Then try this. Not sure you’ll like it? Read the Amazon reviews! Solid 5 stars all the way, and this guy gets starred reviews from Publishers’ Weekly, too. It would make a great Christmas present.

He’s also a terrific fellow. The author, I mean…

I’ve always hated the expression “chick lit”, even though I’ll admit I have used it myself in the past to describe books written in a lighthearted way about modern woman and non-serious issues. Light reading is a better description, and in the past those are the words we used to describe these books; and other books like them that weren’t about women. Not particularly deep novels, but fun. Light reading, and who doesn’t need that sometimes! (Tell me you only read novels of significance and depth, and I’ll tell you to lighten up once in a while.)

The expression “chick lit”, though, has singled out one type of light read and given it a derogatory twist. It’s by chicks for chicks. Not by or for women. Chicks. Fluffy little things without stature that look at you with a vacant stare. And the expression is used now by some readers with a sneer, with the implication that these books are worthless reads, beneath the notice of all men, and also beneath the notice of women of substance.

Here is a marvellous Huffington Post article from Diane Meier, American author of a book about an intelligent middle-aged woman, “The Season of Second Chances”.

As she herself puts it: “Most critics felt the need to talk about how “surprisingly” intelligent the book was. Their tell-tale phrase: how many “notches above Chick Lit” they deemed the book. Or they registered amazement that a book so domestic in tone might have been intended for — can you imagine — educated, intelligent readers.”

Later on in the article (and do read the whole thing) she writes:

She goes on to question the idea of having a prize just for woman novelists, and I’m not sure that I agree with her on that issue, but mostly she is spot on.

I especially agree with her at this moment…Why this week? Well, because it hit home. (Yeah, I admit it. I wait till things get personal, before I get vocal. Mea culpa.)

Stormlord Rising is a fantasy novel, but it does deal with issues of war and its effects, especially on the woman and children who are caught up in the battle. Ok, so it’s a story, not a treatise, but it touches on things like: how much should a woman do to keep her unborn baby safe? Should a woman use her sexual allure and her body to stay alive? How much should you compromise your principles for those you love?

Universal themes, one would assume. One Amazon reviewer didn’t much like the latter two-thirds of the book – his privilege, of course, and I don’t mind that – but he says it’s chick lit and therefore automatically disappointing, not worth the read. Pregnancy in war time, love and life and death of loved ones, are chick issues apparently, not universal after all. Chick lit. Light-hearted comedy.

Let’s stop using the expression “chick lit” even if we enjoy the books now so designated. Let’s be careful how we use the expression “women’s issues” when such issues are usually universal to humanity. If a reader doesn’t like a book about what women feel or what happens to them, or the way in which women live and love, let him say so outright, and not hide behind a derogatory dismissal: “It’s chick lit”.
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 This is either hysterically funny, or excruciatingly wince-making.

A tweet from Terry of BabelClash fame (see Borders.com) sent me to have a look at the NPR site and Librarian Nancy Pearl talking about “under the radar reads”.

One of the books she talks about is Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven and one of the things she says is:

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Here’s a post for you, the people who read my blog. I assume most of you come here because you read books. (If you don’t read books, well you can tell us why too).

So what I want to know is this: what started you on that road? At what age did you become a reader for life? Were there times when you didn’t read? Were you the odd one out in the family?

My mother read to me all the time before I could read for myself. I expect I also nagged my sister into reading to me too, although I don’t actually remember that.

I was a dedicated reader from the moment I learned how to read for myself, which was about five. I read passionately in spite of a lack of reading material (compared to what is available to kids nowadays) and have never stopped. If I had nothing to read as a child, I re-read and re-read. I read adult books as soon as I have the vocabulary for them, or even before I had the vocabulary for them. I borrowed books. I read my sister’s books from the university library when I was still in primary school.

At five years old I missed the school bus stop (on a public bus) because I was reading Millie Mollie Mandy and the headmaster had to come hunting for me (he was the only teacher with a car).

