first things first: the story of the novel is already entangled with the notion of “garbage”. Examine the great realist novels of the nineteenth century, particularly Jane Austen’s, shall we say, and you’ll find characters insulting each other’s reading habits. but there are many reasons to read besides intellectual elevation. relaxation is one; keeping up with what everyone else is reading is another. Here are 40 of the best junk books written in the last hundred years that, if you’re not looking for perfect prose, are sure to ease muscle tension over a weekend or vacation. These books aren’t perfect, but each one has some kind of hook, whether it’s unexpectedly good construction, entertainingly inventive salaciousness, or historical importance in its own right. enjoy!
peyton place by grace metalious
You are reading: Trashy books to read
Grace Metalious’s 1956 classic about love, sex and domestic violence in a small New England village was so scandalous it was banned on Rhode Island. best scene:
zoya de daniellesteel
Arguably the only really interesting steel novel, it follows a minor member of the Romanov family into exile in America. She is a poor dancer in France for a while, then she marries a soldier who dies. she then marries a rich man, then watches the fortune crumble with the great depression. Along the way, one of her children becomes super spoiled. rinse, repeat, forget about after altogether, but finally you will have read one of her novels like probably half the American population and it will have been a relatively painless experiment.
my sweet audrina by v.c. Andrew
Many of the people I asked for their input on this list said, “oh, flowers in the attic, of course,” but this pick marked them out as newcomers to the v.c. andres the v.c. stranger and trashiest andrews is not flowers, not even the last books in the series, which are much stranger than the first, but my sweet audrina, in which a seven year old girl with a serious fog problem is raised brain to replace a dead older sister. . In the forest lives a beautiful boy with his amputated mother who knows the true story of the death of the first audrina. representative quote: “what is normal? normal is just ordinary; mediocre. life belongs to the rare and exceptional individual who dares to be different.”
shirley conran lace
i recommend this thanks to my good friend and trash expert sarah hughes. Conran’s last name comes from her brief marriage to Terrence Conran, of British box and barrel forerunner The Conran Shop. Like good old sex in the city, the book features four friends who have risen to the top of their clichéd big-city professions: fashion, public relations, interior decorator, and, you know, war reporting. and then traces the disintegration of his love and sexual life. Plus, they’re all British. the forerunner of bridget jones, except apparently she’s a bit braver.
judith krantz scruples
scruples is set in Los Angeles and the title refers to the name of the proto-kitson boutique that saves his life. the protagonist’s name is wilhelmina hunnewell winthrop. do you really need more?
the plains of passage by jean auel
a lot of people would say start with the clan of the cave bear, but jean auel’s (that’s stephen king’s term) “cave people sex epics” are so repetitive you probably don’t need the context of the previous books to understand this, the fourth. which, by the way, is full of long descriptions of pleasures, considerations on the importance of pleasures, and sequences like this:
in fact.
best of all by rona jaffe
The author took a journalistic approach to writing this epic of young women climbing the editorial ladder, interviewing more than 50 women. but the result is not just dry sociology; Best of all, I’d say, it’s in the “well-written rubbish” class, though perhaps my opinion is biased here by the fact that the Rona Jaffe estate now sponsors a fine women’s literary award. she enjoyed a brief resurgence when the mad man craze was at its height.
harold robbins rug looters
finally, trash written by a man! About the heir to an aeronautical fortune, whose eccentricities bear a strong resemblance to those of Howard Hughes. according to the review of the time, “it was not entirely correct to have printed the carpetbaggers between the covers of a book. It should have been inscribed on the walls of a public toilet.” but it became a bestseller and a movie anyway.
valley of the dolls by jacqueline susann
Susann based her 1960s pulp classic on her own experiences as an aspiring actress, which was apparently a pill-popping romp and starring in porn movies in Hollywood and New York. At first, Neely O’Hara, the eventual star, is a homebody: “I have a library copy of Gone with the Wind, a quart of milk, and all these cookies. Wow! What a blast! But at end of the book is a monster diva.
the thorny birds of colleen mccullough
It occurs to me that this epic of priestly lust set in the Australian countryside was more scandalous and less repulsive before the recent wave of church pedophilia scandals. however, the melodrama of maggie carey is still impressive:
the lord won’t care by gordon merrick
merrick was a handsome ex-actor when he wrote this book, which was a bestseller when it was published but is now out of print. tells the love story of peter and charlie, whose romance begins in college. But Charlie is always reluctant to commit. Although it’s love at first sight:
the other side of midnight by sidney sheldon
sheldon’s book can perhaps best be judged by the quality of the prose on wikipedia that describes it: “in the united states, catherine alexander was born to a father who had big dreams but was never able to achieve them. Because her mother died at a young age, she never had a mother figure to help her with female problems, and she grew up unaware of her beauty and sexuality. Sheldon’s story of female betrayal involves a retaliatory abortion and many caves. also spawned a sequel: Midnight Memories.
jilly cooper riders
sex and british horse people. Doesn’t he sell you just the cover?
