“Chick Lit” and I have a sordid history.
I strain vigorously against the “genre” for several reasons:
1) I feel too many works of art are ill-categorized and slapped with pepto-pink covers, making them unattractive and unsellable to a wide range of readers including men, boys, and me.
2) If I deign to read the jacket and find a story endearing enough to see past that bubble gum cover, I find myself reading in secret, unable to show my face in a library or trendy used book store for fear of being categorized as a “Chick Lit” reader.
And (most importantly),
3) I fear I am, in fact, a “Chick Lit” writer.
A friend of mine covered this genre in one of her MFA classes when she was studying creative writing at UTD. Her prof asked for her thoughts in class one day, and she expounded later over margaritas.
“I told him that my best friend was the quintessential Chick Lit character,” she said, referring, of course, to me.
I scoffed.
“Don’t pretend to be offended,” she said.
The New York Times posted an article yesterday with rarely-seen (in the Times, anyway) enthusiasm over a handful of books that are sure to grace the hands of women everywhere this summer. Not all of these books are what I would consider Chick Lit. And – if you study the accompanying photo of the books lined up on a beach, ready to be plucked by the hands of an eager sunbather – you will notice that not a single book jacket hints at even a shade of pink. Refreshing.
Per this article, I have added a few new titles to my summer reading list:
Julie Metz – Perfection
Susie Boyt – My Judy Garland Life (while this one actually seemed a little to spacey for me, the fact that Boyt is Sigmund Freud’s granddaughter entices me to at least give it a glance)
Nancy Thayer – Summer House
Jennifer Weiner – Best Friends Forever (while Weiner has been unhappily dubbed by some as a Chick Lit writer in general, I found her short story collection The Guy Not Taken very endearing and full of tangible, beautifully flawed characters, so I am going to give this one a try as well)
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