At primary school the library was a single bookcase in each classroom and we were permitted to borrow one book a week. I nagged my friends into letting me read their borrowed books so I could get my hands on more than one book a week.

Why? Because there were only two forms of entertainment on the farm: books and one’s imagination. Oh, and kindergarten of the air on ABC radio. My siblings were at school long before I was even a twinkle in my dad’s eye. Neighbours were a long way off and play groups were unheard of.

The default for me was books.

So what about you?
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Years ago, close to thirty actually, I came across a coastal town on Morecombe Bay in the U.K. I can’t be sure exactly which one after so long, but I suspect – after a look at the map – that it was Grange-over-Sands. And I’ve just come across that place again, thirty years later in books by Paul Magrs. Ok, so he calls it Whitby, which is over in Yorkshire, but I reckon his literary Whitby is my Grange-over-Sands of 1982.

It happened like this. My sister and I were ambling around the U.K. in a very small car on our very first visit to the Europe. We had an itinerary, sort of, but no accommodation booked. It was April – and of course, utterly gorgeous weather, as it always is when I am in the UK. It was also late evening, the light was beginning to fade, and we’d had a strenuous day and were tired. We’d been driving for ages without having any luck at finding accommodation and were beginning to wonder if we’d end up sleeping in the car. That’s when we found ourselves in this town.

Wonderful! Looked to be just the place to have lots of B&Bs and happy to see customers mid-week in the off season. It looked delightful, an Edwardian seaside resort. So we starting hunting. To our surprise, every place was either full up or massively overpriced by the standards of the day, as if they really didn’t want our custom. We left and went somewhere else.

That’s the bare bones of the story.

But there was something else, and I’m not kidding: the place creeped us out. For a start, we felt as though we had stepped through a time-warp. This didn’t just look like Edwardian England, it was inhabited by people from a bygone era, all geriatric, a great many of whom appeared to be sipping tea with their little fingers crooked as they sat in drawing rooms with bow windows. You could see them as you walked the street – people out of a costume play. Lady Bracknell, wearing pearls and staring at these weird trouser-clad hobos from the colonies. Colonel Blimp with his military moustache and monocle, eyeing us with disapproval. We were in some kind of whacky twilight zone.

This, we decided, was a place where strange things would go bump in the night, and the exceptionally odd landlady would look you straight in the eye come morning and tell you you really didn’t see that body being carried down the stairs in the middle of night. You’d just had a bad dream.

We couldn’t get out of there soon enough.

Until this year, I don’t know what it was all about. Was it simply that we were over tired? Did we hit the Retired Theatrical Costumers’ Association’s annual seaside fling? Were we just over-imaginative?

Well, now I know. Now, you see, I’ve read Never the Bride and Something Borrowed. I swear, somehow thirty years ago, we stepped into Paul Magrs‘ Whitby, and the Bride of Frankenstein answered one of the B&B doors we knocked at while looking for a room. I’m so glad we fled.

Something Borrowed kept me engrossed for part of a very long airplane flight. Better still, I was smiling. There’s no better recommendation than that. If you like your stories whackily insane yet utterly creepy, then try these. Oh, and do be careful in those English seaside resorts.

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To follow on from what I was saying yesterday:

There is an excellent article by critic John Crace on The Guardian page about what makes a good book.

He talks about some interesting stuff, much of which seems obvious, yet is often not realised by readers. For example, not all books by the same author are equally good.

Ever looked at the Amazon reviews of one of those prolific authors who wrote a highly popular and fabulous book in the past and people keep on buying them even though they are now writing mechanical not-so-good, rip-you-off potboilers? There’s one I can think of whose first book- maybe 30 odd years ago – I loved. You can still find it being sold. It has 170+ reviews with an average of 4.5, deservedly so, about as good as it gets. He followed up with some other really good books about the same world.

His latest book, though, has a 2.5 rating. And it’s still on the best seller list. Get with it people; there are stacks of good books out there. If a writer’s latest books don’t treat you, the reader, with respect, then don’t give him your money.

