What a difference 27 years makes, huh? I'm referring to the gap between the 1971 film adaptation of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and the 1998… whatever that was… of Sphere. I mean, we're mostly going to be talking about Michael Crichton's novels, but to prattle on happily for several paragraphs about Sphere without acknowledging what Barry Levinson did to it would be like not picturing a blue Billy Crudup in your head while re-reading Watchmen. We need to breathe through it, come to acceptance, and move on.

That was a shitty movie. And, to my earlier point about the gap between The Andromeda Strain and Sphere, here is [...]

What a great labor of love it is to discuss Stephen King's most magnificent octopus (okay, technically, I guess that would be The Stand, but I didn't read it until a year ago, so it didn't make as significant a dent in my psyche) in our august online publication. Let's stick to the novel, but you are free to go bananas about the Tim Curry television movie in the comments. For the record, you'll never watch him as "Rooster" in Annie the same way again (thank the Turtle she wound up with Daddy Warbucks instead). I guess when you have a mouth that looks like a yawning maw of terror, [...]

As National Novel Writing Month slogs on, the next in our series about the novels that we started writing but, for whatever reason, never finished.

Do you remember the episode of "The Simpsons" where Marge scores the fake Chanel suit? She looks incredible in it, straight-up incredible, and then this rich bitch she went to high school with spots her and briefly ushers her into Springfield high society? Anyway, she has only the one fake Chanel suit, so she has to transform it into culottes and an evening gown, etc. in order to keep the illusion afloat, but ultimately she stays true to herself because of Homer and [...]

Oh, DAPHNE. Daphne. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." THAT'S how you open a novel, guys! Right there. Make it count. What's Manderley? Why aren't you there now? Why are you telling me about it? We have so many questions, and we've barely used our old-timey paper knives to cut open the first few leaves. (Just kidding! This book is from the 1930s, the leaves were already cut for you. Which is good, really, because I don't even like to have to turn my Kindle on, and instead just leave it in sleep-mode all the time, you know?) No, the first chapter of the novel is not [...]

So often when we discuss (great) works of (terrible) literature, one wonders: why did this book come to be? Is the author genuinely attempting to save helpless young women from falling prey to the dangers of the big city? Is the author going through an expensive divorce? Is the author's older brother a serious novelist who always gets served first at family reunions? Is the author trying to see what happens when you pair 'shrooms and tequila? Or, perhaps, a glorious mishmash of the above, for are we not all palimpsests even unto ourselves? (THOMAS HARDY, you guys.) The lovely thing about the EXQUISITE Naked Came the Stranger, you see, [...]

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 [...]

It's remarkable that we've been doing this feature for over a year, and are only now cracking the weathered covers of Christina Crawford's masterpiece. When I say "weathered," I mean it: my copy is from 1980 and informs us that said book is "SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOVIE STARRING ANNE BANCROFT AS JOAN CRAWFORD." Some of you may have missed it, so let's review:

"…ANNE BANCROFT AS JOAN CRAWFORD."

What a world that would have been, no? Setting aside the question of how Ms. Bancroft would have tackled the role, can we address the hypothetical arc of Faye Dunaway's career had she never hacked up a rose [...]

While getting ready to write this month's Classic Trash column on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Nicole tripped on a tree root and was unconscious in a bed of leaves for several hours. This, as best as she can remember it, was the ensuing dream.

Forks, Washington. The Year 3013.

As the dawn broke, I continued doing my new jigsaw puzzle, a beautiful interlocking mosaic released to commemorate the 500th anniversary of a successful Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution based largely but not exclusively on the 1967 borders. It wasn't a physical puzzle, of course, since we now had those retina field computers you accessed with brain waves.

I had [...]

As I stood on the precipice of Atlas Shrugged after a lifetime of merely saying the expected, snide things about Ayn Rand, I found myself consumed with foreboding. I already enjoy listening to Rush. I have a surprising amount of money for someone with my background and skill-set. I have the unwarranted ego of a white, female Kanye West without musical ability. Moreover, I have terrible natural instincts.*

*Evidence of the Latter

1. I thought Clinton was telling us the truth about That Woman. 2. I thought John Edwards was nobly devoted to Elizabeth. 3. At the age of six, while watching a documentary about JFK, I concluded that [...]

(Trill of exultation.) The Mists of Avalon, which I somehow managed not to read until two or three years ago, has a very peculiar place in my heart. Regret and relief, it might be fair to say? I can guarantee that this is a book I would have taken far, far too seriously if I'd read it when I was eleven. As it stands, I completely tore through it and wore more dresses for a while and dragged out my Loreena McKennitt CDs and took a lot of baths with Lush products and pretended to be a servant to the Goddess, but in that awkward, slightly-embarrassed, self-conscious way you do [...]

Awl pals Nicole Cliffe and Richard Rushfield talk about Classic Trash on Richard's podcast. It's here!

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, [...]

It is December 20, 2007, the day before the release of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Jake Kasdan, Judd Apatow, and John C. Reilly are sharing a beer, excited, expectant. There is a puff of smoke. A young woman appears in their midst. She is nondescript, but their attention is drawn to her dress. Peplum silhouettes aren't in. Not… yet. Apatow immediately senses she is from the future.

The Woman: I am from 2013.

The Three Men: Let's just totally accept that without asking a bunch of questions, and assume you're here to tell us about "Walk Hard." It's a hit, right?

The Woman: It is not. You are [...]

We don't usually tell you that reading a particular "Classic Trash" selection is mandatory, so let's take it slowly: "youuuuu mussssttttt reaaddddd thissss boookkkkk." Whew. Okay! Now we can talk about it.

Papillon is my jam. Papillon is the best. Papillon is the most fun. Papillon is the shit. Do you ever do that thing in a new relationship where you assign reading? NO, THE WORST, I KNOW, but you show up with a plastic bag containing four paperbacks and say: "You are not going to understand why I am this horrible, aggravating way unless you do the reading"? Does anyone else do that?

Well, I do that, and Papillon [...]

When I decided to go with Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land as this month's pick, the first thing I did was call my dad, being generationally incapable of solving problems without parental input. My dad, last shanghaied into action for our Hammer of the Gods discussion, is a man of exquisite and discerning taste. Sometimes, though, he must be nudged along:

Nicole: Dad, you have to watch "Sherlock," it's a revelation. Dad: I watched about ten minutes. It's not believable that he's that smart. Nicole: YOU WATCHED ALL OF "BUFFY" TWICE, ASSHOLE, AND VAMPIRES AREN'T REAL. I'm sending you the DVDs. Call me back when you've seen [...]