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Open Book

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books, talking to authors and publishers and unearthing lost classics

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Open Book: Adele Parks on the continuing appeal of Chick Lit

24/06/2012

Adele Parks on the continuing appeal of Chick Lit

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Adele Parks on the continuing appeal of Chick Lit

Adele Parks and Jane Green discuss the continuing appeal of Chick Lit.

Adele Parks and Jane Green discuss the continuing appeal of Chick Lit, and Belinda Jack explores the history of women's reading and the controversies it has inspired.

Regarded by many as a derisory and dismissive label the impact of Chick Lit, reflecting the lifestyles and experiences of modern women has been enormous, perhaps single handedly responsible for putting books on supermarket shelves and expanding the market. 
More used to being ignored than celebrated or reviewed in the press, the sudden downturn in print sales has ironically led to reams of headlines questioning the genre's survival.! Two of its most successful and popular practitioners Jane Green and Adele Parks discuss why it arouses such passion.

Women's reading has had a rich and chequered history - in ancient Babylonia there were at least 14 female scribes and Eleanor of Aquitaine is depicted on her tomb holding a book. However in nineteenth century Britain, it was a common assumption that excessive or inappropriate reading, particularly of novels, could induce women to hysteria and madness. Belinda Jack explores the history of women's reading and the controversies it's inspired.

We continue our series exploring how writers have been inspired by the landscape. This week Jamie Andrews, lead curator of the British Library's Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands discusses Rural Dreams; how the countryside has been the source of inspiration for many of the great literary classics

Producer: Andrea Kidd.

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