This week my student's have been reading Inspirational Fiction for tonight's Reader Advisory class. I knew this week was going to be a tough week as we were suppose to be reading Young Adult Fiction, but due to a scheduling conflict with my guest speaker I had to switch it to the following class. Needless to say Inspirational Fiction is a wee bit less fun that Young Adult Fiction. Before I begin, I need to warn you that this post is probably going to be a bit meaner than normal. Then again, I'm a pretty pissed reader right now.

For this week's class I read A Case of Bad Taste by Lori Copeland. The first novel in the Morning Shade series introduces readers to the Diamond women: Maude, Stella, and Cee-Cee. Maude's life has been one change after another since her husband's death. First her mother-in-law Stella moves in after they can no longer afford to pay for her retirement home. Then Stella's daughter Cee-Cee returns to the nest after the unexpected death of her husband, bringing a menagerie of animals with her. With three generations of Diamond living under one roof, there's bound to be trouble. Maude's biggest problem at the moment though is writer's block. A Christian mystery writer, Maude dreams of one day being on the bestsellers list. But that is not going to happen if she doesn't get inspired soon. When a burglar begins breaking in and redecorating people's homes Maude finds the inspiration she is looking for. But is basing a book on what's going on in Morning Shade the right thing to do? This book is recommended to readers who enjoy stories of strong female characters that live with and learn from one another.

I believe in setting a good example for my students. I would never rag on an entire genre because I do realize that while I don't enjoy a certain kind of book other readers might. With that said, I think this book had to be the worst example of Inspirational Fiction that I could have ever read. The only other Inspirational title I had read before this was Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, and while I did not enjoy the book enough to read other titles in the series, I found it to be entirely readable and could easily understand why readers liked it. I have no clue why anyone would like A Case of Bad Taste.

First off, it is marketed as an Inspirational Mystery. One of the things I asked my students to do while reading their books this week was to try and identify what genre outside of Inspirational Fiction their book could be classified as, keeping in mind the conventions of that genre. A Case of Bad Taste is not a Mystery, and calling it one is crapping on Mystery as a label. I guarantee if you handed this book to a Mystery reader they would return to your library a week later and bitch slap you with the book. And you would deserve it as this book is no Mystery. The "crime" is a burglar breaking into people's homes and redecorating. While the idea sounded cute to me when I was reading the book description, in execution it was poorly done. The number of break-ins was small, only four. Also, at the end of the book it was revealed that the crimes were really fake as all the "victims" were in on it from the beginning. Why were they faking these break-ins? So that people would finally have something to talk about in Morning Shade. It seems that it is such a dull little town it needs to invent its own crime. Ugh.

Another big problem for A Case of Bad Taste though is its main character, Maude Diamond. Throughout the entire novel the author manages to make Maude so unlikable, readers can't help but be unsympathetic towards her. It may have been because of the choice to use first person narrative, but Maude comes off as completely whiny and self-obsessed. All Maude wants is to make the bestsellers list. I first learned that in the second chapter, and I was reminded every 5-7 pages. It got old, fast.

The sad thing though is that I have to take some responsibility for my bad reading experience. I picked Lori Copeland as my author because I knew she had previously written mainstream fiction. I figured I would get off easy with the religious overtones (I was incredibly mistaken there). And to take a page from Earl, I had this bad read coming to me. After railing at my student to suck it up when they didn't like a book and try to figure out who would like it and why, Karma has decide to bite me on the booty. Thanks Karma.

Now to my question for the class: Why do some readers/booksellers/librarians use the label Inspirational Fiction instead of Christian Fiction? Is it because it is more generic and could apply to all religious fiction? Is it because some may view Christian/Religious Fiction as a negative label?

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