More teenage bookcase embarrassments

[mmcirvin]

Crooked Timber has a thread up on the ever-popular subject of books you're embarrassed to have loved, as discussed here over a year ago.

What's striking is that the same names keep coming up over and over: Erich von Däniken, Richard Bach, Ayn Rand, Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein (though several people point out that the shame with Heinlein is not to enjoy his work but to take him as your personal guru). And Jake even mentioned Colin Wilson in a very different context.

Somebody quoted Ursula Le Guin as saying that kids might like junk but no kid is dumb enough to like Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Wrong.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Ever watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

No, seriously. The Mayor, who remains one of my most favorite villains ever, is unabashedly evil. Best bad guy that series ever had, because he was human (well, at first).

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

I mean a real person.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Ah, I misunderstood. A good point, that. Although the really good (in the sense of being good stories, anyway) good-vs-evil stories that I've read don't rely on the source of evil being human, but rather some natural or supernatural force.

Whether one in turn buys that depends on one's proclivities (sort of like what my dad, who trained as a physicist, said about the Age of Unreason series: "As long as you buy the central conceit, it's great").