Light Reading Quotes

I am there to entertain. I call my work high escape fiction; it's high, it's good - but it's escape, and I have no delusions about that. I have no ambition to be a serious writer, whatever that means.

I read a lot of heavy literature when I'm on set, so on holiday I want to indulge in something light-hearted.

A really great popcorn movie is extremely hard to pull off. A really great popcorn book is equally hard to pull off, so I don't feel guilty devouring one.

I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation. I'm an escapist kind of writer.

I don't read an awful lot of fiction and when I do, it tends to be lightweight stuff.

I think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense... But it's unquestionably good escapist literature, and I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter or recovering from flu.

No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events.

I read serious books, but every now and then, I read just for fun.

I like feel-good fiction and mysteries.

I read a lot of lot non-demanding fiction.

Nobody has ever written as many enjoyable, fun-to-read crime novels as Agatha Christie. It's all about the storytelling and the pleasure of the reader. She doesn't want to be deep or highbrow.

I know not everyone starts out reading high literature. If you read enough you might be drawn to some other things, so maybe those vampire books are what they call 'gateway books.' I just coined that term. I don't know if there's a thing called 'gateway books.'

People say 'chick lit,' and what they mean is 'crap.' And so even though you might sell 100,000 copies of a book, you're never going to win a prize. These are books that people don't just read, they devour them - they stay up into the early hours because they want to devour them.

I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.

There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.

There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.

Most people in America want an easy read. I call it McFiction - books which pass right through you without you even digesting them. I don't mean a book that has two-syllable words. I mean chapters you can read in a toilet break. Happy endings. We are more of a TV culture.

Many people, I've noticed by informally polling friends, are prone to distinguishing a beach read by genre. Some people thought all thrillers are beach reads; others thought all romances are. Some people thought only mass market paperbacks are eligible for beach read standards.

The YA category is an entirely new one, and seems to have more to do with readability than with age group or theme. The adult YA readers I know do actually consistently say that they are looking for an easy read, a fun read, an unchallenging read.

I do read on holiday, but it tends to be very lowbrow. I'm into really camp biographies, and I'm a shameless fan of Jilly Cooper.

I did get tired of hearing that criticism years ago. That is not a compliment. Being labeled a "beach read" is a put-down. So, I did deliberately set out to write a book, Camino Island, that would be very entertaining and compulsively readable and we published it on June 6 in time for summer vacation, hoping that people would buy it and take it to the beach.

I don't like anything too heavy. Something I can read, you know, lying in bed that takes me to different world.

I'm afraid I'm just too intense to have soft ideas, you know, about what to read when you're trying to pass the time.

Poetry is not the most important thing in life... I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.

I need the lightness of children's lit.