Guilty Pleasures

[hfnuala]

When I was 10 to 15 years old I devoured everything by Andre Norton I could find. The first one of her books was bought for me from one of the english bookshops in Brussels - it was Tales of the Witch World and was a Daw paperback with a good and pulpy cover. I still have it, though it may be in storage. I've got rid of many bad teenage books[1

Comments

[alltheleaves]

My friends and I went through a stage of reading Mills & Boon because it was just fabulously hilarious. And we read anything and everything by Jilly Cooper moving on to Jackie Collins and a book called Princess Daisy although I forget the writer. And we may have even delved into a few Danielle Steeles.

[hfnuala]

I used to be able to speed read M&Bs in half an hour in the local library because my parents would have freaked if I'd brought them home. I don't think I've ever read a non-romance book in which a woman wears her hair in a chignon. In fact, I'm not even sure I know what one of them is.

Princess Daisy was by Judith Krantz who also did Mistral. I prefered Mistral because it didn't have the creepy brother incest. I've also read a Daniel Steele - the hero owned a vineyard. In fact, I obviously read nothing good for years :)

[alltheleaves]

Oh I completely refused to read anything that would please my parents through my entire teenage years. My sister was a paragon of virtue when it came to reading good books and I couldn't possibly be like her so I read anything and everything that I was told not to. Especially Just 17.

On the other hand I read a lot of the stuff my sister read back then now and I know I'm getting more out of them than I would have done at that age. My parents went on and on about her having read Anna Karenina and I finally picked it up a couple of years ago and thought it was dreadful. I phoned up my Dad and asked him what he thought of it and he said he hadn't liked it either; far too sentimental. I then asked why they made such a song and dance about my sister reading it and it was pure snobbery about her reading Tolstoy at 17.

[hfnuala]

I let into my secret for the way to read AK and like it - skip all the Kitty and Levin chapters. Then it's a wonderful observation of a woman trapped by the society that excludes her but not her lover for the sin they shared and how it eventially drives her mad. But the rest is crap - I don't care how Tolstoy thinks a perfect marriage should be because he was obviously a loon.

I agree about not trying to plow through the classic as a teeenager. I just didn't understand enough about life to get much out of anything that wasn't a straight romance back then.

[kulfuldi]

Even without Kitty and Levin, I still found AK very irritating. I could never understand why they didn't just stay living in Italy. Maybe I was too young when I read it.

[hfnuala]

I thought they left Italy because Vronsky wanted to see more people? Because of course, he was still acceptable in society, it was just Anna who was excluded.

[alltheleaves]

I first read Jane Austen when I was about 21 or 22 and I'm really glad I waited. There's no way I would have enjoyed it so much; every time I re-read it I get more out of it. I'm currently addicted to Gaskell but again she's someone who I think would have been hard to read at a younger age.

[leedy]

the creepy brother incest

Oh ick, yes. What was it about 70s/80s trashy blockbusters and incest? Flowers In The Attic had it as well, didn't it? I read that on a school trip, and even though I knew it was awful, I was compelled to read on until the end, and even borrowed more of Virginia Andrews' ghastly melodramas from my classmate. I particularly remember the one with the girl who grew up in a shack and whose drunkard father sells all her siblings for booze.

Actually, isn't Virginia Andrews still writing from BEYOND THE GRAVE?

[hfnuala]

Angel is the one with the sold siblings, I think.

There's also My Sweet Audrina, which featured a girl who had been raped when she was 10 so her parents brain washed her into believed it had happened to her sister who had died and there was a mad half-sister and when they all grew up she married the sweet guy next door who had witnessed the rape and then had an accident and was paralysed so the half-sister seduced the husband and tried to kill her but it all came out OK at the end. Why did I read this tripe? And why can I remember all the plot details?

That would be Virgina Andrews(TM). And yes, there is more.

[surliminal]

Yep she Goes On. Flowers From the Attic was unputdownable. Shame they never filmed it. Or did they? the rst were awful (ys I read one or two..)

[hfnuala]

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0093036/

Apparently they took the incest out though.

[surliminal]

WHAT! But the incest is ALL THERE IS!

[biascut]

I read V.C.Andrews when I was about nine, because I was staying in an Older Girl's room and found it on the bookshelves. I remember concealing it from my parents, reading it right through to the end, and then putting it down carefully and maturely deciding that I was too young to read books like that because it had really disturbed me. By the time I considered myself old enough not to be freaked out (about twelve), I was too old to be interested in them

[kulfuldi]

CLEAR PLASTIC JEANS OVER BIKINI BOTTOMS! (Sorry, I can't manage italics.) Why isn't this story better known? And the plot lines you quote sound just like early 80s Mandy and Judy. Perhaps they're a little advanced for Bunty. Incidentally, does Bunty still exist, or do all children read Junior Now, or whatever? I LOVED Bunty, but had to read it in friends' houses, because my mother banned it for being too trashy, along with the entire oeuvre of Enid Blyton.

The Ultimate

[surliminal]

But did you read LACE!

Re: The Ultimate

[hfnuala]

I read Lace 2 when I found it in a holiday cottage where I was trapped with my parents for 2 weeks when I was about 16. I read Lace several years later and had actually had sex and didn't find it as compelling :)

They are very silly.