So everybody and their third cousin has been weighing in on the "to be or not to be" chick lit debate and along with Gwenda I recommend Bennett Madison's most witty response to all of this. (He also has done all the handy dandy linking so it's easy to track all the nuttiness.) Honestly I thought I was pretty much done with this and I love Bennett's point - it's not like women are so dense that they can't fight their way through the pink covers in chick lit land and find that new award winning literary wonder book all on their own.

I mean really, we can choose wisely all on our own. (And sometimes that wise choice is for chick lit, believe it or not.)

But really, I was't paying all that much attention to the whole deal until I was going through Booklist the other day and right there under the review for the new anthology This is Chick Lit ("Chick lit devotees will appreciate discovering new authors and the uninitiated will be pleasantly surprised."), I found a review for Scarlett Thomas's upcoming book, The End of Mr. Y. I loved her last book PopCo and raved about it in my review. It was a lot of things - mystery, pop culture survey, light romance, crazy subversive take on corporate overlords, etc., but I never in a million years would have compared it to any of the chick lit I have known and loved. I've been pretty excited about her new book because she's so good at crafting stories that are like nothing else I read. Mr. Y sounds pretty cool - a lost book that's suddenly found, a missing adviser, a dreamworld that was the creation of a 19th century writer that might be real - I mean who knows how it will come together but she never bores me, that's for sure. But there it was in the Booklist review, where I least expected it:

"Like her previous novel PopCo, Thomas's mildly amusing second offering aspires to be both wonky and hip: her protagonist obsesses over philosophical matters one moment, her lamentable love life the next. Chick lit for nerds."

Oh my God. "Chick lit for nerds"? What does that mean and more importantly, what does that make me? And how could it possibly apply to Scarlett Thomas? Is this what chick lit is now - any book anywhere that has romance in it must be stamped with a label that means it's for sad little women seeking a happily ever after any where they can get it? And WHY DOES THAT MATTER ANYWAY?!

I mean good grief, there was a romance in Popco but there was a ton of other things as well. It just seems so strange to me to pick one part of a book for the label. Why is romance the thing that can not be ignored no matter what? Why is it the one we pick at, the one we turn our noses up to, the one we roll our eyes at?

Do you think Scarlett Thomas is happy to read that she's writing chick lit for nerds? (Not even chick lit for cool chicks, it has to be for nerds. Does that leave anything redeeming at all in what sounded like a really unusual mystery/adventure/literary novel?)

And of course here's the part that really matters: why do I care?

Crap. I might have Katie Fforde on my shelf but I don't want to be a nerdy chick lit lover. I need help. Excuse me while I go watch season 4 of Sex and the City. It usually helps in moments like this.