The Girls' Guide to Book Readings

If we had to pick the founding mothers of chick lit, we'd call 'em as Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones' Diary) and Melissa Bank (The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing). Seattlest can see both sides of the chick-lit debate: yeah, at this point the books seem cookie-cutter and boy-obsessed--but if they're getting more people to read books, could that be so bad?

That's a question you could ask Melissa Bank on Wednesday night, if you're one of those brave people who asks questions at these things. She'll be at Elliott Bay promoting her new book, six years in the making: The Wonder Spot, another series of interconnected stories about a young woman and her stumbles toward adulthood. The book got the cherished double-review treatment in the New York Times this week--fellow author Curtis Sittenfeld (who wrote the entertaining/disturbing Prep) found it "highly readable, sometimes funny, and entirely unchallenging," while reviewer Janet Maslin called it a "wise, ingratiating set of stories."

Melissa Bank reads at 7:30 Wednesday at Elliott Bay Book Company.