Another point from Crace: hype sells books – it doesn’t mean the book is good.
There’s a classic SF/F book out there at the moment that illustrates this. It had huge amounts of marketing money thrown at it. I have read it. It’s uneven, brilliant in spots, but mostly dull. I suspect it was hyped because a non SF/F editor was impressed with the ideas – an editor who reads very little SF/F and doesn’t have a clue about the quality out there. That’s what it feels like anyway. It has a rating of 3.5, which means that most people didn’t think it deserved the hype. It has been selling pretty well too.

When I think of some of the wonderful SF/F books I’ve read, which fall by the wayside because of a lack of marketing, it breaks my heart…

Crace also says creative writing courses are a waste of time: I can usually sniff out a book that’s been written by a creative writing student within a few pages; there will be no plot to speak of and each sentence will have been polished so many times it will be dead.

Crace again: A good novel should be readable.

And then the clincher: he says some of the best novels are to be found in genre writing. One of the examples he gives is Stieg Larsson. I have just read the first of his 3 books, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I understand it was the second best selling book of 2008 (not sure whether this is just in UK or worldwide in English, or what…) It was a can’t put-it-down whodunnit which I loved.

I didn’t agree with everything Crace said, but interesting nonetheless.

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I have totally been neglecting my book list for this year. Too busy writing to do much reading!

Anyway, just thought I’d make mention of one book I read recently (it took me 2 months to finish).

The Man-Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

Which has to be the most irritating slog I have endured for a long time. Shame, because I studied this period of history at uni (the book is about Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power in Tudor times), I love the topic, the era, I am enormously respectful of Mantel’s research — and the reason for it being such a slog was such a small thing that could have been fixed.

In the interests of not using the names “Thomas” or “Cromwell” too much, Mantel uses “he” most of the time. Which leads to such monstrosities as this, a passage that starts after a text break:

When Fisher comes to his senses and asks pardon, the old bishop begs the king to consider that he is ill and infirm. The king indicates that the bill of attainder must take its course: but it is his habit, he says, to grant mercy to those who admit their fault.

The Maid is to be hanged. He says nothing of the chair of human bones. He tells Henry she has stopped prophesying, and hopes that at Tyburn, with the noose around her neck, she will not make a liar out of him.

When his councillors kneel before the king, and beg that Thomas More’s name be taken out of the bill, Henry yields the point. Perhaps he has been waiting for this: to be persuaded. Anne is not present, or it might have gone otherwise.

They get up and go out, dusting themselves. He thinks he hears the cardinal laughing at them, from some invisible part of the room.

The first he is Fisher. The second is – I think – King Henry, but because of Mantel’s propensity to use he for Cromwell all the time, I can’t be sure. It could be Cromwell protesting to the king, although I don’t think so. The third he I assume is Henry until I read on. The fourth refers to Cromwell, so I guess the third does too. The fifth is King Henry. The sixth…I assume is also Cromwell. And so it goes on throughout the book.

The problem is that every time Mantel uses he I am plucked out of the story to think about who she means. What should have been a wonderful read became tedious hard work, because my brain is programmed to think that a stray he refers back to the previous male character mentioned, especially if that character was the last subject of a sentence.

And this is supposed to be writing good enough to win the Booker? Nope, sorry. Not to me.

Grammatical rules are there for a purpose. Break them at your peril. If you do it well, it can enhance the story, do it badly and you spoil the book for the reader. Obviously the Booker judges didn’t mind having to sort it out every time they hit a he. I did.

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This via Making Light:

Reading worked best, reducing stress levels by 68 per cent, said cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis. Subjects only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles, he found. In fact it got subjects to stress levels lower than before they started.

Listening to music reduced the levels by 61 per cent, have a cup of tea of coffee lowered them by 54 per cent and taking a walk by 42 per cent. Playing video games brought them down by 21 per cent from their highest level but still left the volunteers with heart rates above their starting point.

See the rest of the article here.
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