second amphibian column
(My second "column" for the new, indieish literary magazine at school, The Amphibian. Enjoy. And I threw some inside jokes in there... ha.)
I’ve come here today to do a bit of defending on behalf of a few of my dearest, darlingest friends. They’ve been mocked, ridiculed, their shiny and chipper exteriors scoffed at by myriad better-than-thou critics. So I’m here to rectify that. Sit down, pull up a chair. Let’s chat.
What about, you may ask? Quality chick-lit. Oh, stop rolling your eyes. I’m a connoisseur of the chick-lit genre, and damn proud. I gobble down one fresh trade paperback after another, chuckling aloud as narrators sarcastically recount the series of unfortunate events that high school life can provide. The best of the bunch are funny, fresh, wry and laden with snark. The worst are downright whorrible. But the blind slaughtering of this entire genre has gone on for far too long.
Oh, I've heard you, Past/Current/Future AP Lit Mafia, making condescending remarks from behind your mile-high stacks of Slaughterhouse Five. "How could she read such junk? Such slanderous, harlequin romances?" And that's just where the problem lies. As I've said, some of the books of this genre, with their classic teenage-girl-picture-without-head and splashing neon covers, don't deserve their suffix of 'lit.' Yep, Gossip Girl, A-List, Au Pairs, Bitchy Teenage Girls Being Overly Materialistic and Catty, or whatever other rich-girl 'fantasties' tired publishers have dreamed up, I’m looking-rather, shooting a withering stare-at you. And yes, I blame you, oh books of immense promiscuity and materialism, for the corruption of a genre with so much potential.
But what can we do? We can acknowledge the truly gems, the excellent chick-lit books that often go unrecognized due to slammings of their far less brilliant counterparts. Some personal favorites of mine include Sloppy Firsts (no, it doesn't have a dirty implication, and no, I didn't start reading it only because I thought the title was dirty) and Second Helpings, both by Megan McCafferty. They are witty and sharp, clever and amusing, and enjoyable without reducing your brain cell count. I've read them both about, eh, fifteen times. And, luckily enough for all of us Megan Maniacs, the third installment of this mini-series, Charmed Thirds, will be released on April 11th. But McCafferty’s books do not stand alone. There are other hysterical and brilliant chick-lit choices out there if you just dig. For example, I have an especially soft spot in my heart for Why Girls Are Weird by pamie.com writer Pamela Ribon; her book chronicles a plethora of misadventures of a blundering blogger.
By no means am I advocating you go drop your volumes of Tolstoy and Austen off at [town name] Recycling Center this afternoon. If classics are your cup of not-so-contemporary tea, go for it. And my love for chick-lit doesn’t undermine the fact that, I, too, love reading slightly more edifying, slightly less sexually-descript works, such as the novels of Barbara Kingsolver or Amy Tan. If you have that base of literature love, oh ye of AP Lit, that’s an achievement.
But, let’s say your love of reading isn’t germinating so well by bogging through five-inch thick reads from the nineteenth century, and you most certainly don’t want turn yourself over to the dark side of mindless throwaway semi-porn novels. Well, then, my friends, it’s high time for you to join me in the ranks of hatching some much-needed respect for quality chick-lit.
I’ve come here today to do a bit of defending on behalf of a few of my dearest, darlingest friends. They’ve been mocked, ridiculed, their shiny and chipper exteriors scoffed at by myriad better-than-thou critics. So I’m here to rectify that. Sit down, pull up a chair. Let’s chat.
What about, you may ask? Quality chick-lit. Oh, stop rolling your eyes. I’m a connoisseur of the chick-lit genre, and damn proud. I gobble down one fresh trade paperback after another, chuckling aloud as narrators sarcastically recount the series of unfortunate events that high school life can provide. The best of the bunch are funny, fresh, wry and laden with snark. The worst are downright whorrible. But the blind slaughtering of this entire genre has gone on for far too long.
Oh, I've heard you, Past/Current/Future AP Lit Mafia, making condescending remarks from behind your mile-high stacks of Slaughterhouse Five. "How could she read such junk? Such slanderous, harlequin romances?" And that's just where the problem lies. As I've said, some of the books of this genre, with their classic teenage-girl-picture-without-head and splashing neon covers, don't deserve their suffix of 'lit.' Yep, Gossip Girl, A-List, Au Pairs, Bitchy Teenage Girls Being Overly Materialistic and Catty, or whatever other rich-girl 'fantasties' tired publishers have dreamed up, I’m looking-rather, shooting a withering stare-at you. And yes, I blame you, oh books of immense promiscuity and materialism, for the corruption of a genre with so much potential.
But what can we do? We can acknowledge the truly gems, the excellent chick-lit books that often go unrecognized due to slammings of their far less brilliant counterparts. Some personal favorites of mine include Sloppy Firsts (no, it doesn't have a dirty implication, and no, I didn't start reading it only because I thought the title was dirty) and Second Helpings, both by Megan McCafferty. They are witty and sharp, clever and amusing, and enjoyable without reducing your brain cell count. I've read them both about, eh, fifteen times. And, luckily enough for all of us Megan Maniacs, the third installment of this mini-series, Charmed Thirds, will be released on April 11th. But McCafferty’s books do not stand alone. There are other hysterical and brilliant chick-lit choices out there if you just dig. For example, I have an especially soft spot in my heart for Why Girls Are Weird by pamie.com writer Pamela Ribon; her book chronicles a plethora of misadventures of a blundering blogger.
By no means am I advocating you go drop your volumes of Tolstoy and Austen off at [town name] Recycling Center this afternoon. If classics are your cup of not-so-contemporary tea, go for it. And my love for chick-lit doesn’t undermine the fact that, I, too, love reading slightly more edifying, slightly less sexually-descript works, such as the novels of Barbara Kingsolver or Amy Tan. If you have that base of literature love, oh ye of AP Lit, that’s an achievement.
But, let’s say your love of reading isn’t germinating so well by bogging through five-inch thick reads from the nineteenth century, and you most certainly don’t want turn yourself over to the dark side of mindless throwaway semi-porn novels. Well, then, my friends, it’s high time for you to join me in the ranks of hatching some much-needed respect for quality chick-lit.