Hey chicky babe: championing chicklit

Yesterday’s meme reminded me of Jess’s post at this delicious solitude about her unexpected discovery of the Jane Austen Book Club. To the disappointment of her book-purist heart, she found herself enjoying it. Her problem was that the novel may be considered ‘chicklit’. Evaluative and enlightening, her post and the comments received provide an interesting take on our assumptions as readers.

Stigma surrounds chicklit. But if content counts, then shouldn’t we as readers be open to new reading adventures? Sure, chick lit books are marketed with bubble-gum covers that scream cultural commodification. This sucks for authors who mix the frivolity of the fashion world with astute observation. Intelligent chick lit, like La’Brooy, can appeal on different levels. I do wonder though, if I wasn’t young and female would I still find La’Brooy equally amusing and enjoyable?

One day, a customer came in to work looking for a book. She was afflicted with a common customer ailment; details had fled her brain. Not even a title or author to go on. She lingered in front of the Alphabet Sisters . She was searching for a book ‘kind of like that.’ I ascertained she meant something with that candy-pink, girly appeal. She wavered at classifying this mysterious book as chick lit. We couldn’t work out what it was.

Alternatively, I recommended the book I was shelving - La’Brooy’s love struck . I raved about its intellectual merit, Salinger allusions, quality prose. Realizing these things mighn’t appeal, I talked up its humourous plot. She looked dubiously for a moment at the garish cover, until recognition hit: ‘that’s it! That’s the author I read!’. Turns out, she had read La’Brooy’s new novel Serendipity, but almost didn’t recognize the author owing to the different nature of the covers adorning her first two books. She happily bought La’Brooy's other books. We were both spun out.

The wish list was truly a riotous read. Particularly amusing was a scene involving an intellectual rendezvous at a bookstore gone awry. Intellectual pretensions are satirized as they create misunderstanding and embarrassment. The incident ends with the accidental theft of some Marquis de Sade. I’ll zip it with the rave review, but the humour definitely gave me an ab workout.

LOVE IN THE BOOKSTORE: BOOKISH RELATIONS

I sell books for bucks part-time. Our staff is a thoroughly attractive bunch. One girl, the lovely J, a fresh-faced, green-eyed, luminescent beauty, often finds herself approached by hopeful suitors. One day, a Jasper Fforde signing sci-fired up readers, the bookstore abuzz with the chattering commotion of fans. J stood sentinel, directing them into lines. She was approached by a man who asked her if Fforde would sign a book by a different author. Unfortunately, he had left his Fforde collection at home, he stated, with a strange conviction in the normalcy of this explanation. Odd request, but she had encountered it before. Advising him that Fforde would probably sign it, J told him to line up and check with the author. The man did not move on but instead, looking at her expectantly, asked her to sign the book for him.

“I don’t quite understand you” J replied, thinking he was one of the mild weirdoes that bookstores inevitably attract.

“I was wondering if you could sign my book” he repeated, “and…just underneath add your phone number” he said self-assuredly.

She chuckled gently, replying, “A for originality, but I have a boyfriend”.

“You can’t help but try” he said, walking away, his pride consoled, having elicited a giggle from a pretty girl.

The bookstore. A place for a bibliophile’s solo discovery. A pick-up joint. Most that enter enjoy reading. But is a love connection based on literary preference a risk worth taking? Journalist Marieke Hardy investigates this question in the Age article Left on the Shelf. She recalls her past bookish liaisons:

“Joel insisted I bone up on Bulgakov; Matty read Bukowski and then wrote countless pages in a similarly liquored-up style; Simon swore by the dusty prose of Tim Winton.”

In search of a literary lover, she attends a literary speed dating event in the hope of meeting, perhaps, an absolutely edible Vonnegut reader. Painstakingly, she chooses her book, Confederacy of Dunces, with awareness that reading taste speaks volumes about a person. The timer ticks, and the bibliophiles circulate:

"Men come and go; pages whirring. The music stops and starts. One by one, I am presented with a variety of male courters holding a variety of novels. David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. In Cold Blood. The Michael Palin Diaries.

"Oh, lovely," I say when I see the Palin. "What's it like?".

He glances down at the shiny hardback. Picks absently at an Angus and Roberston price sticker.

"I don't know, I haven't read it. To be honest I just thought it looked OK so I picked it up on my way here and ..." he trails off, shrugging.
There is an awkward pause.

"So what do you do?" he asks eventually, trying to surreptitiously look down my top before our five minutes is up."

Loveless, Marieke Hardy emerges despondent. She muses that “an adoration of fine scribes can be such a random gift”. Consolation affords itself in the form of empty pages of possibility. Random moments on the train line, dinner parties and future novels offer opportunity for literary entanglement. Indeed, although most would not choose their nearest and dearest based on reading matter, it thrills the booklover’s heart to have a ‘you too?’ moment with another reader.