Guilty Pleasure? Hmmm... That's a good one, Rich! I don't know that I have guilty pleasures any more. When I was younger I used to read Eric Jerome Dickey quite a bit. I liked them at first because the main characters were often accomplished young black people which wasn't a figure I came across often in my literature often at the time. But then they were always getting into some kind of foolishness or had some weird personality quirk that made them a horrible person. Also the plot inevitably shifted toward somebody hooking up... I got tired of that after a while. Same plot over and over. It gets boring. But at the time I felt like they were trashy novels and people looked down on me for reading them, haha.
I do also remember in middle school feeling self conscious about reading science fiction novels. Didn't seem to be a popular genre from what I could tell. I think the problem was mostly failed attempts to summarize the plot in such books and losing people in the process. I'll use my favorite book (which I've mentioned a hundred times) as an example.
Innocent Inquirer: "Oh what's that you're reading, Aseloka?"
Me: "It's called the Snow Queen"
Innocent Inquirer: "Oh really? What's it about?"
Me: "It's about a planet of two peoples: the Summers and the Winters and their Queen. Winter is coming to an end at which point they normally kill the Snow Queen and the Summers take over. But the Snow Queen wants to remain queen forever and wants winter to remain as well so she clones herself amongst the Summers thinking that her daughter will be a Winter and become queen and prevent Winter from ending. The book follows her daughter/clone through her adult life and how she unknowingly becomes the Summer Queen, marries her cousin (who is also in love with the Snow queen), and manages to end Winter's reign over the planet."
Innocent Inquirer: "Ummm... I didn't wanna know all that but whatever..."
Over the years my tastes have changed a bit when it comes to books, but not much. As I've gotten older I just sort of stopped feeling guilty about the types of books I read or the authors. I read because I enjoy the content. No use feeling guilty about it. I love a sappy love story, an action packed sci-fi novel, an uplifting self-help book, an enthralling young adult novel... you name it. I have no boundries!
