Undercover reading
Stephen King is the U.K.’s favourite guilty pleasure read, as reported in The Guardian. In a survey conducted for the Costa Book Awards 2006, King topped a list that included J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, and Dan Brown (the latter two tied).
The article includes a quote from Simon Trewin, a contributing author to The Encyclopaedia of Guilty Pleasures: 1001 Things You Hate to Love, noting that in general we prefer to read a book in public “that makes us look good.” And Quillblog noticed that Guardian reporter Peter Bradshaw’s own blog included a New Year’s resolution to finish reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and a future goal of tackling Hermann Broch.
But if guilty reading pleasures are ruling the day, perhaps it’s Bradshaw who will need to mask his high-brow literary tastes with the faux book covers Costa provided for download.
