A post for Meli

Book Review: The Thoroughly Modern Married Girl: Staying Sensational After Saying "I Do" by Sarah Bliss

The spring/summer 2002 i read through a stack full of books with titles like bombshell manual of style, swell girls guide to the good life, fantastic flirty and fun, the single girl's guide to being fabulous, good fabulous pink stuff...--okay, so i've made up some of the titles. but you get the picture. there are gazillions of these books on the market. none of their content is very different from eachother, so you really should pick based on the pictures.

but i was at the library last week and saw The Thoroughly Modern Married Girl which is exactly the same as all those books, except it's for young, fabulous and married women. i think it actually expects you to have read, or at least have a good knowledge that the previous books exist, or maybe the opposite. because the author takes exactly the same tone as all the rest of these books. you are already fabulous, now just make a few changes to be fabulous and married.

for some reason my mom got a subscription to ladies home journal and in the last week we got 2 issues. this is a very, very bad magazine for old boring people. one of the articles was how the author tried to go on a romantic date with her husband, they swore they wouldn't talk about bills, children etc. 5 minutes into dinner they started talking about the children, and then decided to go straight home after dinner to be with the kids. the concusion was not: oh my gosh, i'm old, boring and horrible. it was: yup, that's the way it is, i've grown out of all the fun and romanance and everything good, and i wouldn't have it any other way. the recipes aren't even any good.

now if you cross a much younger ladies home journal without all the depressing boring old people articles but still the same concerns about how to have fun, how to hang out with another couple when one is your friend and the other is the dumbest, worst person on earth etc with any one of those single girl books written by single girls who think the whole world revolves around them, you'll get this book.

i could have done with less condesending fake situations and a few more real life examples, recipes, and song lists.

conclusion: don't buy it for yourself. but it wouldn't make a half bad wedding shower gift. i read/skimmed through it in less than 2 hrs. the cover is cute, and there are a few cute illustrations inside. also, maybe someone who didn't spend months reading pastel colored self help/entertainment/reference books might find this book new and novel.

second conclusion: i should write a book. too bad i'm lazy.