Just read this and didn't know whether to laugh or cry:
The literary genre known as "chick lit" (think "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "In Her Shoes") is often too simple, too trite. The heroine, usually a clumsy type, always gets her man, and if she doesn't, it's because she learns the true meaning of friendship. But every now and then a chick lit book also happens to tell a great story. For instance, the novel on the agenda for tonight's "Chick Lit Book Discussion Group" ... is premium chick lit. It's called "How To Be Good," and it happens to have been written by a man. You go, Nick Hornby.
I do believe Nick Hornby's first novel, High Fidelity, is basically chick lit (in fact, we included it in our Top 10 chick lit books of all time). But How To Be Good? Not so much.
And isn't it interesting that, with all the chick lit out there (and, yes, some of it is simple and trite, but there is plenty that's neither), a "Chick Lit Book Discussion Group" would pick this book? Almost as if they were embarrassed to be reading chick lit in the first place.
