Comments on: Literary Genres and Gender: Discuss!

By: Libelula

Libelula — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 01:25:36 +0000

I love reading chick lit and have even dabbled in a bit of mills & boons here & there. t's about balance, not whether chick lit is inferior. It's fun and light, and in my teens I did find chick lit quite helpful with what was going on in my head. However I have gotten much more selective since then, so possibly you do need to turn your brain off and your wish fullfilment on. I find nighttime the best time for suspension of disbelief as that is when I can almost never put a book down and will simply not be annoyed by obvious plot twists and the like. I
I normally read sci-fi, historical romance and science books. I've never found fantasy to be more focused towards women in comparison to sci-fi. In fact there are very few fantasy books that I can stand reading, despite the similarities in the genre. I think this is just a misperception of the more often than not male authors as well as the rapid change in perception of what is considered feminine and masculine.
As for good thought provoking reading that covers women's lit and genre, I would recommend Angela Carter. A modern (mostly gothic) fairy tale writer with a modern feminist twist of the highet quality.

By: Jennie C.

Jennie C. — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:49:02 +0000

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card has been described “as a kind of science fiction gateway drug” – I've given it to men and women alike and have never found anyone who didn't love it.

By: Mom

Mom — Sun, 24 May 2009 13:21:31 +0000

My concern with the tiny niche of chick lit -or any other niche- is that it is dominated by market analysis. Chick lit seems to be aimed at grown-up women who loved “The Babysitters' Club books when they were budding adolecents and who are presumed never to have become more sophisticated readers. Years ago I read an interview with the T.B.C. author, herself a Scholastic, Inc. editor. I was appalled to learn that she set her alarm early each morning to write for exactly 2 hours before another alarm tells her to get ready to go to work; so much for inspiration and creativity. These books are really “fill in the blanks” with appropriate sterotypical characters and plot.

By: Kim Werker

Kim Werker — Sat, 23 May 2009 21:22:00 +0000

Having never read chick lit, I didn't intend to devalue it, though I admit I did intend to express my distaste at the marketing surrounding it and my resulting impression that I wouldn't like the books. (My not liking it is different from making a judgment as to its worth.)

I'll definitely read a Jennifer Weiner book and see what I think—is there one in particular you'd recommend? Given my opinions of other novels that have been recommended to me (like The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss, which I found very disappointing after the hype, and I really had to plod through it), and that of The Girl Next Door, I don't anticipate I'll like it, but I don't intend to extend from that to judging that nobody should like it. I just like teasing out which types of books speak to me and which don't.

I don't often prefer books that are about reality, though, unless they're written so artfully that the art is what makes the books extraordinary for me. I love a good love story, but sentimentality makes me roll my eyes -- it's a fine line, and my mood at any given time has as much to do with my experience of that line as anything else. That said, I can't shake the ill feeling I had while reading The Girl Next Door, because of the vague impression I had about the assumptions underlying it. I pay such close attention to the assumptions I choose to have underlie my own life that I ruffle easily when I encounter assumptions I find unchallenged, banal, or ... something a word for which I can't put my finger on.

And there I go rambling. No fear, though, I don't plan to swipe chick lit under my rug without first reading some. And if I do sweep it under my rug, it'll be only my rug I sweep it under.

BTW, I read my first romance novels this year, which I think are also classified as fantasy -- the first three in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. Romance is certainly a genre I'd like to explore more. The less-than-real about it will likely sit far better with me!

By: marikka

marikka — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:58:19 +0000

Although I recognize that a number of the Twitter definitions for chick lit were meant as humorous, there's an underlying issue that many actually see chick lit as one tiny step above romance novels (which appear to be increasing in popularity right now), and in that same vein, we're treating women's fiction as one step above chick lit. All of this is terribly unfair. It's a commentary on worth instead of a commentary on content.

