The modern publisher is fond of categorisation. This is understandable when there are so many books and because of the need to sell to supermarkets (who like things to be as easily indentifiable as fruit and veg). Consequently, books are placed into brackets like gift, literary, self-help, sport and so on. But the one that got me thinking about all this is women’s fiction, broadly defined as stories that speak to women about their experiences of life today. It encapsulates everything from the fun and frivolous to more considered and intelligent matters. By its nature, women’s fiction is a broad genre. But it’s also an important one that acknowledges inherently that the reading of fiction has a great impact on emotional intelligence. A male equivalent of the genre simply doesn’t exist, or at least in decent numbers.