Review: Hazing Meri Sugarman & Sorority Life.

Granted I am not a part of the Greek family here at GVSU, I have always been very interested and curious about sororities. I have many friends involved in the Greek Life and always here so many stories. Some good, some bad. Most of you will remember MTV’s Sorority Life & Fraternity Life. Although the reality shows only lasted a season or two, many people had a lot to say about them, including some of my Greek friends. Most said that the Greek life that was televised was totally out of control and did not highlight the true Greek life that they all know and love. Anyways…like I was saying I’ve always been slightly interested in joining a sorority. So I picked up a hot pink covered book called “Hazing Meri Sugarman” by M. Apostolina. Apostolina himself describes “Hazing…” on his MySpace page as a

comic novel about Cindy Bixby, a mousy first year college student who believes she can change her life, meet new friends, and help her future by joining Alpha Beta Delta, an exclusive sorority house headed by Meri Sugarman, the glamorous house president! And then, uh oh, Cindy comes to realize that Meri is a dangerous psychopath! It’s up to Cindy and her new sorority friends to bring Meri down.

So I sat down to read the book and was presently surprised with it. I enjoyed it-but makes me wonder how sororities (outsideof GVSU) are like. I then went around searching for articles online and came across one from the NY Times. In the article titled” Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias” by Sa Dillon, sororities are still getting bad reviews:

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.

From this I get the impression that you must fit a particular stereotype in order to fit into a sorority…which I know is definitely NOT true here at GV. But–this article goes along nicely with the reality shows…image is everything and sometimes in order to be a part of something you have to fit a particular mold.

I’m just hoping those YA readers who engross themselves into “Hazing…” and Apostolina’s two other novels in a series of three, will not get bad impressions of things that can go wrong and then eventually hold back from joining an organization or club, Greek or not.

M. Apostolina’s MySpace Page

Full NY Times Article

Suddenly I was swimming in pink.

After searching through more blogs I came across some anger towards Maureen Dowd’s article titled “Heels over Hemingway” which was published in the New York Times on February 10, 2007.

In her article Dowd bashes Chick Lit and it’s presence in the bookstore claiming it’s hiding the good literature.

“Looking for Mr. Goodbunny” by Kathleen O’Reilly sits atop George Orwell’s “1984.” “Mine Are Spectacular!” by Janice Kaplan and Lynn Schnurnberger hovers over “Ulysses.” Sophie Kinsella’s “Shopaholic” series cuddles up to Rudyard Kipling.

Later on in her article she says she had taken home several of these pink ‘novels’ and then compared the stories to those of real life Very Important People.

I took home three dozen of the working women romances. They can lull you into a hypnotic state with their simple life lessons — one heroine emulated Doris Day, another Audrey Hepburn, one was the spitting image of Carolyn Bessette, another Charlize Theron.

But then bashed them when saying

…but they’re a long way from Becky Sharp and Elizabeth Bennet. They’re all chick and no lit.

I then decided to check out Maureen’s critics and found:

Dowd doesn’t like books with pink covers, and the best thing about our free world is that she doesn’t have to buy or read them. -Krozser

…how come it counts as journalism to walk around a bookshop mouthing off ignorantly about a genre you know nothing about, grabbing three dozen of them to take home, flip through, and then mock in your newspaper column? -Larbalestier

and the sarcastic Kyra Davis explained that

there’s no denying that Dowd was right on the money when she cautioned her readers not to put chick lit books in the same category as the books of Jane Austen. Austen’s books weren’t just about her characters; they were about the times those characters lived in. When we read Pride and Prejudice, we are treated to a new perspective on the societal norms and expectations of nineteenth-century women. But chick lit is completely different. How could a novel about a single, thirty-something woman struggling in her career and worried about her weight be in any way reflective of a time in which obesity has become an epidemic and women are working longer hours and marrying later in life than ever before? The very idea that these books have any cultural significance is preposterous!

Chick Lit is a battlefield.

View Full Dowd Article

View Full Krozser Article

View Full Larbalestier Article

View Full Davis Article

What’s a cover got to do with it?

What’s a cover got to do with it?

 

    Walk into any bookstore. Peruse all the different sections the bookstore has to offer- science fiction, self-help, magazines, children’s literature, CHICK LIT. You can’t miss it. Chick Lit has an ambiance about it that is like no other. Their covers are filled with pictures of shoes, shopping bags, wedding rings or bells, and are normally colored with vibrant neons or soft pastels. So I tried to look up some stuff about Chick Lit and their cover designs.

 

I first ran across an article from http://www.telegraph.co.uk about which Jane Austen’s novels have switched over to “Chick Lit” covers. Her most famous novels have now been published with a

“glossy, pastel covers design to appeal to women put off by the idea of reading a 19th century writer.”

These covers also feature illustrations that might be common amongst chick lit.

“Mansfield Park, for example, features a couple in Regency evening dress linked by a shooting star, while Pride and Prejudice has a swallow, flowers and a bonneted beauty with her back to a whip-wielding dandy.”

 

Joel Rickett, the author of this article explains how the old novels become new again with their more modern, chic cover designs. He is supported by Harriet Evans, the editor of the series.

Harriet said: “Jane Austen is the fairy godmother of women’s fiction and we want to take her back to her romantic roots. The novels needed to look more relevant to women who read accessible modern fiction.”

So are women less likely to read a book if the cover is dull or look old? I thought we were to never judge a book by its cover? Chick Lit is always judged by its cover. Otherwise we wouldn’t automatically assume it is Chick Lit. Caren Lisser explains how Chick Lit may be marketed using their covers in her article found on MobyLives.com which was started in 1998 as a syndicated newspaper column about books and writers. She was writing about her own trials and tribulations with Chick Lit and how she didn’t really think her book was of that genre, or how she had hoped it wouldn’t be advertised as being of that genre.

“I admit, the marketing was hard to accept at first. Last year, I fought against the swirly lettering on the cover. I wanted something like Rick Moody’s Demonology, with a single iconic image in the middle of the cover and a solid background. Instead, I got some girly–looking letters in pastel blue. “It looks like Judy Blume!” I howled at the publishers.”

She then went on to comment how the majority of all Chick Lit has a pink cover design. So I guess she was lucky enough to be a stand out since her cover was blue.

 

These two articles contradict one another in a way because one loves the idea of ‘girly’ covers being the significant thing to capture the attention of more readers while the other states her sadness of the cover design that will reel in an audience that she didn’t think was suitable for her book.

 

View Full Article by Joel Rickett

View Full Article by Caren Lissner