Controversial reading

Just over a month ago, Mammasaurus tweeted an opportunity to join the team behind her newest brainchild Love All Blogs.

 

 

If you haven't come across it yet, Love All Blogs is a brand new blogging network, which supports any and all bloggers by providing, amongst other things, a weekly showcase into which you can enter one or more blog posts in order to attract more viewers, and a Community Network in which you can ask questions, find support and get to know others.

Mammasaurus has entrusted me to write the weekly introduction to the Love Book Blogs Showcase, which is incredibly exciting but also a little daunting, given that I'm still very new to the world of blogging. Anyway, as I'm now 3 weeks into my new role, I figured it was time to actually mention it here!

Although I've been given free reign to write about whatever takes my fancy in my weekly intro, I'm trying to keep it relevant and I've decided to use it as a space to encourage book-related conversations amongst the blogging community (or anyone else that may read the showcase) and to hopefully inspire more posts that can then be entered into the next showcase.

This week I've asked:

What have you read that was surrounded by lots of hype and what did you think of it? Was it deserving of the media buzz? Maybe you’ve read something that caused you to change your life in some way, or affected the way you think?

 For me, three books immediately sprang  to mind:

 Like many others, I loved Judy Blume books with a passion and when the rumour mill started at high school that she'd written a book with actual S.E.X in it, every single one of us wanted to read it! "Forever" was on permanent loan out of our school library and the waiting list to read it was immense! As a child, I recall it being a very  tender story of first love and losing your virginity. As an adult, I found myself questionning the healthiness of their relationship and thinking it was "for the best" when they broke up. It's funny how time and a bit of life experience can change your view on something isn't it?!

 Ah, "Flowers in the Attic" that sunny afternoon read all about child neglect and incest. I can remember reading this book as a teenager because I couldn't begin to imagine why such shocking and taboo topics would be the subject of a novel or how they would be addressed. My memory is faint on my reaction to it and I'm tempted to add it to my ever-growing reading list to see what I make of it as an adult and mother.

  

 There was so much hype regarding this book that I gave it  a go even though I wasn't particularly sure what it was about. For me, this book is the equivalent of films such as "Saw" and "Hostel"; so-called torture porn with scenes of horrific violence for nothing more than violence's sake. I recall it leaving a very nasty taste in my mouth and I would never read anything else by the author.

So those are my "controversial reads". What are yours? You can tell me in the following ways:

• Leave a comment
• Hop on over to the Love All Blogs Community Network Forum where I've started a thread on this topic
• Tweet me using the hashtag #conreads
• Write a blog post (and if you send me the link, I'll even spread the word about it on twitter for you)
 

Lets get the conversation flowing x