And here we come, at last, to the selection closest to my dark and twisty heart, Margaret Mitchell's hideous bitch-goddess of a novel, Gone With the Wind. It's awful! It's wonderful! It's Marlboro Reds. Apparently, in a 2008 poll, it clocked in at second place (behind The Bible) as the favorite book of the American people. If that doesn't explain your local news reports, what will?

I'd love to be able to say, as one does about C.S. Lewis, "oh, I didn't get the super-offensive subtext about how Muslims inadvertently worship a flaming devil-beast, even though Jesus will still consider taking them to heaven so long as they don't also [...]

Oh. Oh. WHAT could be more delightful? You've read it, of course. It's… oh, I can't even describe it. It's a delight. A melodramatic, delightful delight. Do you have a guest room? Put this next to the bed. Were you one of the many young people who became a classics major as a direct result of The Secret History? Put this next to your threadbare futon with the soy sauce stains on it. Donna Tartt: kicking ass and ruining lives since 1992.

Let's talk about that title. It's awful! And, obviously, I assumed that it was one of those situations in which the author has a totally boss title, and [...]

How in the world is it that I am just now reading Clan of the Cave Bear for the first time? Isn't that wild? I have so much to say about it I could burst. Let's get one thing straight: we have zero interest in the book's historical accuracy. As far as plot summary, let's just go with: "totally totally a legitimate description of a bangin' Cro-Magnon blonde successfully infiltrating a group of fugly Neanderthals and being all Katniss Everdeen connnnnnnstantly until the World's Worst Pre-Human boots her out because he's threatened by powerful women with the ability to verbalize their emotions." THAT OLD STORY, RIGHT?

Right. When I announced [...]

I know, I said we were doing Fear of Flying. I said! But, I'm gonna level with you, I figured it would wind up in an Unpleasant Internet Scuffle, because Erica Jong is more likely to get squiffy with me than Jackie Collins. She just is! And I'm a little gun-shy after the MacGyver Rage Incident. Also, whenever I think about Fear of Flying, I think about her husband always leaving skid marks in his underwear (or was it on the sheets? I think it was on her sheets), and, ew.

NOT THAT THERE ISN'T LOTS OF EW TO GO AROUND IN HOLLYWOOD WIVES, TOO. Let's get [...]

When you Classic Trashers first requested that Shirley Conran's Lace be our next selection, I have to admit: I had, straight-up, never heard of it. Ever! Isn't that amazing? I mean, all I ever wanted, as a young girl, was to attend a Swiss finishing school, and then to become very rich and spend a lot of time enjoying liquid lunches at expensive Manhattan restaurants while engaging in vicious frenemy conflicts with my female peer group. I know, I know—it's like looking into a mirror, isn't it?

Now, this mother is a billion pages long, so let's push past the formalities, shall we? If you're squeamish, [...]

Full disclosure, my darlings! Not only am I reading Stephen Davis' SHOCKINGLY RAD Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga for the very first time (at the behest/demand of the dissipated-yet-charming Alex Balk), but my initial Led Zeppelin knowledge base was as follows: they are not the same people as Def Leppard, whose music was featured in the recent art film Balls of Fury. (I also have "Kashmir" and "Whole Lotta Love" on my iPod, and, although I would have been unwilling to swear to it in a court of law prior to reading this book, I could probably have identified them as the "Stairway To Heaven" guys.) I'm [...]

We were thrilled by the response to our announcement about the "Classic Trash" book discussion, but we were also on the receiving end of several irate complaints that one week was not sufficient time in which to both procure and consume the first selection, Peyton Place. Being not unsympathetic to this argument (we all have lives), we are therefore extending the period in which you can devour the book in question—tech freaks, take note, it's available on Kindle!—by an extra week. We will gather together in this spot on Friday, April 8th, to discuss. Also, if we may, a brief note of congratulations to our moderator, who [...]

We here at Classic Trash love Philippa Gregory, dearly. We love The Wise Woman, which involved a lot of zombie candle-wax creatures who stabbed fetuses; we love her attempt to get into the mind-grapes of each and every one of Henry VIII's wives and female relations (okay, not all of them, but the interesting ones); but most of all, we love Wideacre. (We're sticking here to the first book of the trilogy, so hold your thoughts on The Favored Child and Meridon for the time being.)

This book is totally disgusting—and it was absolutely the highlight, for me, of being nine years old and trying to find something to read [...]

It is rare for Classic Trash to revisit a series. One cannot step into the same attic of flowers or coven of teen witches twice, as Heraclitus of Ephesus so memorably told us. But in a case like this, where our intrepid Ayla came so far without… actually coming at all… it behooves the society of great readers to follow her to Over The Top Pleasure Mountain. We owe it to her, guys.

Not that it was a chore! The Valley of Horses, by equine and cave-person enthusiast Jean M. Auel, is a good time. Admittedly, the NEXT book (The Mammoth Hunters) is where the real cheap fun is [...]

Just once, gentlest of readers, I would like to crack open a YA novel and see our heroine getting ready for a party. I would like to see her getting HERSELF ready for a party, and then I would like her to look in the mirror and say "damn, I look fiiiiine, as per usual."

But no. Always, it's "the girl in the mirror looked back at her." The girl in the mirror being herself, just the surprisingly beautiful version of herself that her friends and/or Alice Cullen have helped pull together with flat-irons and body-conscious dresses and liquid eyeliner—or, as it happens in our selection here, The Secret Circle, [...]