Two things that chick lit and romance have in common are the elements of romance and fantasy. Two things women's lit and chick lit have in common are a focus on women and women's issues and a dose of reality. A Venn diagram is needed to describe them, they aren't separate and varying in value, they're similar but with different perspectives and motives. Chick lit is comedic and used to just be young, single women in the big city looking for love, but as it's become popular it isn't just that anymore. The quality stuff (Jennifer Weiner and Melissa Banks, both who are equally in the women's lit bunch) is more than that, it's honest and sincere, and although it makes you laugh, it's not evil and anti-feminist, it's just a lighter perspective on being a woman. The bad stuff should be ignored, much like the bad SF, fantasy, horror, and "general fiction". For whatever reason, chick lit always seems to be defined by the bad stuff, and few listen to you if you try to counter that it can be good.

When it comes to the defense of chick lit, I've always looked to Ed Champion and Jennifer Weiner, and the Bat Segundo episodes with Weiner are awesome to listen to just to hear a real conversation on the issue.

And I just wrote more than I wanted to about this, but it is a sore subject in this house. Any attack on popular fiction and chick lit results in a lengthy discussion of classics as popular literature. This is not to say that I don't love literary fiction, but it's just like my love for "Dogville", I can't watch that movie everyday, sometimes I need a romantic comedy. I don't care if others don't like romantic comedy, but just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's horrible. I hate "Heart of Darkness", but I'm sure it has some value somewhere, and at least I read the horrid thing.

Ed on chick lit critics: http://www.edrants.com/category/chick-lit/
And Jennifer Weiner's blog: http://jenniferweiner.blogspot.com/

By: kristi

kristi — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:18:55 +0000

Okay, here it is. Can't walk away from an empirical fact finding mission!

"Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market, according to surveys conducted in the U.S., Canada and Britain."

Here's the story: "Why Women Read More than Men"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?st...

By: kristi

kristi — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:13:55 +0000

And oh yeah… Most fiction is aimed at women. Men do a startlingly small amount of fiction book buying. I heard the number once and was shocked. But I can't remember it now. It may all be sci-fi, though.

By: kristi

kristi — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:09:13 +0000

A couple scattershot comments: I have tried to read both fantasy and sci-fi with a fairly open mind and really have little stomach for either. I have never read a book that featured a vampire as a main character (or even a minor character!). I really like fiction with good, deep characters and too often I find that sci-fi devotes much of it's time building it's gadgetry and fantasy spends too much time building it's imaginary world and creatures. I don't give a damn about the squalloping zatschbot unless he's got a compelling relationship with the other characters and actually needs to be there! There's good fiction that's plot driven of course, I think, but that's not really my cup of tea. That said, the sci-fi I've enjoyed has been stuff like Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem, fantasy-wise it lived and died with a brief pre-adolescent obsession with Madeleine L'Engle.

What do I read? Honestly, I read mostly non-fiction these days. About fibercraft, but more about food or travel, or best when there are people eating in foreign places and writing about it. M.F.K Fischer, Paul Theroux, Peter Mayle. For fiction, what I really love to read is a well-crafted short story. Try Cortazar, Borges, Paz, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Welty…

By: Kim Werker

Kim Werker — Fri, 22 May 2009 18:56:48 +0000

Whoa. Amazing list! Thank you!

What's "high" fantasy?

Also, back when we were first dating, Greg gave me a copy of Mists of
Avalon. He'd loved it and was sure I would, on account of it being a
feminist retelling of such a classic, male-dominated tale. I got about
halfway through before forcing myself to admit to him (and myself) that I
found it boring to the point of physical pain. I doubted my own feminism for
a couple of minutes there, but then I got over it. :)

By: Molly

Molly — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:21:56 +0000

Maybe try Jennifer Weiner? In Her Shoes is about two very different sisters struggling to figure out who they are and what their relationship means to each of them; Little Earthquakes is about several women getting through pregnancy together. Men complicate the situations in both books, but the focus is on the women: their own self-discovery as well as their relationships with each other.