A small pink paperback book arrived recently, with a cover drawing of a lady (in the old-fashioned sense of that word) sitting up in bed in a pink dressing gown with fur trim and holding a martini glass. Title: “Live Alone and Like It” (Hatchette Book Group, $14). Subtitle: “The Classic Guide for the Single Woman.” Original publication date: 1936. It was written by then-Vogue editor Marjorie Hillis (1889-1971) and has a new introduction by Laurie Graff, whose contributions to contempo chick-lit include “You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs.”

I leafed through “Live Alone” expecting to find admonitions and advice that were dated and possibly offensive, therefore hilarious, and there was some of that. (Frank Crowninshield’s original intro advises the single lady to concentrate on “not talking about things she doesn’t understand to people who do, or about things she does to people who don’t” — yeah, good thing guys don’t ever do that — and “not wearing a backless gown when she has an over-vertebrate back” — words to live by.) Read the rest of this entry »

  I took this photo of author Emily Giffin in August 2006 at an all-day Book Club Conference sponsored by the Memphis Public Library and Mid-South Reads. 
  I had tried to get a good shot from my seat in the front row while Giffin stood at the podium discussing her new book.
    To my consternation, she stopped in mid-sentence, gave me an annoyed look and asked that I not take the photo until she posed for it. She explained that she hated to be photographed grimacing or with her mouth open. She then posed prettily, but because I was flustered, I snapped a picture which cut off most of her head.
    However, after her talk, Giffin graciously let me take another photo with head attached. Later, I wrote : “By rights 34-year-old Giffin should appear frazzled, harried and careworn. She’s the mother of twin boys 2 1/2 years old, and she recently visited 17 cities in five weeks promoting her third novel, “Baby Proof.” Instead, she looks young and impeccably chic, and comes across as articulate and charming.”
    Two years later, Giffin, a former lawyer, originally from Illinois, lives in Atlanta and has a new daughter, Harriet, as well as a new book on the New York Times best-sellers list.
    “Love the One You’re With,” (St. Martin’s, $25) was described by a reviewer in our “Books in Brief” column on June 1 as “a satisfying, light, chick-lit read about the pain of self-discovery.”
   I don’t disagree with this assessment, but readers should be aware that there’s a darker quality and a bit more complexity to Giffin’s book than one might expect from a work in this genre.
    I liked the slightly snarky, sarcastic tone that Giffin sometimes employs, especially evident when she exploits the Yankee vs. Southerner conflict generated by her characters’ backgrounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately I’ve not had a lot of time to devote to reading lengthy novels that require the full attention span of a higher mammal as opposed to, oh, say, that of a gnat. So I’ve busied myself reading books that can be digested in bits and pieces over the course of several weeks. Both just happen to be guides to strange and foreign lands — one to the land of conscientious environmentalism and the other to the land of the male brain.

Let’s just say that one of these guides will have you raring to go, and the other is going to make you want to chuck things (like, books about the warring sexes) out the window of a moving vehicle.
Read the rest of this entry »