Chick Lit
Here's the latest confession to be added to the list of confessions that people think makes me a man: I don't like chick lit. I feel my brain turning into cottage cheese every time I glance at the cover of a chick lit novel. They're vapid, simplistic and annoyingly predictable. Even the twists I see coming, are the same in every book. I know this because I tried to read them during the spring of my senior year, figuring anything was preferable to working. LIES!
I borrowed my dorm head's copy of Confessions of a Shopaholic, figuring it couldn't be too bad since so many people swore by it. It was on that day that I learned you can't trust people. At first the novel seemed okay, but then things took a turn for the worse. It was the first narrator I encountered whom, if I met her on the street, I would be tempted to maul. I finished on reading the book on principle, but she need a good, sharp poke in the eye with one of her precious credit cards.
Then I did that thing you're not supposed to do where you read a book in the bookstore, over a series of days. I tried the first book in the Gossip Girl Series. There were similar feelings of rage, frustration, and wasted time. After a couple more attempts with other authors, the only conclusion to be drawn was that I wasn't old enough or bored enough to get it.
The biggest tragedy in all this is that these books are expensive. You shell out fourteen dollars to be irritated for a couple of hours. Romance novels are great because the truly trashy, and therefore delightful ones, usually cost between $1.50 and $8. There is some belief that if you enjoy romance novels, you will enjoy chick lit, or that they are somehow one in the same. Not so. Chick lit doesn't involve time-traveling pirate romance or contrived kidnappings by outrageously muscled members of Arab royalty. You're actually supposed to identify with chick lit characters, draw some sense of hope from the everyday heroine who eventually finds the imperfect Mr. Right. Romance novels require a suspension of reality and aren't nearly so patronizing about love. I believe in sword-waving, Anglo-Saxon princes, not only slightly muscled lawyers with sexily tussled hair. So stop printing those damn chick lit novels and filling tables with them, tables that could be devoted to books with Fabio-physiqued men on the front.
Technorati Tags romance,chick,lit,novels
I borrowed my dorm head's copy of Confessions of a Shopaholic, figuring it couldn't be too bad since so many people swore by it. It was on that day that I learned you can't trust people. At first the novel seemed okay, but then things took a turn for the worse. It was the first narrator I encountered whom, if I met her on the street, I would be tempted to maul. I finished on reading the book on principle, but she need a good, sharp poke in the eye with one of her precious credit cards.
Then I did that thing you're not supposed to do where you read a book in the bookstore, over a series of days. I tried the first book in the Gossip Girl Series. There were similar feelings of rage, frustration, and wasted time. After a couple more attempts with other authors, the only conclusion to be drawn was that I wasn't old enough or bored enough to get it.
The biggest tragedy in all this is that these books are expensive. You shell out fourteen dollars to be irritated for a couple of hours. Romance novels are great because the truly trashy, and therefore delightful ones, usually cost between $1.50 and $8. There is some belief that if you enjoy romance novels, you will enjoy chick lit, or that they are somehow one in the same. Not so. Chick lit doesn't involve time-traveling pirate romance or contrived kidnappings by outrageously muscled members of Arab royalty. You're actually supposed to identify with chick lit characters, draw some sense of hope from the everyday heroine who eventually finds the imperfect Mr. Right. Romance novels require a suspension of reality and aren't nearly so patronizing about love. I believe in sword-waving, Anglo-Saxon princes, not only slightly muscled lawyers with sexily tussled hair. So stop printing those damn chick lit novels and filling tables with them, tables that could be devoted to books with Fabio-physiqued men on the front.
Technorati Tags romance,chick,lit,novels
posted by Meredith at 2:35 AM
10 Comments:
You might try these instead. They're chicky, but in a way that doesn't make you want to gauge your eyes out with a stiletto:
The Boyfriend List (E. Lockhart- the title will make you cringe but the book itself won't.)
The Girl's Guide to Hunting And Fishing. (Melissa Bank. Proto chick-lit before the Shopaholic got a hold of it and sucked all the lit out.)
Cause Celeb (Pre-Bridget Jones, when Helen Fielding still thought she had to write well to sell books.)
I wanted to go on a killing rampage after reading The Nanny Diaries. These kinds of books pulled me back from the edge.
oh phew. i'm so glad you still like romance novels. for a second, i was terrified.
Jill: I'll take a look at those. I tried The Nanny Diaries, too, and had similar feelings as you.
Katie: never fear, some things don't change.
Oh man, I did this thing once with some friends where we'd pick the worst books we can find in the library and check them out for one of the others to read. We did it by genre and when we got to romance novels, my friend picked a book called Sweet Silken Bondage for me. Wow. I'm sorry to say I disagree with you about romance novels. There's a really freaky racist/sexist/anti-gay undercurrent in some of those things....eerie! But the cover art is rather awesome.
A book in a series called "Gossip Girl" induced rage and frustration? Who'd a thunk it?
hmm I just finished reading How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, and even though she plagiarized and therefore created a big hungama, I didn't see why anyone could get worked up over the success of this book. You just can't go green over chicklit because you automatically feel intellectually superior. At least, that's how I see it. :)
Did you like Opal Mehta, Sumyoo? I haven't read it, but I don't think Meri was attacking it on the basis of intellectual superiority. I mean, she endorses romance novels immediately afterwards, so. But she can defend herself.
I've been thinking about this intellectualism issue too, and I don't think that's what's so rage-inducing, but I've yet to put my finger on precisely what causes the rage factor.
If you want to get technical, this blog IS chick lit (the good kind). How else to classify the thong & crack rant, for instance?
Jill: Alright, alright, I guess I'm chick lit. There are worse things, like nuclear weapons.
Glen: I know, I was surprised, too.
Sanjukool (it's your new nickname, I've decided): I guess it's just one of those things that I respond to negatively without being able to explain properly. But part of it is the target demographic, according to what's printed, has no interests but shopping, men and chocolate. Plus many of them aren't particularly well written, but not in the over-the-top way of romance novels.
I would highly recommend the book version of conan the barbarian. It has it all--suspension of reality, trashiness that borders on soft porn, great improbable fighting, highly muscled men. You can't go wrong
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