Thursday 25 October 2007

The rise of Git Lit...

If you’re not the type of person that buys fiction books or indeed if you’re just a casual reader who gets one every now and then you may not be aware of the term ‘genre’. This describes the kind of story or viewpoint that would be found in a book ie crime, horror, romance, etc and all bookshops and publishers adhere to these slots slavishly.

From there you have sub-genres, in recent years these have included sex and shopping, aga sagas and chick lit. Publishers believe that it’s mainly women who read fiction books and adjust their requirements accordingly – hence the abomination of books with pink covers and cool looking birds exploding onto the shelves at your local shop over the last few years.

Now as a bloke in his mid thirties who reads voraciously I’ve always found this slightly strange as have my mates who tend to read the same kind of thing as me – mainly the likes of Irvine Welsh, John King, Kevin Sampson, Christopher Brookmyre, Danny King etc.

And it seems that publishers are slowly waking up to the fact that men can read !! The number of mens books aimed at a particular generation is slowly increasing and following a small investigation I can confirm that the moniker allocated to this new sub-genre is ‘Git–Lit’.

Apparently it refers to blokes in their thirties/forties who aren’t action men but aren’t wimpy, camp, talk about their feelings types either. The type of blokes who’ve had a past and wouldn’t mind reading stories they could relate to.

In fact, basically - BLOKES LIKE ME!!!!

I’m here and I’m ready – let’s get my shit on the shelves.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

a lot of that "chick lit shit" (i just made that up) finds its way into our house as i have a wife, who can read. I've read the back covers of a few and they all sound like a load of shite, as does irvine welsh et al to mrs cousin tel. One author i have enjoyed though is Mike Gayle, his books seem to take the middle ground between chick and git, most 30 somethings will find a character or situation that they can relate to in one of his books......go read

Rivs said...

Is that the Mike Gayle that used to be on 'The Big Breakfast'?

I don't mind some middle ground types but mine tend to be crime authors - the wife likes Peter Robinson and I can read his books (usually on day 6 of our hols when I've got nowt left!!)

Anonymous said...

Mike Gayle is the brother of Phil Gayle who read the news on The Big Breakfast (just looked that up, I'm off this week)

Anonymous said...

Wor lass likes Maeve Binchy - Fuck that!