The Joy of Reading "Bad" Books

Last Tuesday, I felt quite good about myself as I walked to the front desk of the public library. I plopped my fat tome on the check-out counter and waited as an older librarian wandered up to the counter, flashing me his quiet librarian smile. I pushed the hefty copy of David Copperfield closer to him and laid my card on top of it. That's right, I was committing myself to hours and hours of Dickens, and I was proud of it, proud of myself for being such A Serious Reader.

As he scanned my card, the computer beeped. "Oh, did you get your hold?" he asked.

"No, I didn't think it was in yet!" My pulse raced with excitement. Was it true? Was it finally here? The book I had been waiting weeks for?

"Well, if it's not on the hold shelf, it must be in the back. I'll go get it for you," he said. "Just let me check the name . . ." He squinted at the screen for a moment. "Circus of the Damned," he said slowly, his voice faltering into surprised disapproval as he looked from the screen to me. I could imagine what he was thinking: But I thought you were one of us! You brought me Dickens, but now you want, what?, some book about devil-clowns?

"Well, I guess I'll get to read my cheesy novel before I get to read my good one!" I giggled lamely as the librarian turned away from the counter and headed back to the returns bins. He returned with a small, pulpy hardcover whose cover showed a woman's hip with a cobra gliding along her curves.

Yikes, I thought, smiling politely as I took my receipt, stuffed my books into my backpack, and snuck away toward the exit.

Obviously, I read "trashy" novels as often as a read "good" ones. I've read all the Harry Potters, all the Twilights, and enough Goosebumps and Christopher Pike books and Sookie Stackhouses to build a small fort with (you know, something to hide in when I got scared of all the ghosts and vampires).

I've gotten a lot of flak for reading cheesy horror/fantasy books, and I've offered a lot of excuses about why I read them:

1. They take me back to my childhood, when I read every neon-covered horror novel in my library's Young Adults section. It's nostalgia that brings me back!
2. Horror novels satisfy my morbid imagination--"Alas! Poor Yorick" and all that.
   
3. They teach me the essentials of plot and tension, so reading paperback fantasy novels has, ultimately, made me a better writer.
4. I just got out of grad school, gosh darnit, and I don't have to spend every day of my life reading Christopher Marlowe and Bleak House! Not anymore!
5. I'm being ironical . . . ?
   

None of these excuses really hold up. The fact of the matter is that I love cheesy horror/fantasy novels and I probably always will. I like reading about worlds that include vampires and wizards and zombies, and I like becoming absorbed in wildly imaginative storylines where, outside of the bounds of realism, literally anything can happen. These books offer exciting plots and great storytelling. Their prose is quick and clean and easy: the words get the job done and then get out of the plot's way.

These books represent a style of writing that is, I think, very underrated. "Light fiction" like this inspires what is called ludic reading. Psychologist Victor Nell defines ludic reading as reading that is done purely for pleasure; it is effortless and completely absorbing and almost trance-like. It's what happens when a great storyteller grabs hold of a reader completely, immersing her in the plot and making her desperate to find out "what happens next."

This type of reading is what English teachers across the nation hope to inspire in their students, and yet the fiction associated with ludic reading is often considered low-brow. I think it's unfair to writers like Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton. Harris and Hamilton may not have the cache of Literary Fiction writers, but they are experts at crafting galloping, imaginative plot-lines and lively characters.

Being a great storyteller is a unique gift that not all writers have. I've been in enough writing workshops to know that being a good writer and being a good storyteller are not necessarily the same thing. There are plenty of brilliant wordsmiths in the world who can make you weep at the beauty of their sentences and tremble at the tastefulness of their semicolon use. But these are often the same people who can't cobble together a life-like character or a rising plot line to save their lives.

And that's fine. Different styles of books exist for different readers, different moods, and different needs. This week, I needed the enthralling, gruesome, morbidly funny world of Hamilton's Anita Blake series. I read the first 270 pages of Circus of the Damned in one night and barely noticed; if I hadn't looked at my phone and seen it was after 1:00 a.m., I probably would have finished the whole thing!

This week, I've been grateful for cheesy novels, even though my librarian gave me the stink eye. I needed to be swept up in Hamilton's vampire-filled alternate universe. I needed to read my nights away, enthralled and entertained, before slinking off to bed, happy and a little creeped out by the thought of a zombie sneaking through my bedroom window.