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Trashy red-haired heroines!
Oct. 30th, 2009 05:43 pmFor a while there I wasn't really feeling up to reading much meaty. I was in fact craving trashy-but-not-completely-badly-written novels. My usual go-to for that is to reread Judith Krantz's Mistral's Daughter, which has oodles of trashy romance, not to mention three generations of gorgeous professional-model red-haired Mary Sues. It's not even horribly badly written (for example, I can no longer physically read the Sidney Sheldon I scarfed down as a kid, it's that bad), though note I am not particularly recommending it to anyone here. So, I finished that and was still casting around for something. I decided to reread that trashy-but-usually-not-unacceptably-badly-written long-novel with gorgeous model-quality heroine and hyper-masculine red-haired Gary Sue. Yes, The Fountainhead. I love that book! It is so deliciously trashy, what with the frigid heroine melting when Her Man shows up, the total bonding of Peter Keating (whom, by the way, I totally love) to his alpha male, the wife swapping, the total manly-man Roark-Wynand friendship and love triangle. (Note also that I intensely despise most of Atlas Shrugged, which tries to be bombastic rather than deliciously trashy, thus losing all the charm of Fountainhead. And is depressing to boot.) Yes, I know Ayn Rand is turning in her grave at being compared to Judith Krantz... bonus!
This all led to a conversation with D in which a reorganization of our bookshelves was proposed. They are currently organized in a Byzantine system involving a) how much we like the book (horizontal depth and partial vertical placement), b) category of book (room and vertical placement), c) height of book (inter-shelf placement), and d) author last name (intra-shelf placement). The new proposed system: a) hair color, and possibly b) eye color.
Besides Mistral's Daughter and Fountainhead, on the red-haired shelf would go Bujold's Cordelia books, Hero and the Crown, Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset (the only reason I own this one is because of the heroine's marked resemblance to my awesome high school junior-year roommate)... Cordwainer Smith's stories about C'mell... probably more I can't think of off-hand. I'm a little shocked, actually, at how much red hair there is around, given how few people I know in real life with red hair, though I suppose I shouldn't be.
(Also, I recently picked up one of the Alanna (Tamora Pierce) books from the library because I was feeling nostalgic, and was horrified to find that Alanna has red hair and purple eyes AND a sentient cat. Who also has purple eyes. (D thought this was hilarious, mind you.)
Does anyone else have trashy but still compulsively readable fic they would be willing to recommend? For reference, besides Krantz, I like in this category Maeve Binchy and Agatha Christie (well, I don't think of her as trashy, but she is not exactly literary).
This all led to a conversation with D in which a reorganization of our bookshelves was proposed. They are currently organized in a Byzantine system involving a) how much we like the book (horizontal depth and partial vertical placement), b) category of book (room and vertical placement), c) height of book (inter-shelf placement), and d) author last name (intra-shelf placement). The new proposed system: a) hair color, and possibly b) eye color.
Besides Mistral's Daughter and Fountainhead, on the red-haired shelf would go Bujold's Cordelia books, Hero and the Crown, Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset (the only reason I own this one is because of the heroine's marked resemblance to my awesome high school junior-year roommate)... Cordwainer Smith's stories about C'mell... probably more I can't think of off-hand. I'm a little shocked, actually, at how much red hair there is around, given how few people I know in real life with red hair, though I suppose I shouldn't be.
(Also, I recently picked up one of the Alanna (Tamora Pierce) books from the library because I was feeling nostalgic, and was horrified to find that Alanna has red hair and purple eyes AND a sentient cat. Who also has purple eyes. (D thought this was hilarious, mind you.)
Does anyone else have trashy but still compulsively readable fic they would be willing to recommend? For reference, besides Krantz, I like in this category Maeve Binchy and Agatha Christie (well, I don't think of her as trashy, but she is not exactly literary).
