Trashy Books

[ailbhe]

I'm getting increasingly annoyed at this as a categorisation. Yes, I have used it myself. But I don't understand how it's used - some people use to to mean "genre I don't like", some use it to mean "plot I don't like", some use it to mean "badly written", and some use it to mean "popular". What makes a book trash?

I think that I tend to use it to mean "poorly thought out" or "unoriginal and badly written". But I suspect I have also used it to mean "popular romance".

Can you think of any genres which you think of as "trash"?

Comments

[souldier-blue.livejournal.com]

Most sci-fi is deemed to be "trash" by the literati, but I guess my own classification would be contemporary romantic fiction a la Mills & Boone.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I think of "trash" books the way I think of "junk food".

A "trash" book, to me, is one which I read purely for easy, accessable fun. It's a book which doesn't challenge me, doesn't ask me to think, doesn't engage my imagination except on the most superficial level.

I like them. I read them by the truckload.

But that's because I can read them by the truckload -- I can read them as fast as I can turn the page, because they don't require me to slow down and meditate on ideas at any points.

Tom Clancy writes trash. Bernard Cornwell's "Richard Sharpe" books are trash. His "Enemy of God" series is not. There are romance novels which are trash, there are romance novels which make you sit down and think. Mystery novels are pretty much split straight down the middle. Media tie-in fantasy is usually trash, but not always.

That's how I use the term. When I use it, it's not derogatory.

I like this definition

[ailbhe]

I usually use "light" or "easy" to describe this. Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen, for example. PG Wodehouse. Many of my favourite books are two-a-day reads.

We'll save phrases like "poorly thought out" and "badly written" for all those other books.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

i think of it as : romance. most romance novels. those terrible ones by Harlequin spring to mind.

i also think of it as things like "The Flowers in the Attic" by whatshername and bad science fiction (which i'm careful not to name, because someone will argue with me :)

my mother calls them "throw away books". she'll say, "real trash, but great for the beach."

i believe trash has it's place. it's fun to read, and you don't feel guilty about trashing it at the airport so that you don't have to lug it all the way back accross the atlantic :)

"n"

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

Plot-driven, the author doesn't seem to have thought much about writting style and often the plot is very soap opera-ish.

Which is why A Suitable Boy or Anna Karenina aren't trash to me and The Thorn Birds is.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

Yep, I'll go along with that (except that I haven't read 'The Thorn Birds'). Also the plot tends to be remarkably formulaic and either predictable or with inconsistent twists thrown in for the sake of twistiness. Soap-operatic, as you said.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Can you think of any genres which you think of as "trash"?

Entire genres? Certainly not. Every genre, no matter how well populated it may be with flimsy, unchallenging, sensationalist books (which can, it must be pointed out, be fun to read - although I usually feel as though I'd eaten too many Wham bars when I finish one), contains genuinely worthwhile books.

There. I Has Spoken.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Not trash, precisely - heck, if someone cared enough to write it, who am I to judge? But I do have a mental category called "supermarket books." You know, the ones you buy 'cause the impulse to read something, anything, hits when you're grocery shopping and the choices are limited to whatever your local Safeway can cram into a half aisle of paperbacks. Romance novels by women with three names, Westerns, genre detective fiction, and everything John Saul ever wrote ...

Some of it's actually pretty good, but the fact remains that I buy it much as I buy Cheetohs, for the flavor, not the nutrition.

[artela.livejournal.com]

"Trash" in books to me means "Mills and Boon" or "Chic Lit Lite" *shudder*

Re: Trashy Books

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i don't think i call any book "trash" because it hurts me to think of actually throwing a book into the garbage can. :)

what you're talking about is the sort of stuff i'd only read if i were in hospital and had already run out of everything else to read -- series romance, for example, or the equivalent men's adventure books. formula, cardboard characters, and bad writing can be found in any genre, but certain sub-genres are almost entirely filled with them; mostly those sub-genres that rely on formula more than anything else.

if it's not making me think a whole lot, i call it "escapist fluff". those are usually not badly written (or i would cringe and not escape), but they're not terrifically original either. and again, they can be residing in any genre, though i get most of mine from the mystery/thriller shelves.

Re: Trashy Books

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I also think of this sort of thing as popcorn reading: Nice and tasty, but not very filling or nourishing.

But, y'know, sometimes a person just wants some popcorn.

Re: Trashy Books

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, exactly. especially when i have trouble sleeping for physiological reasons, i often don't have enough neurons firing to read something that does make me think, but i'd dearly like to escape from tossing and turning. i love escapist fluff for that, and i am glad there is so much around