A Moment of Jen
THE NEXT BEST THING — In Stores July 3rd!



Monday, August 22, 2005
posted by Jen at 8/22/2005 04:48:00 PM

So the pseudonymous I-hate-chick-lit lady turns out not to have actually, you know, read any chick lit, and has gone trotting back to her single bed in Mom and Dad's basement with her tail between her legs, whining all the way.

I'm trying think of any other genre where critics would feel so completely at ease dismissing every example as superficial, reactionary crapola without doing more than taking a fast glance at the covers and skimming an interview or two, and you know what? I can't.

But in the case of girlie books with high heels and hot pink covers, books in which the heroine might actually care about clothing and her romantic future, books written by women, for women, about women, in a comic voice, books with -- oh, the horror! -- happy endings? Off with their heads!

It would be exasperating if it wasn't so predictable...or if it made any difference in the real world.

I remember after I posted about Curtis Sittenfeld's likening chick-lit writers to sluts, I got an email from a reader in Texas, who gently set me straight.

She doesn't care about the critics' name-calling. She doesn't care what labels the marketers put on books, or where the books get reviewed. She knows what she likes and she knows how to find it, and the whole debate over what constitutes chick lit and whether any of it's any good does not matter to her at all. (I suspect it doesn't matter much to anyone except those of us who write it, those who like to follow inside-baseball publishing tempests in teapots...and writers who can't get published and have determined that this is somehow Sophie Kinsella's fault).
| #



Welcome to A Moment of Jen, author Jennifer Weiner's constantly-updated take on books, baby, and news of the world. Email me at jen (a) jenniferweiner.com.

JenniferWeiner.com
Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

To order Then Came You, click on the cover




To order Fly Away Home, click on the cover




To order Best Friends Forever, click on the cover




To order Certain Girls, click on the cover




To order The Guy Not Taken, click on the cover




To order Goodnight Nobody, click on the cover:



To order Little Earthquakes, click on the cover:



To order In Her Shoes, click on the cover:



To order Good In Bed, click on the cover:



My bio
JenniferWeiner.com
Advice For Aspiring Writers

This weblog is now syndicated via this link.

Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]



Jen International

Goodnight Nobody - Norway


Little Earthquakes - Norway


The Guy Not Taken - UK


Good In Bed - Japan


Good In Bed - Dutch


The Guy Not Taken (Dutch)


Goodnight, London!


Goodnight, Amsterdam!


Petit Earthquakes!


Little Earthquakes Japan


IHS Japan


GIB Norway


IHS Norway


Chaussure à son pied


Little Aardschocken


In Her Shoes - Polish


En sus Zapatos


Bueno en la Cama!


Little Earthquakes - Germany


In Her Shoes - Germany


In Her Shoes - UK


In Her Shoes - Italian


In Her Shoes - Dutch


GIB in Finnish


GIB in French


Germans love Hasselhoff and GIB:


Cannie hits Japan!:


NEW - Little Earthquakes Sweden


Cannie goes Swedish!


Cannie hits Rio!


Cannie Goes Dutch:


Polish:


Jen's Favorite Links:

All in the Family:

Throwing Things
Joe Weiner
BenderSpink

News and Media:
MediaNews
Television Without Pity

LitLife:
Moby Lives
Publisher's Weekly
Booksense
Old Hag
Beatrice
Sarah Weinman
Galley Cat
Southern Comfort

Baby Mama:
Bad Mother
Parsley


Snarkspot archives:




Powered by Blogger



Copyright 2002-2008, Jennifer Weiner

Listed on BlogShares