I Read Too Much Smut & It Taught Me to Love My Body

Mary O'Brien
6 min readJun 6, 2019

Trust me. Spicy romance is full of self-discovery.

Photo by 陆初雪 SWEETHEART💘(@luchuxue1997) on Unsplash

I am constantly reading.

I love short books, long books, new books, and old books. I love realist and surrealist books. I love historical books, contemporary books, and time-hopping books. I have often bonded with fellow bookworms over the fortitude to not only bring a book in my bag wherever I go, but to have a back-up book at the ready.

You know… in case I finish the first in my travels.

Ask me about what I am reading right now. I’ll tell you! I’ll go on about it! Ask for a recommendation, and I will happily give you several based on your likes and dislikes. My yearly reading count hovers around the ninety to one hundred and ten range.

Books. Per year. Yes, really.

And over the past three years, roughly 90% of those have been romance.

It’s not that I don’t read other things (I’m telling you, I read A LOT), but especially given the advent of ebooks and the corresponding lack of shame that goes along with not having to hide a particularly raunchy-looking cover illustration…

I suppose it just keeps finding its way onto my phone more often than my beloved memoirs and fantasy series.

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Mary O'Brien

Reader of memoirs, novels, and cookbooks. Writer of lists, essays, and short stories. If I’m not baking, I’m running. If neither, I’m in personal crisis.