But how will girls learn how to hustle products to grumpy people that don't need them? How will they build character without pulling a wagon full of cookies around on snow and ice covered sidewalks in the middle of winter? How will they learn the joy of earning a teddy bear poster for selling $500 worth of cookies? …

UNFAIR. These 8 year olds should be forced to sell 50 boxes in person to earn a badge or perhaps a small pewter tiger.

I'm torn: on the one hand, I want future generations to suffer through bugging people to buy things the way I did. On the other hand, I want cookies now.

If one exists anymore where you live...

Aren't she and Nicholas Sparks the literary equivalent of a Thomas Kincade painting?

I have read several (the only title I can remember is My Sister's Keeper, the rest are just a blur) and I can not recommend a single one. The most telling description is "23 novels in 22 years". They all have a ripped from the headlines, pounded out on a word processor in six weeks, feel to them. They are not…

I agree. Nicholas Sparks books are for 14 yo girls and ladies on the bus. Jodi Picault is somewhere in between.

Oh, totally. I've read chick lit. It's brainless reading for me, perfect for flights and vacations. It's like People magazine and Twinkies, in book form.

I get a lot of book recommendations from NPR and from friends. Amazon, too- their recommendations algorithm is pretty damn good. Put some books you're interested in on your Wish List, and it will start generating all sorts of recommendations. Then get those from the library.

hehehe

If you don't like Nicholas Sparks books, you won't like hers, either.

I read "My Sister's Keeper" on vacation one year- it was fine for something I read mostly drunk poolside. But let's not pretend ANY of her books are "literature." She's a mass market paperback writer.

I'd take this more seriously if her books were better. Her first ones were actually really good, then she starting churning out this formulaic, trite, airport, chick-lit crap. I don't doubt the sexism of the literary world, etc, but maybe she'd have a different experience if her books stopped sucking. Just my opinion.

Jodi Picault's books are pretty much at the same level as Nicholas Sparks'- both write cheesy, airport book-stand novels.

Romance fiction blows whether a male or a female writes it. Oh yeah... "In my humble opinion" there.

I haven't read her stuff, and I will admit I dismissed it as chick lit. But not because of the covers or the advertising, but because of the plot summaries— they all sound like Lifetime movies. A secret is revealed . . . she must sift through the truth . . . she thought she had th perfect marriage. I don't know,…

I don't dismiss her books as airport fiction or chick lit, I dismiss them as badly written dreck. Seriously, I have more respect for Stephanie Meyer because at least her books are entertaining. My Sister's Keeper is one of the most offfensive things I have ever touched.

To be fair, I think Nicholas Sparks is pretty widely dismissed as pointless wankery too.

Because all the poor want is something both hilariously processed and terrible-tasting, rather than a delicious, all-natural chunk of pure protein.

this will do nothing but hurt small businesses. Big corporations will just take it out on the employees.