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]

I can't believe only one person mentioned Marion Zimmer Bradley. While I still think that The Mists of Avalon is a good book, it's not quite as good as I thought it was when I was 16, and most of her other stuff is (by her own admission) strictly potboiler material.

(Btw, hi. I got here from jwgh's journal.)