Why So Guilty?
Have you ever used the term guilty pleasure when describing a book? I used to. A lot. And it was always the same types of books. The romances, rom-coms, celebrity novels, chick lit, funny books about life. But the thing is, I read for pleasure, I read for me, so why should it ever make me feel guilty? And WHO is making me feel guilty?
I noticed that it tends to be Women's Fiction that falls under this Guilty Pleasure umbrella. Books written by women. Books written for women. And increasingly, books written for teenage girls. Shall we just roll our eyes now? Everywhere I looked, I'd see them devalued, looked down on, scoffed at. Mills & Boon sell hundreds of millions of books every year, yet you rarely see people taking pride in reading them.
I think my Guilty Pleasure books are actually Books I Loved But Feel Other People Will Judge Me Negatively For. And once I stopped caring what people thought, I felt free to read what I wanted without guilt, and that was a huge weight off of my chest. And I started to share my love of so called Guilty Pleasure books.
If a book brings you joy, embrace it. Love it. Read it. Don't care about what other people think.
Five Books That Brought Me Joy (And I Used To Feel Guilty About It)
- Famous In Love by Rebecca Serle
- All That Glitters by Vicky Pattison
- Wolf Bride by Elizabeth Moss
- Sex, Lies and Cruising by Cathryn Chapman
- Marie Antionette, Serial Killer by Katie Alender
What Inspired This Post
- What's A Girl Gotta Do by Holly Bourne
- Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
- Things A Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls
- The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck by Sarah Knight
- This amazing article: https://www.
theguardian.com/books/2008/ jan/27/fiction.features1
Thank you so much for this fabulous guest post Cora. Let me know the books you used to feel guilty about reading in the comments below!
Love this Cora! I've always said I don't really believe in guilty pleasures because you shouldn't feel guilty about the things you love, so I'm glad you have decided to embrace the things that bring you joy!
ReplyDeleteLoved this post Cora! When I first graduated from uni, I called YA my guilty pleasure because other people would judge me for reading "kid books" and expected a literature graduate to have more classic tastes. Now I read whatever takes my fancy and I don't care what others think.
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