Three dollars and some change

Oh they always justify their reading by saying that "she is Catholic and she's a good person inside, she's just being led astray". ;)

I certainly don't support their self-righteousness either but I can see where they come from.

For example, there is this website that allows people to put comments about their products up online. They have two categories, negative and positive and the negative one is just bursting with good cheer. It has comments like, "these publishers should all get cancer and die in agony", "you all will burn in hell and I hope it hurts", "you are evil satanic people and may God cause you and all your friends and family pain". It's really obnoxious but these people "fell" for their marketing in the first place and spend hundreds of dollars on their books. Yet if you read even more of these you'll see, "I refuse to even let people see that I own this book. I'm so ashamed", "I would burn this book if I could". But none of them get rid of the books. They keep them and my guess re-read them over and over to remind themselves of what "good" people they are for not buying into it. *shrug* People are weird creatures. They justify it by saying they need to be open to the world around them to educate others against wrong doing. But they avidly and voraciously read and re-read this "satantic crap" and rail against it. ;)

Thing about Anita is that a lot of the bashers are huge Richard fans and even if he was technically a monster, he was human and real and he was a poor boy who got dealt a bad hand of cards. I think they kept reading because they view (or viewed) Richard as a knight in shining armor. That one day he would rescue the misguided Anita from the awful monsters. He didn't choose to be a monster and he didn't participate in their monsterly acts so he was redeemed in some ways.

I'd also liken the AB books to car wrecks .. you can't help but gawk when you come across them. Morbid fascination.

A lot of people who dislike the AB books for the sex don't mind it in the Merry Gentry books because she started out that way. She was a sexual creature from the start.