A LONG, LONG TIME AGO — I CAN STILL REMEMBER — I USED TO READ INTELLIGENT BOOKS. Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Tolstoy — those were some of my favorite authors. I remembering feeling good bringing, say, “Anna Karenina” with me to the doctor’s office and whipping it out in the waiting room because when people looked over at me, they must have been thinking, “Wow, she’s smart.” And if they weren’t, I thought it loudly for them.

But then, slowly, I stopped reading the classics (because no one was really coming out with anything new) and started reading chick lit — and I don’t mean to say chick lit isn’t smart. Some of the books are sharp and witty, and I enjoy those books, but the thing is that I don’t need it to be sharp and witty to enjoy it. I don’t even need it to be particularly good writing. I just need a story where a woman and a man fall in love, and I’m happy. In fact, I comb the stacks of the library looking for books with pink, yellow, or blue covers, pulling them indiscriminately off the shelves, because no matter how stupid they are, I like them. I judge a book by the color of its cover. If it’s pastel colored, I love it.

I used to rationalize my asinine reading choices egotistically. I taught in the mornings and tutored in the afternoons. That’s a lot of thinking. Maybe I just needed to read stupid things to unwind. But now I spend my mornings with my daughter, who only babbles, and my son, who mostly talks about cars, trains, and his fear of Santa Claus and puppets. He’s a smart kid, but I like to think I have mental capacity to spare. But still I read stupid things.

Formerly, I wasn’t completely a lost cause because at least I didn’t read trashy romance novels. But then in some of my episodes of randomly pulling books from the library shelves, I ended up with a few Harlequins by accident. I read them anyway. And I love them. Seductive looks, breathy conversations, husky voices — and I’m still totally on board. Sometimes these books have no plot or development beyond the characters wanting to sleep with each other (which they do, repeatedly, in several different positions, but it’s OK because they’re always in love and get married at the end).

Plus, the writing is atrocious. It’s basically book porn. And still I read it.

It’s embarrassing because the covers of these books are generally of a woman arching backwards, her bodice partially opened (because the characters in these books wear bodices), while a man is leaning over her in a sexually dominant way. I just don’t want to whip that book out at the doctor’s office.

And my students! I can never leave books like that lying around when they come over. I have to stash them in my bedroom and casually put “War and Peace” on the table instead and say, “Yeah, reading that one for the fourth time.”

Some people don’t like to admit to reading “Fifty Shades of Grey.” I read them all. Sure, they’re smutty, but also educational. It’s nice to know a little about everything. Now if I’m ever at a party and S&M practices come up in casual conversation, I can jump right in (to the conversation, I mean. Just in case that needed clarification.)

But actually, I do have some standards. I don’t like books about people having affairs or mothers or spouses dying or anything that will make me sad. That’s just not what I’m going for when I read a book.

Depressing subjects are a definite turnoff — but a woman who trembles with lust, raking her nails across her man’s muscular back, that’s OK. So when people ask me about my reading material, I can say with confidence that I have standards.

Kirstin Odegaard runs the Benicia Tutoring Center. Read and comment on her writings at www.kodegaard.com.

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