Mumsnet Talk

I consider myself pretty well-read, I was always surrounded by books; parents had a bookshop, I worked in publishing etcbut I have never got around to reading any Doris Lessing.

I told a good friend this the other day and she was really . The upside is that she has bought me the Golden Notebook to take on holiday.

Guilty pleasure is Simon Raven. Written in the 60s and 70s; misogynistic, cynical, vile, very rude and politically incorrect; but very funny and wonderfully written. I love them.

Love your name Jaffvader and the Eddie Izzard sketch it comes from.

I've also never read any Doris Lessing, but also never read 1984 which was in the top 25 books voted via the BBC a few years ago.

Guilty pleasures I love things like Gone with the Wind, Valley of the Dolls and The Thorn Birds.

Never read any Margaret Atwood, and judging by the MN recommendations I think this could be an embarrassing omission?

Guilty pleasure is not fiction but Stephen Clarke's 'Year in the merde' series, which make me psml...I think maybe you have to be a bit of a francophile to appreciate them tho

Have just added Doris Lessing to my 'to read' list btw!

Never read loaaaaaads of classics (have got endless lists). E.g. never read Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens . OK won't go on because I'm getting embarrased now!!

But I am going to get round to them!!

Guilty pleasures: I went through an Erica Jong phase ages ago (cringe; although 'Fear of flying' was lots of fun...but everything else merely a repetition of that). I do have a chick lit guilty pleasure thing (e.g. I love Marian Keyes) but that's getting less with time. Last guilty pleasure: I love reading good cookbooks in bed

I've never read any Dickens - yet love the TV adaptations. Guilty pleasures - any of those big thick "girly" books - Barbara Taylor Bradford, Jilly Cooper, Penny Vicenzi etc. I save these for sunbed reading on my holidays. Entertaining story, sex but nothing too graphic, nothing to have to "think" too much about...I've even been known to do Jeffrey Archer when on hols !

PS - a little thought....I went to a 2nd hand book sale at the weekend to stock up for this years hols - Maeve Binchy/Joanna Trollope fest this year....I was on the look out for classics - Margaret Atwood, Dickens, Evelyn Waugh amongst others.

Absolutely none at all - though a tonne of fantasy science fiction novels....I wondered if it was a) that nobody reads this stuff, or b) if they buy it, they keep it and send all the BTB/Jilly Cooper off to the book sale?

<<please don't get your hopes up for the golden notebook....my bookgroup did it....NOBODY liked it, and I - who reads most things- could not finish it. Maybe it will appeal to you more!>>

Embarrassing omissions: Wuthering Heights. All of Dickens except Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. Paradise Lost. Ummm. And Doris Lessing.

Guilty pleasure: Lee Child novels. I excuse this by reminding myself that at least I never read chick lit.

I actually liked the golden notebook a lot...

Oooh, another guilty pleasure: the shopaholic books!

I have a big old list of classics that I'm ploughing my way through at the moment - it includes things like Anna Karenina which I've never managed to finish.

Guilty pleasures - Jilly Cooper, definitely, and anything by Janet Evanovich or Laurell K. Hamilton. I do also enjoy some fantasy & sci-fi, like David Eddings. I try not to read it too obviously in public though

Embarassing Omissions- well, not sure if they count, because I have read them and loathed them. All the bonnet-ridden poverty stricken, old toothless ladies in shawls eating coal and going up chimneys to keep their children fed sort of thing......Dickensy type stuff. (Have come to embarassing conclusion that for me, a novel needs at least a telephone in it....the olden day stuff is just so dreary.)

Loathed Margaret Atwood as well.

Guilty Pleasures: Marian Keyes, Lisa Jewell, Emily Barr. (I like reading about Marks and Spencers ready meals)

I have never read anything by Iris Murdoch and somehow think I should have.

Guilty pleasure - Lovers and Gamblers by Jackie Collins, 70s bonkbuster. Al King (Tom Jones by another name) and Dallas get it on. Jesus H Christ.

Never thought would type a post with both Iris Murdoch and Jackie Collins in

Ooooooh Jackie Collins, oh my god, had forgotten about her! I once discovered loads of Jackie Collins novels in one of my mother's cupboards, hidden behind far more respectable books! And obviously not displayed on the bookshelves for all to see, you understand I read them all (I was a teenager at the time). Don't think my mum ever found out .

(I'm now really embarrassed. Have admitted to liking chick lit, Shopaholic books, Erica Jong (bleurgh) AND Jackie Collins- but I was a silly teenager when I read Jackie Collins!!) I do have a more serious side to me, I feel the need to stress .

As an English graduate and English teacher, I have read only a few Shakespeares, which worries me occasionally.

I have never read 'War And Peace' and I gave up on "Middlemarch" in boredom.

Guilty pleasures -
re-reading children's books (am revisiting Narnia at the moment) and I read a lot of teenage fiction and pretend it's work!

Children's books are perfectly acceptable literature, janeite - although since I tend to revisit my childhood collection most at times of stress, I guess I should properly characterise it as escapist fiction.

Yes, never read Eliot or Hardy.

I still haven't read many Jane Austin etc despite buying quite a few when I've come across them in charity shops.

My guilty pleasure is Penny Vincenzi, I scoffed when someone bought me one and i've been now been known to see if there are any new ones in Oxfam when I go in

I haven't read any Dickens,except A Christmas Carol,read at school.I do feel I ought to,but there is always something I want to read more..and I get irritated by the silly names.
I don't think I feel guilty about anything I read,though I probably should!

Sunshinemummy - @ Eddie Izzard too!

<I'll have the penned arabiata pleas>

No Doris Lessing or Margaret Atwood here either.

My guilty pleasure would have to be, gulp, The Da Vinci Code (plus others of that ilk)! I really enjoyed it. I'm not a fan of chick Lit, so I guess tosh-lit is my substitute.

The more heavily-laden with conspiracies the better.

That was cathartic

But bearing in mind my 3 favourite writers are Jane Austen, Stephen King & Oscar Wilde............

I loved the Da Vinci code when I first read it.
Then I reread it and realised just how badly written it is, and got all that he'd made all that money.....

Historic murder mysterys - you know the kind of thing - monks chasing serial killers. I love them! Hide them on a top shelf behind more intellectual material though!

I haven't read any Doris Lessing or Margaret Atwood either. Or Angela Carter. Though The Golden Notebook has made it as far as my to-read pile: maybe this year...

Guilty pleasure - Harry Potter.

Jeffvader I really like the supermarket sketches and anything where god appears (as James Mason)!

I've never managed George Eliot. Or Doris Lessing. And I once lied to impress a boy about having read The Brothers Karamazov. I never have, and I probably never will.

Maeve Binchy is my guilty pleasure. I adore her. And Ed McBain - US detective stories.

I am reading Doris Lessing for the first time after a recommendation on here.

The Golden Notebook too no less. Tis good.