Spotted sharing a bookshelf in the fiction section at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon: four titles that, when read in sequence, form a set of instructions.
How to Build a Girl, by Caitlin Moran.
Not That Kind of Girl, by Lena Dunham (whose series for HBO is, of course, Girls)
Clown Girl, by Monica Drake
Ugly Girls, by Lindsay Hunter
Elsewhere in the store: A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, by Eimear McBride; Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell, and Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn.
In another bookstore closer to home (Walden Pond Books, Oakland) I found #Girlboss, by Sophia Amoruso; The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes; and Growgirl, by Heather Donohue (who starred in the 1999 cult movie Blair Witch Project and then became a pot grower in Northern California).
All of these books were published between 2012 and 2014; all are about adult women, not children.
There’s a lesson here for lady writers, although it grieves me a little to spell it out: No matter how long ago you passed puberty, to your publisher you’ll always be a girl.
The New York Times' "Combined Print & E-Book Fiction" best sellers list has two books with girl in the title: The Girl On The Train and Gone Girl.
Perhaps influenced by the hugely popular Millennium trilogy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest?
I downloaded the New York Times' trade fiction paperback bestsellers top 20s for back to mid-2008.
There were 358 entries with girl in the title, 6 woman/women, 3 lady, 15 boy, 13 man/men.
Counting unique book titles: 15 girl, 2 woman/women, 2 lady/ladies, 2 boy, 4 man/men.
The unique titles in alphabetical order:
Posted by: Hugo | January 26, 2015 at 07:02 AM
Hugo: And on current U.S. television we have "Girls," "The New Girl," and "2 Broke Girls" (and probably a few more I'm overlooking).
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | January 26, 2015 at 07:11 AM