[QuickTidal]

Dunno if we've ever had a thread like this, but I was prompted by my buddy (who is mostly a Sci-Fi reader) saying he unabashedly enjoys the Jack Reacher books.

Mine are the Clive Cussler books, and probably James Rollins too. Just trashy, soapy dude-ish beach reads about adventure, treasure, and Bond-like leads.

What are your guilty pleasure reads. Stuff you'd not want to admit to your English Lit teacher, but are like popcorn fun for you?

[HoosierDaddy]

I feel no guilt in reading anything and you can't make me!

Seriously though, I don't feel bad about reading "bad books." Better than never reading anything at all, right?

[QuickTidal]

That's a totally fair point.

[Tiste Simeon]

Man I used to love Clive Cussler (the Dirk Pitt ones) QT, I think I had all of them that were out at the time.

[worry]

Billy Boner's Sexventures in Bootyworld. I don't know why, but something about portal fantasy just kinda makes me feel embarrassed. But when it's this well-written....::shrug::

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 20 September 2023 - 03:01 PM, said:

Man I used to love Clive Cussler (the Dirk Pitt ones) QT, I think I had all of them that were out at the time.

I've only read about 5 so far, but they really are just fun romps for a beach read...and super easy to find at used book stores too!

[QuickTidal]

worry, on 20 September 2023 - 04:26 PM, said:

Billy Boner's Sexventures in Bootyworld. I don't know why, but something about portal fantasy just kinda makes me feel embarrassed. But when it's this well-written....::shrug::

I think you're mistaken, it was called COOL WORLD and starred Brad Pitt and Kim Basinger.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 20 September 2023 - 04:52 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 20 September 2023 - 03:01 PM, said:

Man I used to love Clive Cussler (the Dirk Pitt ones) QT, I think I had all of them that were out at the time.

I've only read about 5 so far, but they really are just fun romps for a beach read...and super easy to find at used book stores too!

The first 10 or so are glorious. Seriously, mad fun adventure with a dose of history and science. I have reread most of them at least once.
DRAGON is where the wheels exploded off for me. It seemed Cussler was just rehashing old ideas with new names and places. Some of the franchise books they stuck his name on were ok, most were not.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 20 September 2023 - 12:19 PM, said:

...What are your guilty pleasure reads. Stuff you'd not want to admit to your English Lit teacher, but are like popcorn fun for you?

Mine seem to fall into two categories... monster books, especially sharks, and zombie apocalypses.
I am a complete a total sucker for a by the numbers JAWS hack. Give me a great big shark eating people and messing things up... i'm there, and will overlook some seriously mediocre writing for it. Other monsters are good too, but giant sharks are the fave.
And give me a ten book series about brave group trying to survive in the face of hopeless odds and progressively weirder beasties, dead or otherwise... i do need slightly better writing tho. Silly as the stories may be, the HELLDIVERS and THE TIDE authors can write the hell out of an action scene and at least move along a conversation without irritating me.

[worry]

And you do those by audiobook? Like in the car? I'd be too scared to look over and see a Meg in the lane next to me.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

worry, on 20 September 2023 - 06:30 PM, said:

And you do those by audiobook? Like in the car? I'd be too scared to look over and see a Meg in the lane next to me.

Much better to do it right before bed, as I do... close your eyes and let the great maw take you into darkness as you dive....

[D'rek]

[Tiste Simeon]

What a mighty broadsword that man has. 😳

[Tsundoku]

Tiste Simeon, on 21 September 2023 - 11:24 AM, said:

What a mighty claymore that man has. 😳

FTFY

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Tsundoku, on 21 September 2023 - 12:10 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 21 September 2023 - 11:24 AM, said:

What a mighty claymore that man has. ��

FTFY

In Scottish it's claidheamh ('sword') + mòr ('big').

Like peanas mòr....

Quote

From Old Irish mór. Cognates include Irish mór and Manx mooar.

