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Good chick lit.

jaybe

jaybe

Member
There is such a thing - so don't start denying it. I'm snobby and avoid anything described as this as much as I do stamp collectors and train spotters.

I'll start you off with 'Valley of the Dolls' by Jacqueline Susann. It's described as a cult classic, not chic lit, but that's what it is. No sloppy mush though! A great book about the realities of celebrities.
 
Maybe you're confused because it's usually called chick lit. Chic lit sounds like books that are in fashion.

One of the best selling chick lit authors said:

"To suggest that another woman's ostensibly literary novel is chick lit feels catty, not unlike calling another woman a slut -- doesn't the term basically bring down all of us?" -- Curtis Sittenfeld in the New York Times


But she's young. If it helps you to sell your book, what the heck. Sittenfeld's book Prep was boilerplate lukewarm suck, by the way. And there was also that scandal chick lit by the plagiarising Harvard girl who hired a team of writers. It's not a genre with much distinction.
 
The only Chick Lit that I've really read is Something Borrowed and the sequel, Something Blue by Emily Giffin. They were pretty good-light and humorous reads. I was talking to my boss (he's a bookstore owner :)) about this very thing yesterday and he said that this genre is on the rise. Stuff like The Devil Wears Prada and all that...it must sell pretty good. I'm curious...do men have any category like this? A genre just for them? I would say mystery and horror, but women read a lot of that as well.
 
FrodoLIVES said:
this genre is on the rise. Stuff like The Devil Wears Prada and all that...it must sell pretty good.
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So good, in fact, that some people have suggested the apparently less demeaning handle "hen lit" for more "serious" chick lit.

FrodoLIVES said:
I'm curious...do men have any category like this? A genre just for them? I would say mystery and horror, but women read a lot of that as well.
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Well, I guess the opposite of hen lit would be cock lit.
 
FrodoLIVES said:
The only Chick Lit that I've really read is Something Borrowed and the sequel, Something Blue by Emily Giffin. They were pretty good-light and humorous reads. I was talking to my boss (he's a bookstore owner :)) about this very thing yesterday and he said that this genre is on the rise. Stuff like The Devil Wears Prada and all that...it must sell pretty good. I'm curious...do men have any category like this? A genre just for them? I would say mystery and horror, but women read a lot of that as well.
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It's on the rise in the sense that it's a marketing category that seems to be working, but not in the sense of the quality of books associated with it.

In the UK, the guy version of the genre is called lad lit and most would include Nick Hornby's books. The ruder term is dick lit.
 
novella said:
In the UK, the guy version of the genre is called lad lit and most would include Nick Hornby's books. The ruder term is dick lit.
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Interesting, I've heard of chick lit (avoid it on principle), but I've never heard the term lad lit over here in the states.
 
VTChEwbecca said:
Interesting, I've heard of chick lit (avoid it on principle), but I've never heard the term lad lit over here in the states.
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It seems to focus on the commitment-averse and serial dater type characters. The funny thing is, I think lad lit books are popular with women, but chick lit books aren't popular with men. We could take a straw poll on that.

Guys, who has read:

The Devil Wears Prada
The Nanny Diaries
Bridget Jones (any of them)
Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing
The Rules
Sex and the City
Prep
(and there's a new one out, which is like Prada but in a different corporate setting)


I'm sure there are more, but these come immediately to mind.
 
I checked out a Jodi Picoult book from the library once. I don't know it qualifies as "chic lit" though it's definitely nothing you'll find in a guy's library. I read the first ten pages, I'm still scarred for life.
 
I think it's easy to get snobby over a term given to literature by marketing companies. Looking at novella's list of titles, I would say this genre is written for modern fast moving people to relate to. (or make them feel better about their own lives) Nothing too heavy or tragic - can't have readers bawling on the train - it's 'light' commuter material that can be taken out and read in public. That's my analysis anyway! Oh, and of course blokes won't read it - in public!....
 
The only chick lit I have read (that I can recall) were One for the Money by Janet Evanovitch and Watermelon by Marian Keyes. While both were amusing at times, chick lit really isn't my thing. Perhaps it's that I'm not yet at an age where I can relate to the main character.
 
I've read, from my list below, Nanny, Bridget 1, Prep, and Girl's Guide. The only one I would recommend is Girl's Guide.

Also, I personally think Valley of the Dolls is not chick lit, per se (as these categories go). For one thing, it's long. For another, it is part of the larger, more established genre, the 70s Blockbuster, standing alongside Peter Benchley, Leon Uris, Sidney Sheldon, James Mitchner, etc. It was part of the general mania for really thick 'thrilling' paperbacks. Plus, it does have a serious tone and some pretty gnarly stuff compared with the average chick lit, which is basically Cinderella-as-Mary-Tyler-Moore.
 
It's not really adult chic lit, but as far as teenage chick lit goes, The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot are actually quite entertaining. Nothing like the movie...which is evil, even more so because the books are so awesome. Mia is an intelligent teenager who is a vegetarian obsessed with Green Peace and politics, kind of dorky, and likes things like Rocky Horror and Star Wars and Buffy. A very interesting and fleshed-out character who reminds me of a lot of my friends. She finds out that she is the princess of a small European country and the only heir because her father now can't have kids due to his testicular cancer. So she has to be trained to rule this country, which she has no interest in doing, and try to balance it with her other causes and her social life. She has very amusing observations about things and tends to obsess over things like her "lack of a mammary gland" and her best friend's older brother's chest.
 
jaybe said:
I'll start you off with 'Valley of the Dolls' by Jacqueline Susann. It's described as a cult classic, not chic lit, but that's what it is. No sloppy mush though! A great book about the realities of celebrities.
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I wouldn't consider Valley of the Dolls chick lit. I read this as a "sneak in the house, read under the covers" book when it first came out in the 60s. A little too raunchy and in your face, I would think.

I'm not sure I've read anything recently that would qualify as chick lit. Would Amy Tan qualify? Or Alice Sebold's, The Lovely Bones?
 
i just read the devil in the junior league by linda francis lee and it was cute! i actually really liked it... i didnt think it was the usual chick lit.
 
I generally read a chic lit or two a month. It's a nice, fluffy respite from some of the heavier stuff I read. I LOVED Devil Wear's Prada and enjoyed Nanny Diaries, even the Shopaholic books. Bridget seems to have kind of been the original Chic Lit book for me.
 
Star-Crossed isn't classified as chick lit, but maybe if there were such a category as historical adventure chick lit... Linda Collison, author
 
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