I'm not talking about Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Maas, super popular writers with strong mainstream appeal who have vocal "literary" haters, or Infinite Jest or Atlas Shrugged where being pretentious and getting judged is half the point of reading them.
I'm talking about the guiltiest of guilty pleasures, where you have to turn off all the lights and snuggle under the covers with your phone flashlight even if you're single, because even your overhead light would roll its eyes. I'm talking you won't even add it to your Goodreads because you know the 1-star reviews are generous. Or a story so dark you worry your friends will think you're a serial killer if they see it on your shelf. Or something so pretentious and obscure no one will even approach you reading it because they expect you to start lecturing them with Ph.D. level knowledge of the financial subsystems of Southeast Asia (poor plebs). Or prose/grammar that's just atrocious but the story or a character inexorably draws you in. Something utterly tasteless. Something bland like boiled chicken. Something gross. Something quirky in the worst way. Something that might get your face rearranged if the wrong person noticed you reading it.
Doesn't have to be sexy/smutty, but that's fine. Something that you wouldn't read on public transport, but you still make up super defensive conversations in your head because you just KNOW everyone on the bus would be staring and confronting you about your poor literary taste.
Let's get judged!
by FaceOfDay
7 Comments
That’s multiple different categories and I have things for several of them but not one thing for all of them.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34181
Irene Iddesleigh by Amanda McKittrick Ros is the worst book I’ve ever read and famous for the atrocious writing style. The plot doesn’t make sense either but fewer people know that because you have to get past the writing style to find out.
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/duyvendak_jjl/B25_book_of_lord_shang/duyvlord.rtf
The Book of Lord Shang is the founding text of Chinese legalism. It’s a guide for running a violently repressive state and going on wars of conquest.
I don’t have a link for The Mistress Manual by Lorelei because it’s still under copyright, but it will get you funny looks on public transport because people unfamiliar with the book will think it’s about seducing married men. People who are familiar know that it’s actually a how-to book for dominatrices.
Stuffed by Sylvia Marrow
Unhinged by Vera Valentine
Squeak by Vera Valentine
Stuffed by the Were-Turkey by Tate McKirk
Just go read the synopses for these books and ponder my sanity, but know I read them purely for the humorous entertainment they bring me.
I mean. anything by Dan Brown, no?
Just tell the fantasy sub you read Terry Goodkind and actually enjoy it and sit back with popcorn.
Chuck tingle books
The Fifty Shades series. People who choose not to “get it” LOVE to vilify people who do.
I don’t have a personal recommendation but I did once become friends on Goodreads with a girl I did my masters degree with who read 78 books last year, almost all of which were romance books involving orcs or other similar monsters. I was pretty judgmental of The Maid and the Orcs but maybe I shouldn’t judge a book by its (smutty green) cover