Yeah translating books is quite a good possibility to ruin them I think that goes for most language pairs.
But slightly more on topic: I do the exact same thing with my boyfriend (he's the one reading though) and we usually pick thosereally awful romance novels about some sort of knight in shining armour who rescues the oh so lovely peasant lady (in our times though, not with actual knights) or things like that. They're perfect, because they're dirt cheap, very badly written and the "stories" are just plain...weird. I actually did some research on that before answering, to see if they exist in America (apparantly I just assumed that's where you're from, funny...) and I think the keyword would be things like pulp magazine or dime novels.
But slightly more on topic: I do the exact same thing with my boyfriend (he's the one reading though) and we usually pick thosereally awful romance novels about some sort of knight in shining armour who rescues the oh so lovely peasant lady (in our times though, not with actual knights) or things like that. They're perfect, because they're dirt cheap, very badly written and the "stories" are just plain...weird. I actually did some research on that before answering, to see if they exist in America (apparantly I just assumed that's where you're from, funny...) and I think the keyword would be things like pulp magazine or dime novels.