Well, because I also kind of like them. I want to know how things turn out with Nefret and Ramses, mostly. And I get half a kick out of the silly romance-novel language, even while it bugs me.
Dale Brown (Flight of the Old Dog, etc.)
I also have an uncontrollable need to read any submarine adventure book I find no matter how outrageous, and some of the ‘plucky sub commander is the only one in position to SAVE THE FREE WORLD’ books are absolutely absurd. I just can’t help myself. Michael DiMercurio comes to mind.
Another Clive Cussler fan here. But what really embarasses me is that I read The Destroyer series by Sapir/Murphy. Bad, cheap, violent and funny as hell. 
I went through a phase a few years ago when I read everything Jeffrey Deaver (The Bone Collector, Lincoln Rhyme stuff) and Anita Shreve (The Pilot’s Wife) wrote. They are pretty schlocky but very entertaining. A nice break in the summer from reading student papers and young adult literature.
Dick Marcenko. Think Tom Clancy as a former Navy Seal, but with triple the testosterone. He puts himself in all his books, and routinely uses his own dick as a unit of measurement. His writing is so totally over the top that I just can’t help loving it. Great airplane books.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. by Donaldson. The first three. The writing is crap, and the prose is so purple it probably makes day-glo paint explode. The setting is simply LOTR with names changed. The main character is an anti-hero. Somehow, it works.
A Maze of Death by Dick. Usually hated, but I love it.
Sounds like his books are right up my alley. Reccomend me a book by him! The more action and over the top the better.
All right, who IS reading Danielle Steel, and why is she always on the best-seller list?
(Anyway I thought this thread was for books you are NOT ashamed to have read.)
Jonathan Kellerman. I always start reading his books thinking, no, not again, I’m not doing this again, but I’ll just have a look. And then I can’t put it down. And then, afterward, I think, “Why did I do that?” Then I tell myself it’s research, I’m a writer, maybe I can figure out how he does it. Yeah, that’s it. Research.
I went through a Dean Koontz stage a few years ago, but got tired of his formula so I quit.
I would say the most embarrassing thing I enjoy reading now is super-hero novels.
I don’t read comics anymore but occasionally, I pick up a novelization of a comic series (The Death of Superman, Knightfall) I usually enjoy them.
Oh my God, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant was my favorite book(s) growing up. It is what hooked me on reading as a early teenager! Glad to see there is someone else!
Side note: My wedding band is white gold in pseudo-tribute to what these books meant to me growing up. Not some weirdo fan-boy Thomas Covenant thing, but they opened my eyes to the joy in reading so… anyway.
For me, the one I am really ashamed to admit enjoying has been the series of prequels to Dune - House Atreides, House Corinno, House Harkoneen and even the terrible Butlerian Jihad. They are horrible, utter crap that can’t hold a candle to the originals… but I love them. They are DUNE and I can’t get enough of ALL THINGS DUNE, even the crap. sigh
MeanJoe
Oops, it appears I misspelled his name. Richard Marcinko, not Marcenko. Rogue Warrior is his autobiography, and a very interesting read. After that, he started writing fictionalized (to varying degrees) accounts of his exploits, including Option Delta and Seal Force Alpha. Here’s a list of his stuff at Amazon.
Here’s another vote for the Thomas Covenant series. When I wasa teenager I friggin’ loved those 6 paperweights, but when I tried to go back later on to read them, I was just too disgusted to even come close to finishing. Same thing with Mercedes Lackey. Way too much angst. She does get points for portraying positive, explicit (not subtext) homosexual relationships in a fantasy series. Now if someone would do the same for sci-fi…
But the OP asked about books I’m not ashamed to admit I like. Well, 90% of what I read is sconsidered trash by your average lit. professor, bt I’ll go with old John Grisham (The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Firm , etc. ) and all the sci-fi I go through like a fat person through Slim Fast shakes. Right now I’m doing James Alan Gardner, even thogh I’m probably too damn old for this. I’ll read some Gabriel Garcia Marquez later on to make up for it.
As have I. Good cheese.
And I’m still fairly new on the board, so I don’t know the typical take on Rowling’s Harry Potter series, but damn I love them. Even the worst are well worth the read to me. I only include it because I still get errant looks around campus when I pull out a Potter book, usually to discover that the person has chosen to take a snooty stance on them as “children’s books.” It seems like nearly all who sit down and read them find they’re far more.
I’ve had people vow to disown me for thoroughly enjoying Thomas Harris’ Hannibal.
It’s okay. You’re among friends here. I read HPV first before my children because…well, I knew there was a death, and I wanted to be able to comfort my children without having the book spoiled.
Really! That’s why…mostly. 
Piers Anthony - just the Incarnations of Immortality series & the first few Xanth books… really! OK - maybe the early short stories, too…
Robert Asprin - The Myth & Phule series - humour/fantasy brain candy.
No. I am Robert Parker’s whore, and yes, for the Spenser books. Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone, while moderately entertaining, just don’t do it for me the same way. I agree that something of the edge has vanished from the most recent books; I think Potshot is probably the best of the latest ones. A Spenser novel is like a literary chaser; after I’ve read something intense and challenging, I like to sit down with Spenser and relax.
Nelson DeMille is the same way for me, as are Irving Wallace, T. Jefferson Parker, Patricia Cornwell, and Kathy Reichs. Richard Marcinko is fun too. Those are my WTF?! books, as in the response folks have to them when they see them on my bookshelf.
“Star Trek” books. Yes, I read them. I like them. So there!
I don’t buy them anymore, though. Killing off Kirk = killing off the golden goose that was jsgoddess’s checkbook. So there!
Well, I can start with the books mentioned in Worst Good Book You Have Ever Read which I actually liked:
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Golden Compass (Part 1: His Dark Materials), Philip Pullman
100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Anthem, Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The ones in italics are some of my favorite books of all time…I was slackjawed to see that people thought they were the Worst Book Ever.
In a completely different vein, I have a few books in the Romance Novel category that I can read over and over and never get tired of, but they’re definitely not Literature-with-a-capital-L:
Morning Glory, LaVyrle Spencer - This seems to me to be far-removed from the bodice-ripper type of romance novel. The characters are ordinary people, not good-looking in any conventional manner, and they learn to appreciate each other for who they are and what they do for each other. To me, that’s real romance.
This Calder Sky, Janet Daily - this was the first novel published in what wound up to be a 4-book series, but the other three were written around this one (two prior and one after as the series timeline goes). I can’t put my finger on why I like these…maybe it’s the history of the Montana region and how it developed with government land grants, etc., but I found the characters and the story really compelling as far as romance novels go.
I mentioned LaVryle Spencer in my post, and Morning Glory is one of my favorite books. Some of her books are a bit gag-worthy, but this one is really good.