Poll

Diana Gabaldon "chick lit"?? I don't think so. Did the person who put her in this catagory read her books? I have nothing against chick lit. Read it and love it but Diana's book ain't in that catagory. Case in point, the person who introduced me to this series is a male. He does NOT read chick lit. She should have been in the sci fi catagory before this one.

No-no-no. An Echo in the Bone is NOT chick-lit. May want to fix that snafu...

Where is the romance category? What you've got here is a weird mashup of chicklit, historical fiction, romance and Nicholas Sparks (who is NOT romance and NOT chicklit).

Hey, where's the romance? This seems to be a grab bag of everything with a couple of romances and a couple of pretty much everything else!

How can you ignore romance, the popular fiction genre that was the largest share of the consumer market in 2008 at 13.5 percent, the genre that earned $1.36 BILLION in 2009, the genre that generates most of the profits that allow publishers to offer readers other fiction?

I'm not sure what this category is. It includes some great reads written by excellent authors, but very few of them can accurately be called chick lit--unless you are defining "chick lit" pejoratively and condescendingly to mean all books read by a largely female readership.

I'm disappointed in Goodreads.

By chick lit do they mean women's popular fiction?

I agree that this category is mis-named. All of these books belong to the very broad -- women's popular fiction label. Chick lit is a specific genre which was at its height about 7 years ago and even then it was not as big as Romance.

TERRIBLE categorization here. . . agree with all the other comments.

It's my understanding "chick lit" includes all books involving a strong female main character, not just romance.

I think the more commonly accepted definition is "a type of fiction, typically focusing on the social lives and relationships of young professional women, and often aimed at readers with similar experiences."
Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing were early chick lit titles.

Chick lit and women's fiction and romance are not used interchangeably by the readers of those genres. Each genre has characteristics unique to it.

Wylene wrote: "I think the more commonly accepted definition is "a type of fiction, typically focusing on the social lives and relationships of young professional women, and often aimed at readers with similar ex..."

You are absolutely right! Thanks for the great definition. I think Diana's books should be characterized as historical fiction. I would be interested to know how SHE would define her books.

Thanks for all the valuable feedback, everyone! We've elected to change the poll category to "Popular Women's Fiction," but we acknowledge that this doesn't fix the problem of mixing "chick lit" (a moniker that has received a lot of criticism over the years) and "romance." We don't want to negate the 800+ votes that have already been cast, so we're going to let the poll stand as is, however flawed.

Your comments are duly noted, and we'll certainly create more specific categories for future awards. Thanks!

Special note about Diana Gabaldon: Her books do defy easy categorization, a trait that many authors wear as a badge of honor.

Thank you, Jessica.

Thanks, Jessica.

Thank you, Jessica.

This is one sad list for a so-called book forum site :-( A lot of the books listed (like others have said) are certainly not what you politely call "Women's Fiction" (it seems that you don't quite know what constitutes that to begin with). Did the people who compiled this list actually read these books or at the very least consult the readers who do??? What a huge "oversight" that there is no romance vote. Have any of you picked up a popular magazine/newspaper lately about how romance is the biggest selling genre during this economic crisis and has been even well before that? Women's Fiction, Chicklit and Romance are not interchangeable. Why don't you give people the option to change their vote like they can for other areas on GR and add the correct lists this way you won't negate the votes already cast?

Jessica, why don't you just add a romance poll and be done with it. As others have said it generates a lot of money to the industry and a lot of pleasure to readers. A win/win. We need somewhere we can vote too!

We originally did not create a romance category because romance books were not strongly represented in the most popular books shelved on Goodreads in 2009 (also why there is no poetry category). We wanted books to have reached a certain threshold of readership, or there would not be enough readers to vote in the polls. However, certainly we did make some allowances for this phenomenon because otherwise we would not have the children's fiction and picture books categories. Romance is a popular shelf on Goodreads; however, statistically speaking, readership is probably spread across more books, so few individual books rose to the top of our lists.

That said, we like to be able to respond to feedback. So due to popular demand, we have now created a new ROMANCE poll as part of the 2009 Goodreads Choice Awards. Go vote!

Thank you, thank you Jessica. I've already been to vote & I've left a message in my Romance Group.

I just want to make a general comment about book names. After reading the books in this and other categories what is the deal with adding "A Novel" at the end of the title? Well, of course it is. In this category 5 out of 8 of the books end in "A Novel".

According to the men I know, "Chick Lit" is any book by a girl, about a girl, that has girls in it. Of course, that's also their definition of Chick Flick. Basically, if it has no guns, no bloody fights, no car chases, nothing blown up, etc, it's Chick Lit. So Stephanie Plum books are safe for men to read.