One of the funnest reads I ever enjoyed: Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. When I read it, I didn’t know it was a Steampunk classic. It is a scifi, time travel, speculative, Edwardian, Dickensian, mystic mystery with high notes of comedy.
That makes it sound more complicated and complex and no where near as fun than it is.
But it may be early '80s.
Anubis Gates is trashy? 'splain yourself!
Weeellllll. . . there’s the poisonings and the werewolves and the Fagin-like underground and the devil dogs and the crossdressing. . .
God, I loved V. C. Andrews when I was a teenager.
But I’ve been missing out - I haven’t read most of the books listed in this thread, although a couple are already on my to-read list. I’m making notes.
I was going to say Fear of Flying but was beaten to it. I can’t remember what nom de plume she uses but Anne Rice writes these other even trashier books. One of which Belinda I was reading on the bus and was blushing so much the person next to me asked if I was okay.
Valley of the Dolls is by far the Queen book of this category. Makes you want to take a doll with vodka on the rocks, get in bed, and just forget your husband hasn’t come home yet.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a prime example of the fact Great Novels don’t have to be any good. It’s overwrought, overwritten, and about as subtle as a box of handbills to the head. The Jungle is precisely the same way, and The Grapes of Wrath is only saved from it (if it is) because Steinbeck was a poet.
James Fenimore Cooper was not a poet and produced some teeth-gratingly bad stuff. Just ask Mark Twain.
And, finally, I close with the sentiment we should all always close with, regardless of the topic: “Henry James must die!”
Not from the '70s, but definately trashy are the novels in Liz Maverick’s “Crimson City” series - vampires, werewolves, demons, and lots of the required sex.
Come to think of it, should cross-post in the “vampires” thread"!