"I can't believe you read this crap".

[davywavy]

There are both good and bad sides to not owning a television. The bad side is that I tend to miss the few really good bis of televisual entertainment that are out there, like Life on Mars or Top Gear. On the plus side, however, that means I have more time to thrust my nose into any passing books.

There are the sort of books which you feel kinda you have to read because they're classics, like Les Miserables, one of the most tedious books I've ever read and every single one of whose leaden words took an hour to lever itself from the page and into my brain. Then there's the stuff you read for pleasure; Flashman, or Erast Fandorin or Captain Alatriste and so much more. And then there's crap literature. There's an entire section devoted to it on my bookshelves; books whose titles alone ment I had to buy them. I own Conrad's Quest for Rubber (also known as Conrad's Rubber Adventures). I own Thongor at the end of time. I own The Hard Corps. There's so much joy to be had from reading truly terrible books and then leaving them on the shelf next to pretentious gubbins like Crime and Punishment.

So, question of the day: which is the most embarrassing book you're willing to own up to owning and having read?

Comments

[tooth-fairy.livejournal.com]

I read a Danielle Steele book once. I was staying at my Nana's and in the quest for something to read came to the conclusion that one of her many tomes would do no harm.
I was wrong, it was awful, it was worse than awful, it was the worst book I have ever read.

[tooth-fairy.livejournal.com]

I'll have to get back to you on the most embarrassing one I actually own

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The thing is, truly bad books aren't necessarily awful. I'll lend you The Hard Corps some time - it's astonishingly - if unintentionally - funny.

[ditzy-pole.livejournal.com]

Nope, none of my books are embarrassing.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

You forget I've seen your bookshelf.
And I seem to recall you own a copy of The Reeducation of the female.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

I unreservedly LOVE Guy N Smith.

Crappest writer on the planet (unless you count Lionel Fanthorpe). Titles such as NIGHT OF THE CRABS, CRABS MOON (and several more in the "OMG giant crabs" series), THROWBACKS (somehow everyone reverts to being Neanderthal and men become inflamed with bestial lust at the sight of red knickers), THE MASTER (a Satanic S+M public school in the Scottish Highlands), sprang from his fevered pen. Liberal use of italics, misuse of the elipsis, deathless prose, every setting culled from the last place he went on holiday/to a conference... I can never quite tell if it's supposed to be funny or is unintentionally so.

My favorite passage must be:

Crabs! The size of beach donkeys! Coming down the Blackwall Tunnel! Clickey click... Clackety clack...

(This may not be the precise quote, but it's close enough).

I also seem to recall "He was going back for Pamela! Crabs or no crabs..."

hehehe

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I read his book Warhead, I think - the one with Nuclear Apocalypse precipitated by the Voodoo gods?
Let's just say that 11 was probably a little too young for me to have read it.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

"Project Management for Dummies"

I feel dirty.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Faith No More are headlining Download.

Shall we?

[manywaters.livejournal.com]

On my way to a Camarilla convention, I picked up How To Marry a Millionaire Vampire (http://www.amazon.com/How-Marry-Millionaire-Vampire/dp/B001TKD4ZI/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1) at the airport out of sheer horror. It was truly awful.

Upon arriving at the convention, I promptly took it in character and started accusing prominent characters of having written it, and ultimately got far more than $6.99 of giggles out of it.

The worst in my house that hasn't already been passed on would be Spy Candy (http://www.amazon.com/Candy-Zebra-Debut-Gina-Robinson/dp/1420104721/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236079797&sr=1-4), though the duology of Stand By Your Hitman (http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Your-Hitman-Romantic-Mysteries/dp/084396037X/ref=pd_sim_b_1) and Guns Will Keep Us Together (http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Will-Together-Greatest-Romance/dp/0843960361/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b) continues to make royalcrown's brain hurt. My friend Ron maintains it was my purchase of Twilight (http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Saga-Book-1/dp/0316015849/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236080044&sr=1-1).

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Playing my Follower of Set, I went through a phase of taking large boxes of overpriced chocolates to games and handing them around freely with the words "Would you like a delicious chocolate of Set?" Simply adding the words of Set to anything at all would make people immediately suspicious, meaning that a lot of people simply refued to eat what were perfectly normal tasty chocs. Ah, happy days.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Laurell K Hamilton - the Merry Gentley books. Like porn without the story, decent characterisation or realism.

I tried to give them away recently. No one would take them.

I think I may own some Jilly Cooper as well, but she's more of a guilty pleasure than any kind of unreserved embarassment.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Nicking Jilly Cooper's books from my sister's bedroom when I was about 12 proved quite an eye-opening experience, mind.

[manywaters.livejournal.com]

I enjoy my Merry Gentry books, but acknowledge that it's basically a hardcover erotica stash and little more.

[tooth-fairy.livejournal.com]

Isn't porn without the story porn?
Porn with story is erotica or something more high brow surely :p

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Tarnsman of Gor?

*blush*

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I'm re-reading Outlaw of Gor at the moment!

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

my ex-gf is a mighty Gor fan. *shudder*

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

Guy N. Smith is my all-time favourite, but he's not so much embarrassing as a necessary cult author these days.:)

I own (and still have a colossal fondness for) the first six books of the Dragonlance Saga. The prose is terrible, but they remain very warmly enshrined in my memory, dreadful as they are. The same goes for R.A.Salvatore's Drizzt books.

I'm fond of a bit of Storm Constantine for goth-porn fun. At some point I know I'm going to have to get Twilight, out of a sense of morbid curiosity, and that will trump them all.

Susan Kay's Phantom is so embarrassing I have the spine turned to the back so no-one can see I own it. In fact it's so bad I'm not even sure why I still own it. It's not even cool embarrassing. It's just embarrassing.

For a few weeks, several years ago now, my household was visited by an entity we called The Gay Porn Fairy - for obvious reasons, as s/he would, periodically, deliver free gay porn to us in book and video form. We got some corkers. In fact one of my favourite ridiculous memories is of a friend of mine, one of the most delicately gorgeous, Elvishly-beautiful women I have ever seen on or off a screen, sitting in a long green dress with her hip-length hair flowing over her face, reading aloud to us from the latest delivery in a clear soft voice. The juxtaposition of that image, and prose that went along the lines of, "Peter gasped as Mark forced his thick, pulsing meat up Peter's ribbed, twitching tunnel," will stay with me a long time yet. I don't know what happened to the tale of Peter's Ribbed Tunnel; I kind of miss it.

I love your dreadful books. Conrad's Quest for Rubber had me in stitches for ages.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

Guy N. Smith is my all-time favourite, but he's not so much embarrassing as a necessary cult author these days.:)

hehe I put forward Guy N Smith as my guilty secret. He really IS bad though!
^_^

I also read some Dragonlance but made the mistake of re-reading them after I left Uni. THE HORROR.

[diamondkelt.livejournal.com]

I'd have to agree about the Laura K. Hamilton books. I own quite a few :( :lol: Mostly the vampire hunter novels but they tend towards smut at the end of that series.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I have yet to read the da Vinci code.

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

L. Ron Hubbard. BATTLEFIELD EARTH. And god help me I finished it, too.