THE WEDDING by Nicholas Sparks and AT FIRST SIGHT by Nicholas Sparks

I heard and then looked up something I heard on the radio last month about the difference between literary and popular fiction. According to the authors of the study, “the boundary between "literary" and "popular" fiction can be blurry. But they say they "consider popular fiction to be more concerned with the plot than the characters. The characters themselves…tend to be more stereotyped, coherent, fully accounted for. Literary fiction focuses less on the plot, and more on the mental life of the characters, who are often "incomplete;" hence the need for the reader to make an effort to infer what their intentions, emotions, thoughts, motivations are."

I’m blogging this information because it informs my personal opinion about Nicholas Sparks’ novels.  I recently read two. THE WEDDING: Wilson and Jane follow in the footsteps of the story of Noah and Allie from The Notebook.  AT FIRST SIGHT: Jeremy and Lexie in Boonville, NC after falling in love in True Believer.  My daughter really likes Sparks’ novels.  Me, not so much, because they seem mostly formulaic “love stories,” even w/surprise twists late in the novels.

Maybe I read too many crime novels J

THE WEDDING, Grand Central, 2003 291 p.

AT FIRST SIGHT, Grand Central Publishing, 2005 289 p.