I’m going to a friend’s house for dinner next Saturday, and she’s just sent me an email to check she’s remembered correctly that I don’t like mushrooms. I don’t. I don’t like blue cheese either. Or red wine – the very thought of it makes my mouth pucker with the remembered taste. I don’t feel ashamed about these likes and dislikes. I have no guilt that I prefer a chilled Pinot Grigio to a gutsy Merlot. It’s just my taste. My personal quirks are part of what make me myself and I see no reason to apologise for them.

So why is reading different? There can be no doubt that there is an underlying feeling that what you read is not simply a matter of taste, as if you might judge someone’s intelligence or moral probity by their choice of reading material. As a novelist I’m sometimes told by a reader how much they enjoyed one of my books, before slipping in a guilty let out clause that they “don’t usually read that sort of thing.”

Yes. I write “that sort of thing.” I write contemporary women’s fiction. It’s a wide field, and could include Anne Tyler or Carol Shields. It could also include straightforward romances, such as those published by Mills and Boon, or what’s variously known in the business as chick-lit, hen-lit, saga, rom-com or relationship novels. I like to place my books vaguely in the relationship category and hope they’re well written, but the absolute certainty is that I am writing commercial fiction, not literary. I write to entertain. I write popular fiction, and I don’t think writing unpopular fiction would be in any way better for me, or you, for that matter.

I write - I hope - the sort of book you can pick up after a hard day’s work and be transported to a place that’s fun to be in. For a short time you can forget about the essay that needs writing, the bad supervision, your overdraft and student loan, and instead become part of a world where characters may struggle and make bad choices but it will all come good in the end. Some of my novels are more romantic than others but they’ve all got happy endings, whether that comes with a kiss or not.

My novels, and others like them, aren’t going to stretch your brain – but why should they? That’s not what they’re designed to do, although I have to admit I hope my readers enjoy learning a bit about a range of subjects such as eighteenth-century symbolic landscape gardens, Shakespearean cue-scripts or the properties of Roman concrete, all of which have formed the backgrounds to my novels.

You could say they’re the equivalent of fish pie: comforting to eat at the end of a tiring day, neither empty calories nor exquisite haute cuisine, but good, solid nourishment that slips down easily.

Perhaps that’s part of the problem. We confuse the ease of reading with the ease of writing and therefore value the novel less, but it takes skill and hard work to write something that reads effortlessly.

When I went to my first meeting of the Romantic Novelists Association I was surprised by the authors I met. It became clear that the more light - and, dare I say, fluffy - a book was, the more formidable the author. At that first meeting I met an economic adviser to the World Bank, a consultant radiologist and a member of the Civil Service selection board, all of whom wrote romantic novels for Mills & Boon as the antidote to their high-powered careers. I myself run an academic career alongside my novel writing, teaching at Bristol University and The University of Oxford.

Maybe it’s a hangover from the Protestant work ethic that means reading cannot be viewed simply as entertainment, but has to be educational or improving in some way. The more difficult it is, the more educational or improving it must be. Weetabix without sugar comes to mind.

All genre writing comes in for a similar range of sneery comments, but women’s fiction seems singled out for particular disdain, hardly mentioned on the review pages despite being the single largest selling genre in both the UK and the USA. Crime fiction, the next biggest genre, has achieved respectability and gets review coverage that reflects this. Historical fiction, long in the literary doldrums, has suddenly shot ahead with the majority of the 2009 Booker Prize short list being classed as historical fiction.

Yet still women’s fiction languishes, propping up the publishing industry yet ignored by the media and a guilty secret for many readers. Could there be a clue in the title?

Pick up any broadsheet and count the number of male reviewers and male authors whose books are reviewed, then compare that with the number of female reviewers and female authors if you don’t believe that sexism is rife in the worlds of literature and media. The arguments for the Orange Prize for Fiction, which is only open to women writers, have been well rehearsed and still stand, fifteen years after the award was set up.

The feminist in me is appalled, but the writer… well, this writer shrugs her shoulders. To be honest, I prefer to read books about subjects that appeal to me, and because I’m interested in relationships and how people work together in situations that reflect my own experience, I tend to read books by women with female characters placed centre stage. That’s not to say I can’t, won’t or don’t read books by men or women about other subjects, or books that challenge or stretch me. Of course I do. But when I want to read for relaxation or sheer entertainment, I prefer women’s fiction.

There’s no guilt or shame attached to that choice. Choosing fish pie at home tonight doesn’t mean I won’t appreciate a gourmet meal at a five star restaurant tomorrow. It’s about preference, about personal taste.

So, pass me that glass of Pinot Grigio, and happy reading.

Sarah Duncan’s novel, A Single to Rome, has been longlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year. For more information on her work, visit www.sarahduncan.co.uk.