Do you sometimes wake up feeling like life is too ridiculous to be sublime? That the truth is stranger than fiction? Or that your life, if made into a book, would be in danger of running into cliché, if it didn’t have so many beautiful-sounding words in it? Is it possible that you – Dear…
Category: Bestseller Genres
How to Know If You’re A Cop In A Crime Novel
Earlier, we had How To Know If You’re A Chick-Lit Heroine. But you are categorically not a Chick-Lit character. You know this to be true, because you’re so much darker than that. You feel you’re much more closely aligned to a thrilling, mysterious, dangerous situation. The sort of thing you find in crime novels, or thrillers. You’ve…
How To Know If You Are A Chick-Lit Heroine
Inspired by, and with apologies to, this piece of true brilliance from The Toast on how to know if you are in a Jane Austen novel (I love The Toast. Everyone should dip into it now and then in order to find out how many clichés they’re living with. And anyone who has ever had a group…
Up Yours, Literary Fiction
I know. How uncouth! How belligerent, sanctimonious, and other words of more than 1 syllable! Book genres have become a bit of a joke really, as I was saying in my last post regarding the nonsense categorisation of “Women’s Fiction”. Here’s another literary joke for you: ************************************************ Q. What’s the difference between Literary Fiction and Romance? A. So’s your face. ************************************************ Isn’t that…
Adventures in Book Genre Stereotyping
Another day, another Guardian article. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Guardian’s Book section. It feeds me. But I don’t like it when it makes me feel guilty and ashamed. Especially when they’re right. Today’s offensive (i.e. read: far too close to the bone) article points out that there is no such genre as “women’s…
The Next Big Book Trend: That One From Before
What goes around, comes around. Apparently, we are regressing, in terms of fiction, back to the sensationalistic stories of old. People seem surprised by this. I am surprised by people’s surprise. It’s like being taken aback because skirt lengths have changed again. If you didn’t see it coming, you were standing in the tunnel with…
5 Book Trends for 2014
In this post (and, following some suspicious yoghurt, this one) I pretended to have a look at what was going to happen in 2014, but now I’d like to do it for real. What fads and fashions will we see in genre fiction in 2014? Will fantasy lose its dystopian and grimy-fingered grip on the bestseller market? And that age-old question –…
2014: The Year That Was (Part 1)
Taking inspiration from J.K. Rowling, who wrote the last chapter of the Harry Potter series long before half the books were even published, I’ve decided to write my 2014 reviews now. It will save time at the end of the year, when I’ll be very busy with TV appearances, liposuction and smiting my enemies. Only…
Bestseller Trends Part 3: Woman, Know Thy Place
In a previous post I mentioned how, in 2011 and 2012, female authors topped the bestseller lists by writing the books everyone wanted to read. In comparison to ten years earlier, they were not only far more prominent on the list, but outselling male authors for the first time. It was all very promising. However,…
Bestseller Trends Part 2: Fantasy Vs Misery
This is not news to most people, but I’m going to tell you anyway. As readers, we generally want to read something which is far removed from our experience, and possibly at the extreme other end of the spectrum. In good times we sink our teeth into tragedy. In bad times we want comedy. Perhaps it was the…
Tara Sparling writes 