See Also: Zane Grey – Book Series In Order
anais nin venus delta
according to the author herself:
irving wallace’s second lady
The premise of this alone sells it: the Russians, through extensive plastic surgery, created a replica of the first lady. but once installed, her doppelganger discovers that mimicking isn’t as easy as it seems.
georgette heyer’s black moth
today, heyer is largely forgotten (ed: in the us! but we hear you, georgette heyer fans), but she was a big deal in her own time, primarily as an author of historical romances . the black moth tale about a highwayman was inspired by a sick brother.
lady chatterly’s lover by d.h. lorenzo
the forbidden book that was possibly one of the first to mix “garbage” with “literature”. read it now, it’s a bit tame for modern tastes.
anne rice’s witching hour
anne rice’s vampire novels may be better known, but her epic about a family of witches in new orleans is arguably a little better, if only because witches must live in the modern world and therefore They have a preference, like here, for dating handsome firefighters.
jackie collins hollywood wives
jackie collins made her career on this book, which is rumored to be just a loosely fictionalized account by various people in hollywood.
erica kennedy beauty
all about the underbelly of the hip-hop world and a delightful book I read in less than a day in a park recently.
he loves music, he loves dancing by mary higgins clark
in the era of the craigslist killer, this book’s alarmism about the dangers of personal ads is almost quaint. But it’s probably the most elegantly constructed of the Clark Higgins mysteries.
the blind fury of john saul is coming
Horror nerds have always found plenty to read at the lower ends of the book trade, and one of my favorites growing up was this book by John Saul. it’s a typical haunted house/possession story. I may have liked it so much because the girl in the center was named Michelle.
strangers by dean koontz
again, for horror/thriller nerds, strangers is the book that made koontz’s reputation. a group of strangers (heh) come together over illnesses that turn out to be related to alien forces.
the silence of the lambs thomas harris
I mean, you know what it’s all about. David Foster Wallace showed it to his students. what bigger excuse do you need?
Ira Levin’s Stepford Wives
At this point, the term “stepford wife” is so ingrained in popular culture that it hardly seems transgressive to mock the empty heads of devoted housewives, but when it appeared, the book of wrath levin was taken as a strong satire of gender politics. . the book actually holds up surprisingly well; here is joanna, the heroine, dealing with a doctor who is exposing her theory to:
the bad seed of william march
Now that it’s associated with a cheesy movie, people forget that when The Bad Seed came out in 1954, the critics loved it and it was nominated for a national book award. according to the new york times, it is an “absolutely first-rate novel about moral embarrassments and responsibilities closest to the heart of our decade.”
a season in dominick dunne’s purgatory
See Also: Tamora Pierce – Book Series In Order
This is Dunne’s novel about the murder of Martha Moxley, which she also wrote extensively about for Vanity Fair.
the mists of avalon by marion zimmer bradley
Putting the Arthurian legends on its head, Bradley’s retelling through the experiences of the women behind them is a perennial bestseller and a very good read.
naked came the stranger from “penelope ashe”
this book is actually a kind of hoax. Written by a group of journalists frustrated with the success of the pulpy bestseller, the book has only the loosest of plots and is packed with sex scenes of every kind imaginable. naturally, it sold as well as the tricksters thought it would.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
I suspect it might be impossible to live in America without coming across this book, but for my money I prefer it to the movie, despite the lack of “frankly, dear”. completely racist, too, of course.
outlander by diana gabaldon
Scottish big, strong and stocky. time travel. sexual frustration. endless fun.
the stephen king stand
the king novel that seems to be enjoying the biggest resurgence of interest lately is actually my other favorite. but I think the motley crew of people outside of booth community building is about to be reborn. they messed up the miniseries, but i’m asking hbo to take care of it.
James Clavell Shogun
In my opinion, the direct equivalent to bodice rippers are the historical sagas of great giant men like shogun, which essentially express the myths of male virility through their conquest and control of other people. That is why I include the giant carnation here. also because of the unintentional comedy factor in lines like this:
God’s Little Land by Erskine Caldwell
When it appeared in 1933, Caldwell was arrested by the New York Society for the suppression of vice. he had written what he believed to be a novel in which he criticized the anti-union movement in the South; they only saw the numerous sex scenes. of course, it became an instant bestseller.
ask alice for “anonymous”
go ask alice about my high school as samizdat. it’s about a young woman’s descent into a life of drugs, and as she spoke to me and my classmates in the early 1990s, I think she’s still holding her own. and the life of beatrice sparks, who wrote it, could be her own novel.
wife of judy blume
blume’s only truly “grown-up” book is as fabulous as that description sounds.
pillars of the earth by ken follett
It’s crazy that, in a sense, these books are sagas of power struggles over architecture. but they are that rare game of thrones: a complicated byzantine saga that is actually relaxing to read.
queenie by michael korda
Korda (who happened to be the publisher of Harold Robbins, Small World) wrote this novel about his aunt, actress Merle Oberon, who was half Indian, and her attempts to pass as white. It’s… really fabulous. and as far as I know, discontinued. save us, light up!
land of beulah by lonnie coleman
lonnie coleman’s beulah land is some kind of swindle that was obviously going to be a bestseller that doubleday paid $800,000 for the rights to the paperback, in 1978 dollars. that would be something on the $3 million range today. But the kind of quiet prose in which it’s written is unusual for a bestseller, probably because Coleman was a respected literary novelist before writing this behemoth.
hawaii by james a. michener
and we end with another epic of great men. even if his characters are always flat and the world historical conceit of something like hawaii is heavy michener gets a rona-jaffe pass from me for founding a writers center at the university of texas austin which is funding some of today’s best writers. . and he writes pretty clean himself.
See Also: 25 Marketing Books You Should Be Reading