C is for Cookie...and Chick Lit :)

We received the "Smart Cookie" blog award from Silvy at Books are my life. I guess we were "smart" to feature her blog this week in "Blogs of the Week." Thanks, Silvy!

Here are the rules:
1) Thank the award giver and add a link to their blog.
2) Share some interesting facts on anything.
3) Pass the award to other "Smart Cookies".

Interesting facts about chick lit:

Origins of the term
"Chick" is an American slang term for a young woman and "lit" is short for "literature". The phrase "chick lit" is analogous to the term chick flick.

The term appeared in print as early as 1988 as college slang for a course titled "female literary tradition." In 1995, Cris Mazza and Jeffrey DeShell used the term as an ironic title for their edited anthology Chick Lit: Postfeminist Fiction. The genre was defined as a type of post-feminist or second-wave feminism that went beyond female-as-victim to include fiction that covered the breadth of female experiences, including love, courtship and gender. The collection emphasized experimental work, including violent, perverse and sexual themes. James Wolcott's 1996 article in The New Yorker, "Hear Me Purr", co-opted the term "chick lit" to proscribe what he called the trend of "girlishness" evident in the writing of female newspaper columnists at that time. Works such as Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City are examples of such work that helped establish contemporary connotations of the term. The success of Bridget Jones and Sex and the City in book form established chick lit as an important trend in publishing. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank are regarded as one of the first chick lit works to originate as a novel (actually a collection of stories), though the term "chick lit" was in common use at the time of its publication (1999). Serena Mackesy's The Temp appeared in the same year.

Publishers continue to push the sub-genre because of its viability as a sales tactic. Various other terms have been coined as variant in attempts to attach themselves to the perceived marketability of the work. Publishers Weekly editor Sara Nelson suggested in 2008 that the definition of what's considered to be within the genre of chick lit has become more accomplished and "grown up".

From Ask.com

Here are the nominees:
1. The Review Girl
2. I am a Reader, Not a Writer
3. Chick Lit Advocates
4. Book End Babes
5. The Hungry Bibliophile

Congratulations!!!