Staff Confessions: Our Favorite Guilty Pleasure Reads

by Emily Temple.  Friday Jul 27, 2012 - Flavorpill

We all try to read books that enlighten us, teach us something about the world, or give us insights we might otherwise have missed. We think it’s important to read great literature and culturally important works. But let’s be honest: we also want to read books that entertain the crap out of us. And sure, we may judge other people on what they read — whether it’s books that could have us running for the hills or sidling up with our sexiest face on — but that doesn’t mean we’re saints ourselves. Just like anyone else, we indulge in guilty pleasure reading: books we know are about as good for us as an enormous chocolate sundae, but also equally delicious. Click through to see some of our most treasured lowbrow treats, and then if you feel emboldened, admit to your own guilty pleasure reads in the comments.



“My current guilty pleasure is this series of Turkish detective novels by a British writer called Barbara Nadel. The prose is dreadful, but the characters are great and the stories are real page-turners. I’ve been buying them and devouring them in about a day and a half. (Literary) God forgive me.” — Tom Hawking, Music Editor

“The Alphas YA series. It’s terrible — there’s an island boarding school where teen girls are trained to be perfect supermodels. There’s secret jets and jet packs and cat-fights and mistaken identity and holy god these books are incredible. (P.S. I mean c’mon my favorite author is Bret Easton Ellis so obviously my life is guilty pleasure.)” — Russ Marshalek, Social Media Director

“I listened to Rob Lowe’s autobiography on tape recently. I laughed. I cried. I shared with no one.” — Allison Pottasch, Designer

Full list at Flavorpill - includes some surprises!