January 10, 2018

Holiday Smut

One of my book clubs determined, through a great conversation of great fun that shall not be repeated here (what happens in Book Club stays in Book Club), to read “holiday smut” over the break. I was intrigued. I have never read smut. I swore to never, ever read That Smutty Book Everyone Talked About a Couple Years Ago because I heard right off the bat that it was chock-full of really poor writing. (In fact, I’ve heard it’s so terribly written that I won’t even sully the wall of my blog with its title.) There are too many good books to waste time on sloppy writing, no matter how steamy it is. So when one of my friends offered to recommend a smut book for our December read, I jumped at it. The only smut book I really knew about was the best seller that was made into a movie. Which I also didn’t see because I don’t want to throw good money at poor writing in any form. So to have a smut book recommended for reading over Christmas? Perfect. A whole new genre to explore. I’ve studied the Russian masters, the English classics, the new Americans. Dostoyevske to Shakespeare to Capote to Kerouac. Spent a whole term on Chaucer freshman year of high school. Read Lolita in college because Sting sang Don’t Stand So Close To Me. Fell in love with Dorothy Parker’s wit. But through sheer subconscious purposeful intent luck, I have managed to avoid smut. It’s time to expand my horizons.

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