Can someone please explain to me these goddamn "chick" books, with so-called "smart and sassy women" who are slaves to chocolate, and shoes?
Reading the back of these is like reading a shoe store sequence from "Married with Children", without the funny! Well, without the intended funny, anyhow.
Seriously. WTF? Is this supposed to appeal to me, because it's main attraction is for use as kindling, or cramming up the ass of the idiot author who wrote it.
It's weird. My take on it is that they are part of a drive by authors to make novels with a female point-of-view -- I have heard it said that up until recently most books in Western literature, whether written by men or women, whether using a male main character or a female main character, made use of a POV that was either male or supposedly "neutral" (actually just a less obvious male). "Chick" books have female main characters and the corresponding POV, so you'd think it would be a step forward.
But it's not. The women portrayed in these books are still conforming to female stereotypes in Western civilization: they are primarily concerned with material goods (chocolate, shoes) and with obtaining men. Rarely is the main character in one of these books an intellectual or a loner; instead she worries about her appearance. When she's not chasing men, she's concerning herself with children or family members, secretly a soft nurturing type inside her sassy shell.
Well, like >>1, none of these chick books really speak to me either. Guess we should write our own or something.
It doesn't matter if >>1 or >>2 are chicks. Even men can at least attempt to write in a non-stereotyped female pov.
I feel embarrassed saying this, but I really liked Wally Lamb's novel "She's Come Undone" when I was in high school. He perfectly replicated the "female voice" and although it becomes problematic later on, his initial depiction of the fat, outcast female subject of the novel as a HUMAN BEING is a wonderful read.
I can't speak for >>2, but I'm a chick.
All I've seen of "Bridget Jones' Diary" are trailers, and have little opinion on it as of yet. Part of what gets me about the books is the level to which the leading females conform to steriotype. The character I've seen who comes closest, is in the movie Catwoman. Patience's friend from work, who keeps trying to convince her to go out with the police officer. She's comic relief.
>>4 is right.
I've never read it. I'm willing to look into it.
That does explain some of it. I guess these roles are so engrained in these authors minds, that all they can do is give a somewhat creepy depiction of what it's like to be within them?
Even when the character is supposed to be an intellectual, they're not. They're the same drones with a book in their hands. Remember, the loner is always looking to be pulled out of her shell by the right man, so that she can undergo her metamorphosis from a catterpillar to a butterfly.
I don't have the intestinal fortitude to do this, but it'd be nice if there were a list which really separated the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps a review site that's willing to pull no punches about these books. Personally, I'm a little scared of the prospect of reading too many of these. I wouldn't want to auto-brainwash, or something. lol
>Guess we should write our own or something.
Sounds like a plan. See you at the signing. ;) I'd say I needed talent, but then again, look at some of this stuff. What I need is to stop procrastinating.
Books like that are written because, like it or not, there's a market for it.
There is a population of 40-ish overweight housewives who watch soaps on muted TVs in the gym and then go home to stuff themselves with sweets and shoddy "novels". Of course they have nothing to do with reality, that's exactly the point of those "books". What next, the earth is round?
It has very little to do with the "a drive by authors to make novels with a female point-of-view", but rather with the fact, that many freelance-writers out there deliver what their publisher orders them to: Spook books, sci-fi bullshit, "chick" books.
The end.
>>8 is talking out of his ass.
The people I know who read "chick" books are not housewives, do not stuff themselves with sweets, and only half are overweight. They range in age from 22 to 65. A couple of them listen to NPR and watch PBS regularly ( public stations in the U.S. ) and all of them are fairly intelligent. ( One of them does watch soaps, but she is an anomaly, and certainly not stupid. )
I would bet that >>8 is only extrapolating his "population of 40-ish housewives" from the one or two that he has seen watching soaps in the gym, and then has assumed that they go home, eat sweets, and read shoddy novels. You are part of the problem, >>8.