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posts about #womensfiction more → Blogger Asks, What Is Women's Fiction?
The Fun/Smart Divide: Why Books Are Candy-Coated
New York, 12:44 AM
Tue Dec 8
68 posts in the last 24 hours
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Blogger Asks, What Is Women's Fiction? |
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06/04/09
It's kinda hard to get a degree in 19th-century British Lit if you don't read any novels written by women. Needless to say, the attrition rate was fairly high.
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yes! I looooove that book. I have tried to convince pretty much everyone I know to read it!
06/04/09
Have you read The Return of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas? She's a really interesting writer, not strictly sci-fi but she deals with the tropes in an interesting way, particularly in that book.
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Also I love Neal Stephenson, and am a lady. When I read Snow Crash, I wouldn't shut up about it for weeks. Though I haven't gotten around to the last book of the Baroque Cycle, I admit, because those books are commitments.
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"Have you read The Return of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas?"
oh, wonderful, I will check it out. I am always psyched for new fiction recommendations, and happen to have some time at the beach planned for myself next week. Perfect, thank you!
I have had several people (men and women) tell me that they've purposefully avoided "Cryptonomicon" because they've heard it has so much math in it. Sigh. All I know is that I could read it and love it, even though I had to completely re-learn basic math in order to take the GRE.
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Heh, I still can't shut up about "Cryptonomicon"! I live in Chicago and just toured the German U-boat that is at the Museum of Science and Industry, and it just made the book even cooler.
I am trying to read "Quicksilver" currently, and I have to confess that it feels like a slog. But some of his books are slow burns-- I didn't really like "The Diamond Age" until about 150 pages into it.
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06/04/09
Women's fiction is a Lifetime Original Movie screenplay.
Women's fiction is written in small blurbs underneath pictures of celebrities.
Women's fiction is written every day, by idiots who say that there is no glass ceiling.
Women's fiction is being cataloged on Twitter, under the tag #liesgirlstell.
06/04/09
In case you were wondering, there is also a mystery books shelf, a psych textbooks-music therapy books-general music books shelf, a myths and legends shelf, three general fantasy/scifi shelves and a Terry Pratchett shelf that has double the amount of books on it that normally go on a shelf (ran out of room, I had to get creative!). There is also a lot of overflow into the other rooms of my mom and dad's house.
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I would think, myself, that you'd label as "men's" and "women's" fiction the genres, subjects, and writers whose readership is primarily male or female. This doesn't mean that their ONLY readers are male or female, simply that they are generally associated with a male or female audience. I generally consider particular writing styles or voices "male" or "female": the terse, staccato prose of Hemingway and Chuck Palahniuk, for instance, I'd call "male". That said, I of course know many women who love Hemingway dearly, and I, a woman, have read several of Palahniuk's novels.
That all said, I don't really like to use these terms at all. Book-store labels like this are inherently reductionist, and, when applied to a minority (like "women"), often serve to devalue that work in the eyes of potential readers. Not reading Alice Monroe because she's a "woman's" writer? That's a problem.
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Fiction written by women is not inherently different than fiction written by men. But novels written by women are labeled as different-Amazon has a women's fiction category but no men's fiction category (those are just books).
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Women's Horror, maybe.
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As to some others - early 20th century and all admittedly English rather than North American: Rosumund Lehman, Jean Rhys, Antonia White, the wonderful and too often overlooked Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Bowen, Iris Murdoch (although it's debatable whether she really tackles women rather than disembodied minds)
06/04/09
Capturing a woman's feelings and thoughts doesn't make a writer a "women's writer." It just makes them "good writers."
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I mean, I don't use the label women's writer or women's fiction on my own. This is a response to the article-- not a call to label things a certain way.
06/04/09
Sometimes I feel that some men don't take women's issues seriously only because no one ever told them they should. Considering the women who wrote the characters they'd most be able to empathize with and who wrote about the most important issues to belong ONLY to women would only perpetuate that.
06/04/09
Where are you getting the idea that these books belong only to women? I certainly didn't say that, and I haven't seen anyone else say it either. (also, Hardy and Thackery are men. And write about men too. and Hardy, at least, is definately read by men)
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