~ By Melina Kantor
Happy Friday, chick lit fans!
Wow. It’s the middle of September. Hard to believe! I just finished my first week back at school (I’m a teacher).
Yes, vacation is officially o-v-e-r and fall is on its way. And, I don’t know if you’ll think of this as good news or bad news, but that means it’s almost time for NaNoWriMo. . .
Yikes! But more on that later.
News:
Author Polly Courtney has decided to no longer work with HarperCollins. Why? She didn’t want her books portrayed as chick lit:
“I’m not averse to the term chick lit,” said Courtney, “but I don’t think that’s what my book is. The implication with chick lit is that it’s about a girl wanting to meet the man of her dreams. [My books] are about social issues – this time about a woman in a lads’ mag environment and the impact of media on society, and feminism.”
What do you think of her definition? Are chick lit books only about finding romance? What about social issues? Leave a comment and let us know.
Goodreads has come up with a formula for recommending books:
Combining multiple proprietary algorithms which analyze 20 billion data points, Goodreads better predicts which books people will want to read next.
Using ‘The Help’ as an example, if a reader liked it because they like reading historical fiction and they also liked ‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society’ and ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, ’ then a great recommendation for that reader is ‘These Is My Words.’ With Amazon, the focus is on other best sellers so someone buying ‘The Help’ would get recommendations for books as diverse as ‘Water For Elephants, ’ ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘One Day.’
“With Goodreads, it’s as if you combine your favorite librarian, your best friend, and a database of two million book titles into one person and ask ‘what should I read next?’” said Chandler. “We’re the Netflix of book recommendations. As members add more reviews and ratings, we keep improving our suggestions for them.”
Interesting theory. What do you think? Can this work?
Here’s to a wonderful weekend full of reading and writing. Looking to find more time to write? Here’s an idea:
See you next week! 🙂
Melina writes contemporary women’s fiction with a pinch of oregano and a dash of chutzpah. She just returned from a two month trip to Crete and Israel, where she visited family and friends did her best to turn her travels into research and inspiration for her writing. You can visit her at http://melinakantor.com.
Nicely put, Chris. I completely agree with you.
I see chick lit as being more about dreams, with or without a man as the primary goal. I won’t argue that chick lit, as a term, has a ditzy connotation. And labels can hurt. But I think most contemporary women struggle with real social issues, and if you’re writing a contemporary novel from a younger woman’s POV, you end up with — chick lit.