Sugar Baby Love

Chick lit? Sick lit, more like…

I’ve just read a fabulous article by Helen Rumbelow about the decline of chick lit on Times Online (it’s so freshly pressed that no Google result exists for it yet).  The way we read is clearly changing, and it is obviously no longer acceptable to female readers to be targeted in a patronising and divisive fashion. WH Smith would’ve cheerfully continued to have a section labelled Women’s Fiction, had two offended young women not complained about it.

What I found most interesting about the article was the male chicklit authors suggesting that men rather than women formed the greater part of their readership. Moreover, the invention of the ereader has enabled these men to read these chick lit novels in secrecy, safe in the knowledge that no city boy will laugh at their reading matter on the Tube. One massive disadvantage the ereader creates, however, is a loss of community in the act of reading. If you can’t tell what a stranger’s reading, how can you ask them if it’s any good?