Literary Junk Food

Recently I asked my friends on Facebook what snacks they buy at the gas station when they're on a road trip. I received an unprecedented response! A couple of principled people responded with "water" or "I hate snacks from the gas station." Most, however, gleefully admitted the various crap they ingest on such occasions, "edible food-like substances" as Michael Pollan describes them, that they normally do not allow themselves.

When I'm reading, I do the same thing. Being in 2 book clubs and reviewing books for a Christian magazine means that I am usually reading something that I expect will enlighten me or enrich my life in the process. Most of the time this leaves me happy and fulfilled. But every once in a while I get tired of reading useful and/or literary books. I want to read something just for the fun of it. Sometimes something truly crappy.

So, in the spirit of all of those who confessed their road trip preferences--cheesy popcorn, Sprees, Twizzlers, Reeses and mountains of soda--here are some of the books I've picked up for the pure guilty pleasure of some fun.

As a teen, I started out with sweet Christian romances like Janette Oke's Love Comes Softly, moved on to the First Love by Silhouette series, and moved with alarming speed into the less sweet, less sacred realm of romance novels for adults. My older, married sister was a great resource for this. But now, I like to think I've put that all behind me. After all, I still have a crystal clear memory of reading a Danielle Steel novel on a class trip, and having my friend Holly pick it up and do a random dramatic reading. The line she hit on? "She felt as though her insides were flying out her ears." Sorry, don't remember the context, but I can guess.

But I don't think I've gotten so far, really. Last year I picked up Twilight by Stephenie Meyer out of curiosity about all the press, and I was hooked. It isn't far off from some of the novels I read in high school. Lots of burning desire and longing gazes. Many people salute the books for having a teen couple who don't have sex until they're married. Since sex is just about all that occupies their minds, it's hard to take that too seriously. The writing is cliched, but the storyline is fun and satisfies all my inner teen's dreams of my misfit self being swept up by the most beautiful man in the world, who finds me utterly fascinating and protects me every moment. The fourth book is truly awful, and reading it diminished some of the fun of the preceding installments. And yes, I read them all.

Other things I read just for the fluff and nonnutritional value: The Nanny Diaries (so-so on the fun scale) and both Bridget Jones novels (the first is one of my all-time fluff favorites). My most recent venture into junk reading was (some of you may want to brace yourselves for the title) Good Christian Bitches by Kim Gatlin. This book takes place in a very wealthy part of Dallas, near where I spent middle school and high school years, and it is meant to be a fun skewering of mean-spirited "Christian" rich girls by a woman who appears to claim the same designation for herself. I couldn't resist, thinking that it would be fun to see a Christian writing some good-humored satire about her own circles. It fell flat--a poorly written story about mean-spirited people doing mean-spirited things, with no Christianity that I could recognize. So that one was the equivalent of Dutch licorice for me--looked like candy, had the texture of candy, but tasted like, well, crap.

There are some books that can be read just for the fun of it, but aren't just fluff. Off the top of my head I think of Grand Opening by Jon Hassler, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (especially if you skip over some of the more preachy environmental stuff) and Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns.

In the end, I find that a fluffy detour leaves me hungry for more satisfying fare. What is your literary junk food?

It's A Dog's LIfe

Narrow Dog to Carcassonne. If Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods, In A Sunburned Country) decided to take his wife and dog in a narrow canal boat to cross the English Channel and explore France, and if he decided to disregard almost all punctuation, this is the book he would write.

And the Fab 5 would read it all, given enough time. As it turned out, two of us almost finished it, and two of us merely got a taste of it. For the record, I am one of the two who almost finished it (and skimmed the rest). I report that only so you don't think I'm getting into a habit of reporting on books I haven't even made it halfway through. That will come later this year, when work picks up a bit!

Terry and Monica Darlington, along with their dog Jim--a whippet--made the journey through England, across the Channel, and through France in their 7-foot-wide English canal boat. Most travel books incite a renewed case of disastrous wanderlust in me, causing me to lose many hours of my life to Travelocity.com. The Fab 5 agreed that many months aboard a narrowboat (particularly crossing the Channel), waiting for locks to fill and open, isn't our next hoped-for adventure.

Sonya brought a catalog of canal boats along to the meeting. They look so cute and cozy, but yet so narrow. Perhaps it's having children at home that makes it sound so claustrophobic, or jobs that we must get back to, or the fact that most of our vacations are always fitted to the very limited time frame set for them. Terry and Monica are retired, which I realize doesn't mean they have nothing to do, but it gives them some freedom to take a leisurely pace if they so desire.

This book is hard to read. There are no quotation marks. And he jumps from topic to topic, allusion to allusion, event to event very quickly. I think he must have read Joyce's stream of consciousness novel Ulysses one too many times, or possibly even Finnegan's Wake. (Does anyone really read all of Finnegan's Wake?) But hard reading isn't necessarily unenjoyable. The book is hilarious, and the further we read, the more we liked it. It just takes a bit more time and concentration than we planned for a summer travel read.

Terry enjoys people, pubs and keeping his dog company. Monica, his tiny dynamo of a wife, keeps them moving in a straight line. Jim the whippet runs the show and keeps them on their toes. Jim encourages the pub habit and, sadly, hates boating. A couple of us might be next in line at the whippet adoption center. If you want to see a picture of Jim and his owners, you can look them up on http://www.narrowdog.com/.

I personally laughed out loud many times while reading, and I forced my husband to listen to many out-of-context readings that left me howling with laughter while he graced me with his patient smile, waiting for the opportunity to get back to his own book. Yes, I'm one of those people. But Darlington is a very funny writer, and his quiet exaggerations of certain scenes are worth the work of deciphering his paragraphs.

Talking about the book got us talking about vacations. Nancy is the opposite of Terry and Monica. While the Darlingtons are forever visiting other boaters or having them to visit, Nancy suggests that one good way to discourage strangers from talking to you at a campground is to display an Amway or Herbalife sticker in your vehicle--"Lose weight now, ask me how." She tried putting beer on the picnic table one time, but that only encouraged visitors. It would most certainly encourage Terry Darlington. Not so much a people person, that Nancy.

The follow up to this book is Narrow Dog to Indian River, in which they somehow take their boat (or at least a boat) down the United States to Florida. I definitely want to read this book, because I'd love to know Darlington's impressions of the American territory as he passes it by.

Next month we'll be getting our feminist groove on, reading When Everything Changed. It's something to do with the state of women in the US over the last 40 or 50 years. Get out the bras and the lighter fluid.