Summer Reading for the Young and Sassy: Will Chick Lit Survive?

Summer approaches, and that means the search for the perfect beach read (or reads, depending on how many vacations your employer allows). Last summer the market was dominated by the "chick lit" genre that had been growing over that several seasons. The market was flooded full force with chipper, witty ten dollar novels with brightly colored covers and authors you've never heard of. But is chick lit surviving into this summer? The answer, it seems, is no. One quick look at the bestsellers list and the shelves at your local drugstore, and you'll see readers are searching for higher brow fare.

The chick lit craze started as college girls and twenty-something women across the country found a way to buy quasi-smutty romance novels without the embarrassment of a Fabio cover model. Red Dress Inc, a division of Harlequin Romance Novels, took the trend to a whole new level and flooded the market with anyone and everyone becoming a novelist. As the "chick lit" market grew, more people thought, "Hey, I can do that." And for the most part, they're correct. The genre is one populated by writing accessible to any twenty-something woman. It encourages authors to write in the same way that they speak. Not so difficult, particularly for a social, marginally witty female writer. And so the onslaught began. Book with titles like "Marrying Up" and "Sleeping Over" and countless others filled the shelves of Walgreens and Wal Mart.

There were several high points in the wave of chick lit. Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the City" was a clear high point, with a fresh and witty way of looking at being single in New York. Lauren Weisberger's "The Devil Wear's Prada" was another. This sharp, devilishly hilarious take on being an overeducated, underpaid, no-respect assistant in the fashion industry was as down and dirty as they get, and readers ate it up. Translated into 27 languages with millions of copies sold, the book is set for a summer 2006 theatrical release starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway.