What book is your guilty pleasure?
Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but last week was the first I’d heard of NPR’s “My Guilty Pleasure” series on All Things Considered, in which “writers talk about the books they love but are embarrassed to be seen reading.” The series has been airing since May 27, 2009, and you can listen to archives here.
A few highlights: Kate Christensen (author of Trouble) likens reading Janet Evanovich to eating Twinkies. Lizzie Skurnick (author of Shelf Discovery) loves Peter Benchley’s Jaws, which she calls “Peyton Place by the sea.” David Sax (author of Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen) can’t get enough of Eat, Pray, Love—also known as “a scented candle of new age wisdom.”
No surprise here, but “My Guilty Pleasure” has me thinking about my own guilty reading pleasure. My philosophy is that reading should never inspire guilt, but a particular series does come to mind: Anyone ever race through Jean M. Auel’s 1980 novel Clan of the Cave Bear? What about under your desk during chemistry class? Let’s just say that, in the words of my grandmother, this pre-historical novel includes a lot of “R.” And as a high-schooler, I loved it—although I’d blush if anyone asked what I was reading.
What book do you love, but you’re embarrassed to be seen reading? Spill all in the comments.
Related in BookPage: Read an interview with Evanovich, a hand-written Q&A with Benchley, an interview with Skurnick or an interview with Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert.
I have lots of guilty pleasures. Stephen King is a guilty pleasure. I also enjoy Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston and lately The Hunger Games books.
I must be living under the same rock, as I’ve never heard of the feature either – and I listen to NPR at work all day. Must be on after work hours!
My guilty pleasure would be Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I LOVE these books. I’m on my second read of the series – 12 books at about 1000 pages each. I have so many other new and exciting titles to read… but sometimes I just have to go back to Jordan.
Scruples by Judith Krantz. I first read that book when I was about sixteen.
I love the YA series The Luxe. The girl are incredibly bitchy and it’s definitely chick lit, but I cannot put those books down. A romance novel every now an then is another guilty pleasure.
I love the Twilight series, but — being a woman in her mid-30′s — I’d never admit it to my friends! lol
I’m not sure that I ever feel true guilt for reading anything I really enjoy. When I was in middle school and early high school, I did read VC Andrews. I cringe now just thinking about it, but when I was 13 I thought they were great!
I love Young Adult literature, even though I’m 50-something. Current favorite is Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Catching Fire.’ Eagerly awaiting book 3 in the series due out in August.
I love YA books, too. THE HUNGER GAMES are next on my list! I’ve heard nothing but great things about the series.
Same guilty pleasure! I remember “sneak-reading” this one as a teenager :p My mom had the first three books in paperback, I remember her saying how good they were (she started studying anthropology in college at one point) but she refused to let me read them! I was like “try and stop me”! So whenever she was out of the house I’d grab the book from the shelf and devour it, rushing to put it back in place when I heard the car… And so I read all 3 of them!
By the time the 4th came out (and my mom got it in hardback) I was deemed “old enough” to read them. Funny, she never wondered why I was starting with the 4th… :p
Even guiltier pleasure (guilty factor increased by the fact that I have all these on my shelf), the French series “Angélique”, definitely a Roman Historique “à l’eau de rose” (what they call romance-tinted novels). I just couldn’t get enough of them! Got them out of the library and then about 10 years ago found them in a 2nd hand book store and bought the lot. I didn’t care about the romance so much as the wonderful detail in recreating that particular time in history (Louis XIV’s France and then the mysterious Middle East and then French North America) and all the drama and tension and mysteries. Hmmm… I’m feeling like reading them again!
The Executioner series. Mack Bolan is ex-FBI or something like that and spends every novel creating a massive body count of mafia types and drug dealers. Complete mind candy for the teen-age me. Oh to have those hours back to read something more substantial …
I had a post about guilty pleasures last month, too: http://carolinebookbinder.blogspot.com/2010/01/guilty-pleasures.html
My favorite is Valley of the Dolls, with Clan of the Cave Bear and Jaws also getting shout-outs.
Thanks for sharing your post, Carin! So funny that Clan of the Cave Bear was a guilty pleasure for you, too. (Plus, you’ve inspired me to read Valley of the Dolls.)