Boring kink porn, and SO many people thought they were so racy and daring for reading them.

I'll admit that I thought I was daring to read them at 20. Well, I thought that I was daring to buy them. They were outright touted as erotica and there was much in those books that I had not done yet. I was less impressed with myself after I read them. They really were boring kink porn.

I haven't read a Sleeping Beauty book since I was a freshman in college - I didn't think they were boring then, but granted, I was a teenager. No idea what I'd think now.

I think the "ooh, aren't we scandalous!" books at university were the Storm Constantine and the Jaqueline Carey ones. I tried reading the Kushiel books again, I just can't. Way too rhapsodic about their content matter for me. I prefer something more cynical.

I remember LOVING Lasher when I first read it, and Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat too. (All in high school.) Nothing else really sticks out for me, except I know I looked through one of the Sleeping Beauty books in the bookstore and was not terribly impressed. The last Rice I read was probably Memnoch the Devil, and I gave up after that.

God, yes. I read the first one, Sleeping Beauty, I guess, and I was bored and fairly squicked by how clear it seemed that her sexual fantasies/needs were right there on the page.

It occurs to me that Anne Rice is basically what Laurel K. Hamilton would have been if she kept her vampire/supernatural stories and TMI kinky wish fulfillment in separate books.

Sleeping Beauty didn't scandalize me, but then I was reading Phillip Jose Farmer and Gordon Merrick in high school.

Did you know that Gail Carriger is doing a new series set in the same universe? (But young adult and 25 years earlier). Here's the description from Goodreads:

Etiquette & Espionage (The Finishing School #1)

First in a four book YA series. The Finishing School series will be set 25 years before the Parasol Protectorate but in the same universe.

Rayne, I did not. That sounds like fun!!

Never been an Anne Rice fan, really.

I did know that and have been looking forward to it madly.

I knew that, and am pretty psyched about it.

I read tons of Anne Rice, starting in high school. I adored them, of course. I read some of Belinda; was bored. Read all of the Sleeping Beauty books, was bored by the middle of the 2nd (my first intro to BDSM, really) and was all "BLAHBLAH ass-sex flogging ball-gag ponyboys, BLAH BLAH, whatever, ok."

I liked Merrick. And I liked the Mayfair books until the 3rd or 4th one, but by that time, I was all cynical and "Let your editor do her job, bitch!! Don't believe your own hype!"

I have tons of books on the TBR pile, and several I want to review that I've liked, but I've been swamped with paying jobs.

Most of them are resumes, which pay the grocery bill, but I'm really trying to get more booky/geeky jobs. I've gotten some interviews, but I don't have anyone who wants to give me money for them -- YET. Man, I REALLY love interviewing authors. Amy got me hooked. I've got an interview with Laura Anne Gilman scheduled, as soon as Dragon Virus gets here (small press, print-only), and I can blaze through it. I'm a thorough researcher.

I only have heard the audio book of Cry to Heaven but it was read by Tim Curry and just hearing him say "Tonio" turned my bones to butter.