An irregular change of már (possibly influenced by the comparative/superlative forms with ó) from Proto-Celtic *māros (compare Welsh mawr), from Proto-Indo-European *moh₁ros.
Compare Old High German māri ("famous, great") and perhaps the element -μωρος (-mōros) in Ancient Greek ἐγχεσίμωρος (enkhesímōros, "mighty with the spear")
mòr - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Whereas the English word more is apparently:

Quote

from Old English māra ("more"), from Proto-Germanic *maizô ("more"), from Proto-Indo-European *mē- ("many").
Cognate with Scots mair ("more")
more - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 21 September 2023 - 01:25 PM

[Abyss]

Azath Vitr (D, on 20 September 2023 - 06:47 PM, said:

worry, on 20 September 2023 - 06:30 PM, said:

And you do those by audiobook? Like in the car? I'd be too scared to look over and see a Meg in the lane next to me.

Much better to do it right before bed, as I do... close your eyes and let the great maw take you into darkness as you dive....

I don't seem to have book inspired nightmares.


Still have to do a reality check before scuba diving tho.
Or at the beach.
Or in the bathtub.

Azath Vitr (D, on 21 September 2023 - 01:25 PM, said:

Tsundoku, on 21 September 2023 - 12:10 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 21 September 2023 - 11:24 AM, said:

What a mighty claymore that man has. ��

FTFY

In Scottish it's claidheamh ('sword') + mòr ('big').

Like peanas mòr....

Quote

From Old Irish mór. Cognates include Irish mór and Manx mooar.

An irregular change of már (possibly influenced by the comparative/superlative forms with ó) from Proto-Celtic *māros (compare Welsh mawr), from Proto-Indo-European *moh₁ros.
Compare Old High German māri ("famous, great") and perhaps the element -μωρος (-mōros) in Ancient Greek ἐγχεσίμωρος (enkhesímōros, "mighty with the spear")
mòr - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Whereas the English word more is apparently:

Quote

from Old English māra ("more"), from Proto-Germanic *maizô ("more"), from Proto-Indo-European *mē- ("many").
Cognate with Scots mair ("more")
more - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

This is an awfully complicated way to say the man had a giant penis.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Claidheamh mòr et la petite mort being almost as ravishingly beautiful as limit supremum = infimum supremum (a twisting spiral, dynamic symmetry of extremes)....

Could argue that anything other than math and science is 'popcorn'---but like bubble universes foaming on....

Relative to my 'old literary standards' almost all fantasy would be 'popcorn'---with Erikson being one of very few exceptions (who I think I could adequately defend with a few choice quotations). A Song of Ice and Fire is 99.9% popcorn. Hobb is borderline (better than Dickens or (Jane) Austen though...).

OTOH last I checked at the upper level literary snobbery is passe and works are studied for their cultural significance, with students being forced to read plenty of cheesy popular stuff from the past to analyze it in terms of postcolonial / Marxian / 'psychonalytic' or broadly 'continental' theory---which is the only 'true' Literature. Though there's been a bit of a shift towards 'distant reading' and data science based methods....

I've been dreaming about Fool's Errand intermittently; not particularly negative dreams though, as far as I can remember them.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 21 September 2023 - 02:20 PM

[Abyss]

Azath Vitr (D, on 21 September 2023 - 02:18 PM, said:

Claidheamh mòr et la petite mort being almost as ravishingly beautiful as limit supremum = infimum supremum (a twisting spiral, dynamic symmetry of extremes)....

...

Got it. Giant pretty spiral penis.

[pat5150]

Personally, I don't really have any guilty pleasures. I own up to everything I enjoy reading, even if it's the occasional Dan Brown!

[Tiste Simeon]

pat5150, on 23 September 2023 - 03:04 AM, said:

Personally, I don't really have any guilty pleasures. I own up to everything I enjoy reading, even if it's the occasional Dan Brown!

Agreed - on my honeymoon I read "The Undomesticated Goddess" by the author who did the Confessions of a Shopaholic series. There were tons of books in the cottage we rented and this was one of them.

I unequivocally, unironically loved it. It would make a great romcom movie if they ever did that.