This hit home quite well today; I was at a garage sale where the young woman was sorting books by "gender appeal". I found myself buying four of them from the "male" box, as the others were pretty much romance types, which just don't do much for me.

I found this to be interesting, as I thought about how I myself react to some book covers and/or titles. I shy away from books with covers linked with high heels and/or shopping, if they are pink... I can't think of any book titles that I shy away from that I categorize otherwise.

There was that craze of Lad Lit not long ago (Nick Hornby, for example), but that seems to have calmed down, and I don't remember there being a pattern of Lad Lit book covers (not like the female ones). For example, with the women-focused covers, it seems like an awful lot of them are white background (or lots of white space), with a cartoon-y leggy white woman with long hair and shopping bags and high heels...

However, I might be wrong about that. I'll have to look at the bookshop this weekend. (Weeh. An excuse to visit! "Research".)

I don't mean to be snobby or demeaning to either gender - I am a woman, after all. However, I do think I expect a certain literary "standard", and I am too embarassed (right word?) to read *obvious* chick lit (like Jennifer Weiner etc.). They seem to be too superficial for me, and altho' I certainly enjoyed the TV series "Sex in the City" as entertainment, I still don't know the big deal about Pierre Laboutin shoes and shopping. :-)

But who am I? They are obviously popular going by the bestselling lists and the movies that are made from them.

When I was teachingEnglish to teenagers (quite a while ago, now), I found that the girls would be happy to read anything as a class-reader but the boys wouldn't touch anything they thought was 'girlie' - like Jane Austen. Though I once took them all through Wuthering Heights.... and the boys were horrified: 'I thought you said it was a love story, Miss, but it's morelike a hate story!' The girls were quite happy with it (apart from grumbling that it was hard to read).

I only skimmed the article. I usually don't bother reading blogs. I have friends that have them, but I consider them (maybe wrongly) to be more like Facebook which I never joined.

I read a wide range of books, but must admit mostly 'male' books, thrillers etc. I do not read 'romance' while I know some enjoy it, to me it is a complete waste of my time. I would never bother with the "Grey" books. The reviews of readers on Amazon about those books mostly admit them to be porn. "You can tell a book by it's cover" - actually the covers with scantily clad females & bare-chested males are a real turn off to me. I realize it take all sorts of readers & we each enjoy our own genres.

Pat