can anyone reccomend a good chick lit book please?

No time to read all suggestions but have you tried Melissa Bank A Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing or The Wonderspot. She is a wonderful very wry, very touching New York writer - definitely aimed at women but it is intelligent and perceptive (no shopping or soppy plots).

The reading group is by Elizabeth Noble - that is a nice read.

Can't wait to hear what you went with 'lizandlulu'.

the reading group - can't rem who by

read and re-read, nice heart-warming story...

I've read Thirtynothing, Paul's Party, Watermelon and Shopaholic & baby: they're all shameful and wouldn't use them as door-stoppers. I reckon by now they've been recicled into something more dignified (smug emoticon).
Bran, to work out that a particular genre is not your cup of tea you don't have to read every single novel in that genre ever published! But if that was the case, I'd still take a chance and stick to my choice of never picking up another chick-lit volume. Life's too short to waste any valuable reading time on such junk. I'd rather sit in front of MN or pick something else to read.

I just read one called the chocolate lovers club. It was a nice fun read. Can't remember the author though.

How many chick-lit books have you read Seashell and paperchain? I can believe that you've never read a good one, but I'm not sure how you can extrapolate from what you've read that they are all not good.

If you have read every single chick-lit novel ever published (and I'm including a couple of Jane Austins in the genre) and none of them have been good, then your point is proved. In that case I would have ask why you bothered wasting your time after the first couple of thousand failed to meet your high expectations.

haven't read all of this, but I'd recommend Jennifer Crusie (if no-one else has already). Also recently read Lani Diane Rich's The Fortune Quilt and loved it

phillipa gregory- some ofthe non tudor ones are very good..fallen skies. Also elizabeth chadwick...

no, it is not all the same. Some is very readable. Some is passable, and some is downright dreadful. And that's just the ones that get published.

you are at least the 3rd person to flout their oxymoronic knowledge on this thread to sneer at chicklit.

Agreed with paperchain, no big deal, just the fact that there isn't any good or bad chick-lit, it's all very much the same! Slayerette, what I meant was that authors like, for example, John O'Farrell or Sue Townsend write very easy, entertaining, beautiful novels yet they don't eve come close to numbing your brain like chick-lit does.
But of course everyone's free to read what they damn want to read!

no big deal - just the title made me smile! I read all sorts of trash different books

So the women wants some chick lit for her holiday's..........what's the big deal people!!!!!!!!!!!

Who said anything about junk-lit, seashell? And who said I limit myself? At the moment, I'm reading Oliver Twist, A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve, a thriller by Harlan Coben, The Wastelanders by Ian Strachan (to see whether I think Yr 7 would enjoy it), The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, Cold Comfort Farm, The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville, Resistance by Owen Sheers and Gold Diggers by Tasmina Perry. I read whatever catches my fancy on a particular day, but would never want to write off an entire type of writing

None of the above has a pastel cover by the way...

a good chick lit book? An oxymoron, surely?

I read two fantastic easy-read books last year and they were :

The Island by Victoria Hislop and

Getting rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon

Both were great!!

Mmmmhh, slayerette, why limit yourself to either classic lit or junk-lit? There's so much in between the two! There are millions of funny, well written, entertaining books that are not "demanding", yet go a bit deeper than those featuring a svelte figure on the pastel-cover, holding a mobile phone with one hand and lots of shopping in the other... I read a few and found myself cringeing a bit, thinking that there is such a thing as a "sub" genre made for women.

Well said, bran!

Can't stand all this holier-than-thou crap about chick-lit. I teach English to A level and am perfectly secure in my ability to understand the most demanding of texts. But I certainly wouldn't be so patronising as to dismiss a whole genre which has given me many hours of enjoyable escapism and sometimes provided a much needed break from working with Proper Literature

There has been argument discussion about this on other threads Seashell71. It ultimately boils down to how you define 'good' and 'chick-lit'. Anyway it's very subjective and if you don't like something there is a tendency to dismiss it as not good, when in fact you just don't like it.

Even if you are a prof of English lit or on the Booker shortlist panel (and I'm pretty sure you aren't) I don't think that you really have the authority to dismiss a whole genre. So I will take your comment with a pinch of salt and continue to read good chick-lit.

Ahem, "good" and "chick-lit" don't go together...

I really enjoyed A Crowded Marriage by Catherine Alliott. Rachel's Holiday is my favourite Marian Keyes, and try some Emily Barr - female heroine but the novels all have a mystery edge to them.

How about some real bonkbusters in the Jilly Cooper style? I'm reading Gold Diggers by Tasmina Perry and also have read a lot of Penny Vincenzi.

course!