Guy Lit

I am reading a book that falls in the category of Guy-Lit, also known as Lad-Lit or Dude-Lit. I am reading Formosa Straits by Anthony Hyde. The setting is Taiwan. The first paragraph is an exciting attention grabber. The protagonist Nick Lamp, an American businessman of Chinese descent, finds the dead body of businessman and thug, Cao Dao. Nick met with a Japanese prostitute who was hiding in Cao's apartment while he was murdered but now she too has been murdered. An american lawyer, Robert Young, out of the blue is offering Nick legal services but Nick remembers his father's word, Trust no one. I am on page 95 and it is exciting so far.

Dude Lit?

The success of Franzen's new book, Freedom, has stirred up a discussion by Laura Fraser about "Dude Lit" versus Chick-Lit on The Daily Beast .

Lad Lit

Well who knew? If I had not attended that library conference I would not have heard about Dick Lit also known as Lad Lit and Guy Lit, a subgenre of fiction written by men for men. It appears that they are not as attractive as the Chick Lit subgenre if I am to go by this article.

I had heard the expression Chick Lit and figured, correctly I might add, that it was related to the movie equivalent, Chick Flick. Now that I have been enlightened I can see that my favorite fictional character Agatha Raisin, created by MC Beaton, is a middle aged version of the typical Chick Lit protagonist. She is smart, sassy, humorous amateur detective with romance issues. Dead bodies pop up whenever she's around and she always fumbles through and manages to get the bad guys.