Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

There’s been a pretty interesting discussion on The Lipstick Chronicles about the girl ghetto in mystery fiction. Of the four responses, I have to say Harlan Coben’s interested me the most, especially this bit here:

TLC: Do you think male readers want a different type of story than women (i.e., gun-toting loner vs. something more relationship-oriented and emotional), or is it all about perception?

HARLAN: I think female readers may be more open than male readers. A female reader will be more apt to read, say, a Tom Clancy than a man would be to read a Danielle Steel. The female audience is also larger. That said, I hate generalizations, so maybe I should just ignore this.

I think Harlan is right: generally speaking, women tend to read more, and more diversely, than men do. However, forget the comparison to Danielle Steel. Hell, Danielle Steel books aren’t ghettoized solely because they’re women’s fiction. Let’s face it: her books just tend to be god-fucking-awful. Let’s try another author, an author who’s even more successful, one whose works are extremely well-regarded by pretty much everyone in the fiction-by-women-for-women community (barring infidels like myself, of course): Nora Roberts.

Would the average guy be caught dead reading, say, Jewels of the Sun or Irish Thoroughbred? Not on your fucking life. On the other hand, most women wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen reading books by Tom Clancy, Lawrence Block, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, Harlan Ellison, etc. Hell, a significant number of women read lad lit penned by the likes of Nick Hornby et al, or gritty urban tales with a distinct masculine bent like those written by Irvine Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk, but I’m willing to bet that the numbers aren’t reversed for Helen Fielding, Jennifer Weiner or Maeve Binchy. In fact, I’m willing to bet that a woman who reads mostly male-oriented fiction, fiction that’s considered gritty and dark, is seen as exponentially cooler than a woman who reads mostly female-oriented fiction about relationships and (god forbid) squishy emotions like love and grief. The former is one of the boys. She’s cool. She’s not squeamish. She gets it. She’s not into all that girly shit.

It all boils down to the stigma of effeminacy. To be called “girly” is rarely a compliment. “You throw like a girl.” “Stop being such a girl.” “You write like a girl.”

And God forbid that a man, well, read like a girl.

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