I really want to read ‘Behold a Pale Horse’ by Milton Cooper but I just know I’m going to enjoy it so much and feel guilty for it at the same time. It’s not that I’ll feel guilty for believing the conspiracy theories that he mentions in the book but WANTING to believe them instead.
I’m interested to know what peoples biggest guilty pleasure reads are and why? I imagine there are so many different reasons, hit me with them.
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by vodosolly100
39 Comments
My guilty pleasure is YA novels that get made into movies (To All the Boys I Loved Before, The Summer I Turned Pretty, 13 Reasons Why, etc). I just think there’s something so silly and special about being a teenager and thinking everything is so important when it’s totally not. I also occasionally read smutty romance to get out of a reading slump because they’re so hard (pun not intended) to put down.
The Other Boleyn Girl. The historical inaccuracies make me twitch and the author is controversial amongst actual Tudor historians for its depiction of Anne Boleyn but it was my “gateway” book into the period and I still love it!
I know Memoirs of a Geisha was written in a total betrayal of the author’s source, and that it’s very embellished and doesn’t show the culture correctly, and that it’s about a literal child crushing on a middle-aged man, but it’s an excellent story and I adore it.
Ahh shit, here we go. The Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. I read it as a 16yo teen boy when it came out, not having any idea what it’s about. Didn’t actually care much about the sex stuff, but the plot was genuinely interesting and fun. I still read them every few years skipping the sex scenes and it feels like crappy comfort food.
Mein Khampf
Nah just fuckin wit you. I fucks with the Stephanie Plum novels. That’s my girl. And sometimes I read those wierdo ass romance novels about a woman moving back to her coastal hometown from the big city to unwind then swept into a romance from a letter in a bottle… or some crazy shit like that.
The dictionary during Bananagrams
I honestly don’t feel guilty or ashamed of anything I read. Actually I don’t like the term ‘guilty pleasure’! 🙂
Kathy Reichs
The Earth’s Children series by Jean Auel. Not for the sexy stuff and not for the horrible written relationships, but for the descriptions of life in prehistoric times. So much well-researched detail, I love it. Total escapism.
I skim over the thousands of pages of agonizing that could have been avoided by just talking about things in the first place.
[Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/34500952/chapters/85870804). It’s Draco-Hermione fanfic and it’s one of the most delightful things I’ve ever read. It had me at the tag: “graphic depictions of competent women,” and the author’s name, she goes by isthisselfcare (how amazing is that?) You don’t have to like Harry Potter, fanfic, or want Draco and Hermione to be together going into this, I didn’t, but seriously guys, I have a degree in creative writing and literature, and this book is def. one of my top ten favorite books of all time, and very possibly one of my top five. It’s that good. Also, isthisselfcare is a published author, so don’t let any fears about the qualiity of fanfic writing hold you back. Her prose is so good. In fact, her everything is so good. Read this story now.
You can find it for free online. Judge me now, thank me later.
Link: [https://archiveofourown.org/works/34500952/chapters/85870804](https://archiveofourown.org/works/34500952/chapters/85870804)
Edited to gush just a tiny bit more and add the link 🙂
As a 30 year old man, I read the entire Lizzie McGuire book series.
Ammie Come Home by Barbara Michaels. A nice autumn read with seances, ghosts and an old house. Set in historic Georgetown.
I have a degree in English lit and focused almost exclusively on 1600-1890 British lit. That being said, most people expect me to always be reading a classic or some other heavy lit. It’s exhausting. My favorites right now are those urban magic books. The ones where magical creatures live under the noses of humans but some humans know about them. I just eat it up but if I tell people I’m reading that they look at me all shocked that I would read that drivel. Whatever, it’s fine.
I really liked Ready Player One. Yeah it was full of tropes and not terribly well written, but the tropes were kind of the whole point and the writing was just good enough to keep me interested. Also, the other book he wrote that I can’t recall now had an Ender’s Game vibe while still full of the same reliable trope.
Twilight 😆
Valley of the Dolls. Like reading a soap opera
The witch of blackbird pond, I have no idea why. My American friend sent it to me when I was about 14 and I have read it so many times since. Maybe it’s the cosy feeling it evokes, I really don’t know
Edit: I definitely got the question wrong, this is my comfort book, not guilty pleasure! Oh well
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, totally not my typical kind of read and a lil bit cringey at times, but it was so much fun, I loved it!
I loved the Sookie Stackhouse books.
Just about anything by Sarah J Maas, but especially Court of Thorns and Roses series. Look, I know it’s hot garbage, but the second book is a comfort read.
I’ve really been getting into MXTX’s works. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation really sucked me in, and I’m devouring Heaven Official’s Blessing. The pining! The magic! It’s been a delightful intersection of horror and romance that makes my gay little heart happy.
I’m down for dystopian fiction from the YA section.
Gossip girl 😂 I’m 30 and have a PhD
I probably read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury every other October and love it every time even though there are other spooky books to read.
Then Came Heaven by LaVyrle Spencer. It’s about a widower and a nun who fall in love in the ’50’s. I have a varied interest in books and when I downsized my library a few years ago, I kept it. I love this terrible little novel.
Oooo! It’s Jilly Cooper for me. Or Judith Krantz. Any of those glam 80’s books where the characters are all rich and they are all terrible people. I can visualize the shoulder pads on the women’s power suits lol so bad but so good.
The Fever Series by Karen Moning. It’s the origin story of a superhero from discovery of her powers to full power and the politics of learning who to trust in the realm of monsters and vampires and faeries. I love the characters and I’m a suckered for a story that has a complete arc. The author is a romance writer venturing into fantasy, so there are some campy romance bits, which make it even more a guilty read.
Fountainhead. I just like to imagine roark and Gail wynand running off and being gay and hot and haughty together. With Dominique dying in a freak building collapse.
No such thing, babe. Never feel guilty about what you wanna read! Run to it! Read it!
Also, I love hard boiled pulp where it turns out it’s lesbians, especially the great cover art. Guilty!
twillight –
the first book, it just has a hold on me ever since I (22 m) read it the first time when I was around 11 and I find some scenes in it actually hilarious and funny.
I read that book like 10 times over the years…
The “Gone Girl” wannabes, the psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators. I’ve read them all. Some of them are pretty good and some of them are terrible, but when I just want to sit back and be entertained, I’m there.
As a reader of more heady sci-fi and epic fantasy, I absolutely love the RA Salvatore Forgotten Realms books, as well as the entire Draglonlance series. Compared to my usual choices, these are practically dime store novels. In the time it takes me to make it through one of the Malazan Book of the Fallen novels, I can read the entire Dark Elf Trilogy.
anything by colleen hoover…i know.
I’ve read over 100 of the Remo Williams Destroyer pulp fiction novels and I loved them all. In a nutshell, President Kennedy realizes the US constutition is fatally flawed so he sets up an autonomous assassination department. The assassins? A 100 year old North Korean Sinanju master and his student, a former New Jersey cop who may be the literal incarnation of Shiva, the Destroyer. Thanks to their diet and breathing techniques, they can also dodge bullets and go without air for hours
The Sookie Stackhouse series is my go-to when I wanna just read for “vibes”. They’re funny, sometimes really serious, and full of interesting characters.
The Da Vinci Code, I know it’s not good and I know it’s historically horseshit and I just don’t care I eat it up
Heaven by VC Andrews. Don’t judge me
Outlander. Love it, obsessed. I don’t tell anyone I’ve read every book! Except my husband lol.
The ‘Protector Of The Small’ quartet, by Tamora Pierce.
Harry Potter. All of them. I’m just captivated by the descriptions, the settings and the characters.