Literary Infamy

EDITED to make actual sense after I appear to have missed the fact that a cat went keyboard surfing and messed up my post. Many thanks to Jeffe for alerting me!

Have you ever made someone else cry with your reading choices? I have that distinction. It was a holiday party and the idea was to bring your favorite book already wrapped. We then did a blind exchange. All the wrapped books were put under the tree, we drew lots and went around picking books. The gal who got mine opened a copy of Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - a book I still love for world building. She started to cry. They were not happy tears. To be fair, she's a teacher. Getting a nonfiction book was a little more than she could handle. So yeah. I still feel guilty about that one. Fortunately, someone else wanted the book and offered to trade a historical romance with her. Happy ending.

That's actually my only real brush with literary infamy. My reading tastes are wide ranging and not all that controversial. I'm probably more interesting (or demented) based on the books everyone else likes that I dislike. However. That's another day's navel gaze.

The book(s) that I enjoy that might surprise you are those written by Mr. Chuck Tingle. Oh yes. Space Raptors Butt Invasion. Hugo nominated!

I love Chuck for so many reasons. I mean. What's not to like about a man who so effortlessly and gleefully trolled the ever-living hell out of the Rabid Puppies when they did their damnedest to game the Hugos? So much admiration.

And what's not to love about a mentally ill man finally finding his niche and his joy in writing unlikely homo-erotic and occasionally politically on-point porn shorts?

The stories are fun. They're filled with lovely, unambiguously consenting, enthusiastic sex partners. Perceptions get twisted - in one story a dude falls in love with a handsome building. For several pages of that story, I had to consciously tell my logical brain to shut the hell up - because in my own weird mental world, all inanimate objects have a spirit, which would make them not so inanimate anymore, right? Where do I get off saying it's impossible for a guy to fall in love with a roadside diner and then spend pages having hot sex with it? I like that I have to shove my assumptions about what's possible aside in order to consume the candy this man writes. Besides. There are worse slogans in the world than his: Love is real.