Is Chick-lit just about getting through the night?

Adele Parks, best-selling novelist, will be one of the International writers visiting the Cape Town Book Fair from 13 to 16 June. She writes what I like to call intelligent page-turners about the lives of women, and sometimes their loves as well. But the question is does she belong in the category of chick-lit, you know those books with the stylised covers and the pictures of beautiful young woman desporting themselves on beaches. The books we buy with a degree of guilty pleasure at the airport book shop when we know we should really be firing up the laptop and going over our presentations for our meeting at the other end of the flight. And why do we feel the need to give books written about the lives of women a ghetto of their own anyway? We don't call books about men having midlife crises "Harley-lit" or young blokes on the pull "lad-lit", in fact sometimes we call pretty ordinary books about men's lives literary fiction when they really aren't. It's one of the topics that will be debated at the fair and we hope you will join in, or at least I do or a whole panel of people will be sitting looking at empty chairs and then we will be very miffed. One of South Africa's new stars will join the panel Fiona Snyckers and she likes being in the chick-lit genre, Rob Turrell will also be joining us to give a blokes perspective, should be interesting (wonder what he is reading at the moment). I read all of Parks' novels to prepare for meeting her and loved them all, they are real, witty, and well-written and there is much in them that I could identify with, but I do wonder why we feel such a need to categorise books why not just enjoy them. Come along and join in the debate, and feel free to join it early on this blog. Jennifer Crocker (who is not off to read War and Peace in bed).