I came across this list of reading "guilty pleasures" as recommended by a number of well known authors, intended to give you some summer holiday reading. I haven't heard of all of the "famous" authors, but that's my ignorance no doubt, and probably some are American, as the list is in Time magazine.
It has some good ideas, though, and I can save you ploughing through 16 pages on the very clunky Time website with the list below. Mind you, if you do have the time to wade through it, click here.
Or you can be more selective and read just some of the excellent justifications of their choices produced by the writers, by clicking on the titles in the list. I was especially pleased to see Alexander McCall Smith's recommendation of Dick Francis.
| Jane Smiley | Justine by Marquis de Sade |
| Tina Brown | The Manny by Holly Peterson |
| Alexander McCall Smith | Anything by Dick Francis |
| Joyce Carol Oates | Mad Magazine |
| Anne Lamott | Falling Man by Don DeLillo |
| Margaret Drabble | 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne |
| Nathan Englander | Literary Murder by Batya Gur |
| Martha Southgate | Carrie by Stephen King |
| Janet Evanovich | Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic books |
| Susanna Moore | Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor |
| Pete Hamill | Bomba the Jungle Boy at the Giant Cataract by Roy Rockwood |
| Ann Packer | Love and Work by Gwyneth Cravens |
| Karen Russell | The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham |
| Doug Stumpf | The Best of Russian Cooking by Princess Alexandra Kropotkin |
| David Baldacci | Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde |
| Tom Hayden | Boomsday by Christopher Buckley |