[Monica]

I read Jules Verne quite a lot and this type of literature by other writers. It's real fun and I really, really enjoy it :D

[Hermy]

I like this tread! Brain-candy consumers anonymous. My guilty pleasure are Janet Evanovich's Stephany Plum novels. I hide them from view, but I've got them all.

I also enjoy children's literature and fantasy classics, but I don't really consider that pleasure guilty. I love Harry Potter and can't seem to tire of it. I could read it over and over again.

[rachel]

Mono,

You seem like a teacher, an elf and a child all in one. And when I think of your name I get two immediate reactions. The first is I think you of course are one of kind, unique and rare.
The other is I think of the isolation ward and the several weeks I spent in there being treated for severe mono which in fact took a whole year to recuperate from.
So each time I see your name I get all emotional!!!

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." chesterton.

[mono]

Mono,

You seem like a teacher, an elf and a child all in one. And when I think of your name I get two immediate reactions. The first is I think you of course are one of kind, unique and rare.
I appreciate that, rachel, thank you. :blush:
Unfortunately, I can consider myself neither a teacher, elf, or child (at 23), though I do tutor in creative writing and human anatomy and physiology, two entirely unrelated subjects. I tend to admire many others' posts, however, yours among them.

The other is I think of the isolation ward and the several weeks I spent in there being treated for severe mono which in fact took a whole year to recuperate from.
:lol:
Yes, mononucleosis (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000591.htm), or "the kissing disease," seems difficult to battle. For isolation precautions, you must have had quite a case. Glad to see, it seems, you have recovered well, however.

[shortysweetp]

mono I also read the whole series of goosebumps. the other day while at the bookstore I saw that you can buy the monsterblood series as one book there were like 2 other series too. i just looked it up and there are lots of boxed sets of those goosebump books
Also I liked to read Scary Stories (i provided a link) which is also now sold in a box set
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006440465X/102-2260354-1880167?v=glance

[rachel]

I think one is born a teacher and an elf and as for being a child I am thinking of an eternal one, always fresh and beautiful and full of imagination and ideas.
Mono you are all these and I cannot wait to read all the future things you write.

"As a man thinks so he is" Bible

[subterranean]

I'm wondering what Sophie Kinsela or Mr. King would say if they happened to check out this thread..
:D

[Natalie]

LOL, Natalie...those Shopaholic books are shameful, aren't they? I've read two of them! Never read The Devil Wears Prada but I've seen it. Any good? Maybe I'll pick it up.

They totally are!

The Devil Wears Prada is good - I really enjoyed it - great beach book or if you want something to read on the plane. Or if you're sick and need something lighthearted.

[Lady19thC]

I would have to say mine would be Harry Potter series, The Borrower series, by Mary Norton, Little House on the Prairie books, and the Anne of Green Gables series. I love children/ya books! When I need a break from my Victorians or Shakespeare, these are my "comfort" books-quick and light reading. They are what I would turn to if I didn't feel well and was in bed needing something light and fun,as well as any time I needed to be cheered up!

[underground]

They totally are!

The Devil Wears Prada is good - I really enjoyed it - great beach book or if you want something to read on the plane. Or if you're sick and need something lighthearted.

. . . how? i read the second or the third book (the one with new york), and the main character is just too pathetic. what, does she not realize that she's spending all that much money? i've forgotten most of the details, but i remember thinking, "damn, girl, you're one idiot with some superficial needs. do get help." but maybe it's just because i'm not obsessed with clothes at all and can't sympathize with women who feel the need to shop at least once a week. heck, i didn't even know what prada was until recently.

as for the poster above me: no, no, they are great books! i love children and young adults' books as well and would die if i had to call them my guilty pleasures. seriously, i need to get back to classics. but i was picking up absalom, absalom earlier today, and i couldn't get why the first sentence never ended. i guess if you can't finish faulkner then you're not supposed to be bother with proust. ah, well, there are always cliffnotes. :p

[shortysweetp]

Lady- i used to have to whole series of little house but when i moved out from my family's house i havent seen them since, along with my other teenage/childern's books. I am going to the uni library tomorrow they are having a sale of all their old books and their children books are .25 (cents) so i am going to load up

[rachel]

Nocturnal,
I know how you feel. When I was a child and was in dance and played classical piano I also,being a child played rock and danced modern dance. I read as I have written somewhere on this site Nancy Drew etc.
But when I wanted to touch who I already knew I am I sat down and played the classics, danced the Swan Lake and even as a little girl I read easy versions of Dickens and Dosteovsky, Jane Austen, etc.
I remember being in hospital in a primary grade and before going I picked out Paris in the Terror about Charlotte Corday and the revolution and although I struggled through it of course( i am no einstein) I was enthralled and absorbed.
To me those works that are great to some of us both reflected the times and the author's part in them, their sufferings and their trying somehow to touch something higher, divine if you will. It is hard to explain but I read them with reverence.
I do not criticize J.K Rawlings, who could. But I am not so sure if that is the well from which she and others like her draw the way Tolkien's sufferings led him or whether it is just an economic thing, business as it were.
Oh well it is all muddled but I do think I know what you mean.
"I have never loved Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end I might have acted like our lawless lion hunter has done." Holmes to watson in The adventure of the devil's foot.

[YellowCrayola]

My guilty pleasure would be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.


That's why I shall never have kids :P Seriously now, I know what you're saying and it is quite true. All I am saying is that there is always a reaction, a certain feeling of...Academia to be preserved, so to speak.

I agree. Not everybody are always open-minded about these kinds of things. A teacher of mine even told me that he yearns for the days when the literature of Dickens, Bronte and Shakespeare flourished, and not the "poisonous" books of today such as Harry Potter.

[subterranean]

I really enjoyed the movie series of Little House on The Prairie. Laura was always everyone's fav (I think), but I preferred the calmer Mary. Until now I still read those Japanese comic books once in a while, even the silliest like Kariage, Kobo-Chan, or Hagemaru :nods:. They are so funny that you still smile eventhough you have read them over and over..


I would have to say mine would be Harry Potter series, The Borrower series, by Mary Norton, Little House on the Prairie books, and the Anne of Green Gables series. I love children/ya books! When I need a break from my Victorians or Shakespeare, these are my "comfort" books-quick and light reading. They are what I would turn to if I didn't feel well and was in bed needing something light and fun,as well as any time I needed to be cheered up!

[PistisSophia]

A piece of garbage called "The Poet in Exile" by Ray Manzarek.

[~Maude~]

I always keep a book in my bag for those otherwise wasted moments waiting around at the doctors, the lunch counter, wherever. Since I usually only get about 5-10 minutes of reading at a time during the day, I try to keep it light and funny, Olivia Joules by Helen Fielding is currently in there. I like having something I can pick up and put down with little thought and can make me chuckle every now and then. I like it when strangers look over at me like I'm nuts, it makes my day :D .