TiVo Lady

My Blurber's Book

Reading Little Pink Slips in two days is a lot like eating a giant-sized bag of vegetable chips all in one sitting.  They are salty and tasty and not necesarily good for you, although an improvement on chips of the potato, but you just can't stop shoving them in your mouth.  That's how I felt about my non-stop read of this book, written by Sally Koslow, who very kindly blurbed my book, BEYOND THE MOMMY YEARS, six months ago.  This book is fun, full of juicy details about upscale single life in the publishing and fashion worlds of Manhattan.  Here's her description of the "six food groups" of the apartment-dwelling, single, professional single woman:

"low-fat cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, strawberries, coffee ice cream, dark chocolate, and cashews."

I'm a bit disappointed that Koslow did not tackle age head on:  instead, she makes the magazine editing heroine, Magnolia Gold, thirty-eight years old, instead of the fifty-something that Koslow is and was.  So, unlike Koslow, Gold gets a second chance at editing a different magazine and finding a suitable lover, and, ultimately, living happily ever after.  Here's just a hint of those age issues, ones that are on Boomer minds everywhere:

"'I take heart that as long as we both shall live, Darlene will always be older than I am,' Magnolia said.  Lately, no matter the situation, Magnolia defaulted to the subject of age, her brain trilling, "Thirty-eight!  Thirty-eight!" like a taunting parrot.  She'd started to ask new questions.  Am I too old to show my navel?  No, not as long as my abs stay flat, she decided.  Is it time to start dressing like a lady senator?  The world will reward me if I don't.  Will I ever again be carded?  Not likely. 

In a chapter titled "Cleavage Never Hurts," Magnolia tries to decide what to wear. 

"Magnolia tried on the new Tuleh floral.  It showed tasteful 'I'm a woman, not just a working girl' cleavage, and Abbey had lent her a pair of dangly tourmaline earrings that made her eyes look as green as granny apples.  Her orange mini and halter?  Did it say 'festive dress,' as Natalie had requested, or 'tranny hooker'?  Should she go for understated chic with the Chloe cream eyelet pants and semisheer shirt?  The outfit was her seasonal splurge--she could have gone to Paris for a week on what she'd spent--and now she wondered if it looked like she'd grabbed it from Forever 21."

It goes on, but you get the idea.  I'm pretty sure that I have never thought as intensely as this about what to wear--anywhere.  But I love reading about someone who does.

This is a fun book by a Boomer, fantasizing about having her own life happen again, only younger.  If you know what I mean.

Book Break

Just finished a book not really worth mentioning, though I will anyway.  It's Imperium, by Robert Harris,  and it's proof that the author really did his research, and may even know some Latin, because he writes the life of Cicero as if by the guy's slave and secretary, Tiro.  Tiro apparently invented Shorthand for Latin, and that's how he knows all the stuff that happened for the three decades of political aspiration led by Cicero.  I only read this because I was longing for more of Rome, as in HBO-type Rome, and I thought this would do the trick.  It didn't.  My friend, Kay, listened to this as a Book on Tape, and loved it.  I have a much higher tolerance level for books I listen to with my ears, than those I read with my eyes.  On tape, a book just has to entertain me enough so that I'm not bored out of my mind driving on the same seven roads in and around where I live.  So, maybe, this book is easier on the ears than it is on the eyes.  Or, maybe not.

I've just started Little Pink Slips, by Sally Koslow, and it's delicious fun.  There's a sad subtext here, since it basically tells Sally's story of humiliation and defeat at the hands of Rosie O'Donnell, who was hired to remake McCall's magazine in her own image, and failed miserably at it.  Still, Sally's a great story teller, and includes a lot of very realistic inside dirt on what it's like to edit a major woman's magazine, which she did.  Most of the names are fictionalized, including hers, but every so often, a real name pops up, quite mysteriously, too...  Conflict of Interest Alert:  I interviewed Sally for my book, BEYOND THE MOMMY YEARS, and she also graciously agreed to blurb my book.  (Providing a juicy compliment that's printed on the back cover.)  So, I am somewhat obligated to like her book.  So far, though, I love it a lot, no strings necessary... More later!

Here is a preview of my book's look--although not the final, final version.  After a year of back-and- forthing and bickering and indecision, the subtitle is not as it appears here:  EMPTY NEST, FULL LIFE.   Instead, it is this:  HOW TO LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER . . .  AFTER THE CHILDREN LEAVE HOME.  Author says:  No comment.

My publisher, Springboard Press, went through many many versions of a cover before this one finally came out on top.  There's a science to designing book covers, apparently, but it's not one that has an Einstein, as does Physics, or a Madame Curie, as does Chemistry.  No, instead, this is dart-board science.  Hit or miss, what the hell.  You tell me:  Is it a hit or a miss?