Recent Salon article on women's fiction: Women's Fiction: All Misery and Martinis?

http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/03/19/womens_fiction

"As Rebecca Traister wrote in 2005, 'Beating on 'women's' fiction -- and dismissing certain literary trends as feminine rubbish -- has a history as long as the popular fiction itself.'"

The article also goes on to define a big issue with women's fiction, which is that it's a very vague definition, and no one seems to know who gets to decide (publishers? readers? authors?) what ends up tagged as WF or not.

Beach Reads... Summer will be here before you know it!

The upcoming issue of Library Journal (May 1, 2010) has my latest Beach Reads roundup:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6726026.html

Would like to point out that I would also add to the list 2 more books I just finished (not in the article, but they were positively reviewed in LJ by others. I'll be posting my own reviews here this week sometime) -
Allison Winn Scotch's The One That I Want (due out in June); and Kathleen Center's Get Lucky (out now).  I'm  also really looking forward to Jennifer Weiner's Fly Away Home, which is due out in July, but from what I gather from following Weiner (OK, OK, stalking, LOL) on Facebook, she's in the final edit stages, so there isn't an ARC available yet... I'm hoping my editor at LJ gets her hands on it and sends it my way when it needs to be reviewed!

And I simply LOVED Isabel Wolff's A Vintage Affair (due out in June).  It came to me as part of the article, but I liked it so much I asked LJ to run a separate, starred review of it so it wouldn't get lost in the roundup. Will post the review once it's published!

Well, hello there! And mind if I brag?

Well!  It’s been way too long since I’ve posted, but let me take a moment to tell you why!  I recently published an article on Readers Advisory for Public Libraries magazine,  titled "Jack of All Trades Reader's Advisory" for the Jan/Feb 2010 issue.  When it’s available online, I’ll post the link here.

I also have this year's women's fiction  "beach reads" roundup coming out soon for Library Journal... should be the May or June 1st issue, I think.  Will certainly post the link when it's available.  Here's the link for 2008's list (I didn't write this one, but it's still fab!), and the 2006 roundup.

I’ve done several presentations in the last month, Feel the Need to Weed for the Illinois State Library’s On the Front Lines conference, and Books:  The Top 5 of the Top 5 for the national Public Library Association conference.

And, I’ve snagged 2 kudos this year.  I am the 2010 recipient of PLA’s Allie Beth Martin Award, as well as named one of Library Journal’s 2010 Movers and Shakers. 

So you can see, some of this has kept me from posting on this blog!  I plan on being able to post at least weekly in the coming months – we'll see!

The Article that started it all...

Here's a link to the chick lit article I wrote for Library Journal back in 2005, which was my entryway to becoming a library expert on women's fiction (editors at Libraries Unlimited had come across my article and that led them to asking me to write the 2 books for them!)


Hip Lit for Hip Chicks

Older titles, but still relevant info.

"Chick lit offers fun, entertaining reading—don't go looking for timeless prose, philosophical musings, or unpredictable plots here!—but that does not completely explain its allure. The genre's aim of eliciting a response of "I'm exactly like that" or "That just happened to me!" has really struck a chord with women in their twenties and thirties who want to be reassured that they are not alone in screwing up their lives—or that screwing up doesn't preclude a happy ending."  Read More...

Women's Fiction: What's the appeal?

Women’s Fiction:  What’s the Appeal?

(Originally appeared on the now defunct Libraries Unlimited's Reader's Advisor News online newsletter:)

I was chatting with a male patron recently, and he wanted to know what makes a book “women’s fiction”.  As a non-librarian, non-book industry person, he wanted to know, was it simply books about women?  It’s a little more nuanced than that.

As we talked, one of the points that came up was that the majority of readers seem to be female.  This may simply be a generalization, but it’s held true at the libraries I’ve worked at.  And one thing you’ll notice – women read across the board, while men don’t.  You will often see women reading a Harlan Coben thriller, a recent nonfiction blockbuster, or a hard-boiled detective story, but you’d be hard pressed to find a male reader who counts Nora Roberts, Jennifer Weiner, or Sophie Kinsella among his favorite authors.   

So, if women will read just about anything, what’s the special appeal of Women’s Fiction?  

Women’s Fiction is that catch-all term that covers fiction focused on the trials and tribulations of modern women.   It’s difficult to call it a genre, because the scope of the story can cover so many other genres – there can be mystery or suspense elements, it can take place in a different era, it can be funny, or sad, or often both.  

The appeal really is that when a reader picks up a Women’s Fiction novel, she is looking for a sense of recognition.  As a reader, I love being able to identify with a character.   From sad moments to happy celebrations to “thank goodness that never happened to me” – it’s pleasurable and comforting to escape into a story that you connect with on a certain level.  If I had to boil it down, I would say - we read nonfiction to learn something; we read suspense to get a thrill; we read science fiction and fantasy to take ourselves to another world; we read Women’s Fiction to identify and feel recognition.  

As I explained some of this to my patron, he of course then wanted to know, “So, what makes something “Men’s Fiction?”.  That’s a little harder to pin down.  Is there such a thing as “Men’s Fiction”?  I jokingly told him that everything else was men’s fiction, women just chose to read it as well.  I would be interested in hearing your responses.  Is there anything that holds the same appeal to male readers, and almost exclusively to male readers?  All the books I could think of right off the bat were books that I know have female readership as well.  Is there a sense of recognition in typical “male” books?  Are our male readers even interested in that factor?