I'm not, unfortunately, a Harry Potter fan. It's not that I don't like the lad, I just don't care. I'm a Harry Potter agnostic.
So what's an agnostic to read these days?
The Guardian's book section has a cover story about Christian fiction that's worth reading, if only for explanations like this:
More tellingly, its stark black-and-white morality and its bromides about "healing" address two fundamental American concerns: the need for certainty and for closure (note the vast success - within both the Christian and secular public - of a novel such as Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, with its comforting depiction of the sweet hereafter).
If Christ-lit and kid-lit aren't your thing, how about the much-maligned chick-lit? Booksquare defends the genre, written, incidentally, by, for, and about women, and maligned by the same.
Now don’t get us wrong. We love elitism, so much so that we practice it wherever and whenever we can. The statement does, however, beg the question — is it true that the New York Times does not review chicklit because it sucks? Does the NYT refuse to review other books that suck, or just this particular genre? If that is the case, then, wow, those editors must have had one fun policy and procedures meeting. We imagine the following inserted into the manual:
Section 6, Paragraph 7: The New York Times Book Review (”NYTBR”) will not publish reviews of any novels that fall into the genre of “chicklit.” For the purposes of this paragraph, the genre will be defined as the following:
1. The cover contains shades of pink, blue, green, or anything in the pastel family. Books with covers depicting shoes, purses, hats, or female figures (except those reminiscent of classical sculpture) will also be defined as chicklit.
2. The narrator or protagonist does not possess a Y chromosome.
3. The character(s) experience difficulties with romantic relationships, work, parents, or airline attendants.
4. The author is female or knows a female.
Note: When applying subsection 4, use only the best available information.
Also, thanks to Booksquare, (go read the comments for the great stuff) I've discovered my next beach read: The Thin Pink Line, by Lauren Baratz-Logsted. Faking a pregnancy never sounded like so much fun.
But where are all the women crime fiction writers?
Normally I sympathize with any author who experiences declining book sales. But not this one.
Do real writers blog? Tom Dolby answers:
As a novelist, so much of my interior life is already exposed -- when a book of mine is published, I'm giving my readers eight or 12 or 24 hours of myself -- that to give up that essential energy and put it all online would be to spill some of the blood that fuels my work. For now, I want to experience at least part of my world privately, to let my ideas percolate in my imagination before they make their way to the printed page or the screen.
Can't help but agree.
And that's enough of my blood for now. Check back tomorrow for fresh platelets.