It came! It came! The original 1972 Joy of Sex. Thank you, Mohammed from Brookline, MA. May your positive Amazon ratings never go down. (Look at all the unintentional sexual innuendo we've already covered!) I especially would like to thank Mohammed for making my back-up plan obsolete: taking my mother up on her offer to "see if she can figure out what she did with her copy."

And now that it's here, and I'm looking at it, it's a little gross. But endearingly gross. For a much better and more exhaustive look at the merits and career of Alex Comfort, M.B., Ph.D., I would refer you to Ariel [...]

Oh, my darlings. If you've somehow managed to miss The MacGyver Rage Incident spawned by our last installment, please do catch up here. I have carefully sifted through our cultural detritus to ensure that John Cleland, author of this week's dusty gem, Fanny Hill, a.k.a. Memoirs Of a Woman Of Pleasure, has no similarly hyped-up, under-medicated relatives who might conceivably call for my blood to be spilled in an act of ritual atonement. (Prove me wrong, hyped-up, under-medicated relatives of John Cleland!)

Let's talk a little bit about said illustrious author first. When you initially learn that the novel was written in debtor's prison, you may imagine a [...]

It's Valley of the Dolls, everyone! This is definitely Gateway Classic Trash. It's that first friend who hands you two pills and tells you that what you REALLY need is just one good night's sleep; the next thing you know, you're doing European "art" films to support your loser boyfriend, and your bookshelf is stuffed with Themes And Variations On Flowers In The Attic. Valley of the Dolls goes down pretty easy, lovelies. I'm going to get the basics out of the way, and then you should all have at it in the comments.

I'm sure that some of you cheated and just watched the movie. And what do I [...]

The critical debate over whether "guilty pleasures" should actually be something to feel guilt about is as extensive as it is tedious, but the fact remains: trash is trash. That said, not all trash is equal. Some trash, either through flawless craft or extensive prurience or sheer cultural impact, enters a canon of its own. It becomes Classic Trash. These are the books you and your friends passed around in high school, the dog-eared volumes you were worried that your parents would catch you reading even though they surely had copies of their own. In celebration of these great and terrible works, we are thrilled to introduce a new [...]

Shiver of happiness. Oh, Awl-My-Children, of all the trashy books we've enjoyed so far, Margaret George's The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes By His Fool, Will Somers is the one I have read most often. That's just sad, I know, but my favorite kind of trash is thinly sourced historical fiction. Extremely long and convoluted, thinly sourced historical fiction. How many of us arrived in college, planning to formally study our preferred era, only to discover that Gone With the Wind is an Un-Book and that no reputable university will allow you to write a dissertation on which of Henry VIII's wives is your imaginary bestie and why? Philippa [...]

The first time I read Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds, I was about eleven years old and volunteering as a library-cart-girl at an old folks' home. Please save your praise on the latter point; even at the age of eleven I knew I wasn't going to get into a decent college from a Canadian hick town without performative volunteer work. I was there to use the elderly, not to serve them. Anyway, the first thing you learn about old people when engaged in such an act of questionable good works is: Old People Read Smut. They do! They love it. I could not keep anything vaguely bodice-rippy in stock. Hey, [...]

This isn't Peyton Place, kids. Confessions of a Shopaholic isn't even strictly "Classic," but, as a reader pointed out last time, it's 11 years old now, and, honestly, that makes it basically Jude the Obscure, right? It's older than Facebook, so deal.

Confessions of a Shopaholic (or The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, if you're from Jude the Obscure's literary homeland) is the first in a series of six (!) novels following the excruciatingly useless Becky Bloomwood through her pointless, awful Hellmouth of a life, which, since there is No God, somehow rewards her again and again for her near-sociopathic narcissism and twittery charm. She is like a [...]

You're mad at me. I can tell. But hear me out. Remember how we were going to talk about the original, hairy, musky Joy of Sex? And it was going to be ACE? Well, apparently, when you're in Canada and you attempt to get a used copy of said august tome sent to you, it doesn't really work. People keep sending you the new version, EVEN CLAIMING IT TO BE THE 1972 CLASSIC, which, whatever, I know how to have sex, right? It's pretty endemic in the culture at this point. I want to see sort of unattractive people bringing their 1970s A-game to the table. That's what I [...]

I would like to think that Pamela Des Barres' glorious 1987 romp I'm With The Band: Confessions of a Groupie requires no introduction other than that offered in the foreword by Dave Navarro (!), but on the off-chance you're a young Amish person enjoying the freedom of Rumspringa, this is a super-famous memoir written by a super-foxy woman with very few personal boundaries and an enduring love of the popular rock and/or roll music. Who boffed a lot of singers. And bass players. And roadies.

If you're going to write a memoir about screwing your way through two decades (and you should! Send it to me!), the only [...]

Welcome to "Classic Trash," my lovelies! This is all for you, obviously, so I'm just going to get us rolling with my OWN slightly manic observations on this precious, precious gem, and then turn it over to our delightful commenters. If you forgot to read it, or never intended to read it, or gave up in disgust, feel free to participate anyway! It's never stopped anyone from making public pronouncements on Peyton Place in the past, you know?

Fifty seconds into my (delightful, overdue) re-read of this novel, I found myself engaging in an unexpected bout of doublethink when my 15-year-old niece inquired politely as to what I was reading. [...]