Shelves O' Shame

Kathy the Cake Eater has turned the latest book meme around a bit and asks us all to confess to ten authors on our bookshelves of whom we are embarrased.

This proved a bit more complicated than I had expected. For one thing, I obviously can't go after the kids' books. For another, I can't go after the Missus'. She has quite a collection, including some solid heavyweights such as Flannery O'Conner, Eudora Welty and Ellen Gilchrest, but also a number of authors who I strongly suspect of writing pure chick lit. However, since I haven't read them, I can't comment. (Nonetheless, if she thinks I don't know about that copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul, she's got another thing coming.)

Anyhoo, here is my list. It's made up of authors I shamefully enjoy as well as authors I hate. (I simply cannot bring myself to toss books out, so once a book arrives on my shelf it stays there.) I'm putting it in the extended section so I can offer commentary as well. Are you ready? Here we go.....

1. Tom Clancy - I enjoy Clancy's books, although I'm ashamed to admit it. He writes exactly like what he is - a middle-aged insurance salesman who never gave up a childhood fondness for playing soldier. From what I gather, his technical information is supurb. But his character development tends to make me laugh in places I'm not sure it's supposed to.

2. Jeff Shaara - Not to be confused with his father Michael. It's awful enough to plagiarize your own father's style and substance. It's even worse to generate third-rate hack work as a result.

3. Ann Coulter - As I often say, I read Coulter for entertainment purposes only. Having said that, she can be awfully entertaining.

4. James Fenimore Cooper - Blowhard extraordinaire.

5. Jacque Derrida - French blowhard extraordinaire. And there aren't even any bloodthirsty Indians. A leftover from school days.

6. "The Great Life" by Men's Journal - I ordered this by mistake from Amazon thinking it was something by P.J. O'Rourke when, in fact, he only wrote an introduction. The book is a compendium of what the mag trade thinks are hot "guy" topics. It strikes me more as a compendium of secret guy insecurities.

7. Eric Hobsbawm - Marxist historian (meaning he's a Marxist, not that he wrote about Marx). Another leftover from school. But since I went to the Glorious People's Soviet of Middletown Connecticut, you can bet he was on a lot of history profs' reading lists.

8. Roberto Calasso - Probably the single most pretentious author on my shelf. Of his The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Gore Vidal had this to say: "I have no idea whether Roberto Calasso is a 'genius' but I do know that The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony is a perfect work like no other. He has re-created, in a blaze of light, the morning of our world: the gods, heroes, monsters of the Greeks are made mysterious sense of in what is, finally, a numinous text to be placed beside - ahead of? - Old and New Testaments." 'Nuff said.

9. "The Fluff Shelf" - I've got a pack of harmless books put out by people like Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and Paul Reiser. AND of Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes collections. For when I've had enough of Roberto Calasso.

10. Sylvia Plath - Yup, she was a loon.

Special Bonus Book O' Shame: It's not actually on my shelf, but every time we go up to the Missus' grandmother's beach house, I flip through her battered old copy of Harold Robbins' The Betsy. You have not truly plumbed the depths of bad writing until you try Harold Robbins.