Though I love the TV show, Candace Bushnell’s book Sex and the City is very dull. I actually read it long before I ever started watching the show – in fact, that’s why I held out for so long. You know how you read a fantastic book and then are often disappointed by the book? This was just the opposite – hated the book, loved the program.

Everything that is wonderful about HBO’s Sex and the City – humor, sweetness, romance, sexiness – is missing in the book. In fact, I’m amazed the show was ever made, because the raw material of the book is utterly uninspiring.

Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity was not only the first guy lit book I ever read, it also preceded my discovery of chick lit by a couple of years. I was living in Paris in the summer of 96 and reading my way through the bookshelf of the British woman whose studio I was subletting. I was bored by most of the books, so imagine my joy at discovering the jewel that is High Fidelity: outrageously funny, clever, touching, and romantic. I loved it so much that I nearly stole the book, but instead contented myself with writing down the title and author and ordering as soon as I was back in the US.

Chick lit-like books written by guys deserve a more manly name, so I’ve come up with guy lit. (Incredibly inspired, I know.) I’ve also see “lad lit,” which I find too British, and “dick lit,” which offers a nice rhyme but is rather vulgar. So guy lit it is. I’ll soon be adding reviews of some of my favorite guy lit books, so stay tuned.

Marian Keyes, the queen of Irish chick lit, delved into the serious subject of drug addiction in her third book, Rachel’s Holiday, but managed an amazing job of mixing those horror stories with romance and humor. The end result is a wonderful book about another of the Walsh sisters – it’s funny and sad, serious and playful, and I’ve read it half a dozen times.

Isabel Wolff will always remain one of my favorite chick lit authors, even though I was incredibly disappointed by her third book, Out of the Blue. It’s the story of a woman whose husband has an affair and leaves her, sort of, but never manages to completely make the break – and she doesn’t really help him much either. The reason I was so disappointed was that SPOILERS » Keep reading

It’s fun to imagine that incredibly smart guys, called “nerds” in high school, will grow up to be rich and successful while the jocks and other popular kids will end working at a gas station. Vicki Lewis Thompson’s Nerd in Shining Armor takes this fantasy a few steps further. The nerd in question is not only brilliant, but also extremely good looking and a great lover to boot. When he and Genevieve end up on a deserted island, it doesn’t take her long to succumb. This is the chickiest of chick lit, but if you’re after escapism, you’ll enjoy being marooned with beauty and the geek.

If The Edge of Reason, the sequel to Bridget Jones’s Diary, left you wanting more, then you’re in luck: Helen Fielding did another series of columns which are available online. (Or maybe you’re not as lame as I am and already read them when they were published 3 years ago.) Anyway, it’s a little bit of a drag to have to read Bridget’s third and almost certainly final volume on the computer, but I couldn’t bring myself to print out all those pages. Regardless, the year of weekly diary entries brings things to a much more satisfactory conclusion: Bridget Jones’s Diary Returns. (Note that the site also includes links to articles about the columns – the actual diary entries have bolded dates.)

I’ve been away for a while – just haven’t had as much time to read and blog as I’d like, but I promise I’ll be adding more reviews soon. In the meantime, I thought I’d share this list of the 50 Best Chick Lit Blogs from The Love Coach – “Helping Nerds Date Since 2008.” Enjoy!

Last Chance Saloon is Marian Keyes’s first novel told from multiple third-person points of view. It’s the story of old friends and new loves, growing up and seeing people for who they really are. Between the hair-obsessed actor and the woman who learns that it’s ok to need someone, it will make you laugh and cry.

It’s funny how people can see things so differently. A friend of mine asked a chick-lit-loving friend of his to recommend a book for me, and she came up with Alex Witchel’s The Spare Wife, which she described as “fun, sexy and an insider view of New York City’s upper crust.” I tried really hard to like it, but I found it boring, mean, and basically horrible – affairs with best friends’ spouses, rape fantasies, things that some people apparently find sexy and others – or at least I – find offensive and not at all fun. I literally hated this book. To each his or her own.