fluff enough
I get some interesting offers via email to my blog (no, not that kind!). Unlike my friend Metrodad, no one has ever offered to send me a free portable DVD player to review. But a few months ago, an intern from BenBella Books contacted me to see if they could send me a review copy of This is Chick Lit. I’ve never been one to say no to free books, so I told him I would take the book, but that I wouldn’t guarantee that I’d review it.
The backstory on this book is that it’s a collection of short stories by women authors lumped into the category of ‘chick lit,’ who reacted badly to the publication of a women’s short story collection called “This is *Not* Chick Lit.”
I have to say, that as far as burning political issues of the day go, this is not one of my more pressing concerns. I can appreciate it that women get upset when they feel like other women are denigrating their work–I mean, the whole Mommy wars thing is right up this same alley. Or maybe it’s more comparable to the mommybloggers controversy that’s occurred at Blogher–where some women got upset that there are mommybloggers in the world, taking away from the seriousness of their own blogs.
It came last week, and I read it over the weekend. For the most part, the stories that I liked were the ones that didn’t try to fit in an entire novel in ten pages. The art of story writing is different from the art of novel writing, but I’m not sure every contributor to this thing got the memo.
I’m not the world’s biggest chick lit fan, but neither am I the smallest. I’ve read all of Jennifer Weiner’s books, I read the Bridget Jones novels, The Devil Wears Prada, The Nanny Diaries, all that stuff. But just like I don’t love every mommyblogger’s writing, I didn’t love every story in this collection. There were some that I liked, but none of them knocked my socks off.
If you’re looking for a light beach read, check this one out.
Bumblebee Sweet Potato 