Books

"I learn that black people don't have blue eyes. I learn that I am black. I have blue eyes. I put all these new facts into the new girl."

Even though the tone of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky reads like a young adult novel, told simply from the point of view of the characters--a young boy fascinated by birds, an immigrant mother, Rachel, the young protagonist--the book itself is drenched in disturbing realities and complex subjects, including race and identity.

Have you been wondering what would be the perfect metaphor for being single in your forties? Well now, just in time for Valentine's Day, Lori Gottlieb and her godsend of a new book (Marry Him: a case for settling for Mr. Good Enough) have answered it: it's like irresponsibly drinking before driving, and then causing serious bodily harm to yourself or someone else in a horrific accident. No seriously:

Although Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, came out nearly a year ago, it remains to date on the New York Times Top 10 Bestselling Fiction list… Forty weeks of its shelf life in fact, it has spent jostling with other titles on the list, still sitting comfortably at No. 4 as of January 11th. In this list-watching way, I waited patiently, patiently for my copy to move to number 1 on the library holds list. When I finally had the massive 444-page, hard bound copy in my hands, I grabbed a blanket, made cup after cup of tea and spent nearly two days on the couch plowing through Ms. Stockett’s tale of black domestic servants in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, and the white privileged woman who wants to write about them.

 

One of the lesser-discussed hassles of identifying as feminist is that people often think you'll be super-delighted to engage in some good old-fashioned man bashing. Those men, you know? What's up with them never being able to pick up their damn socks? And the belching? And like I care about whether the Red Sox will ever be in the World Series again. I should totally just get a dog—at least he'll be satisfied licking his own balls, instead of whining that I never do. Amirite, ladies?

So it's important, every so often, to stress that feminism does not equal female chauvinism. I was reminded of this when the review copy of Undateable: 311 Things Guys Do That Guarantee They Won't Be Dating or Having Sex arrived at Bitch Media HQ.

Undateable does not bill itself as a feminist text. It's a dating manual: As authors Ellen Rakieten and Anne Coyle write in its introduction: "There's an unspoken list of things men say, wear, or do that will pretty much guarantee that the girl you just took out to dinner won't ever want to see you again."

So, basically, it's the real-life version of Liz Lemon's "dealbreakers" book, only  not funny, and also instead of urging the ladies to shut down relationships for sensible (if insane) reasons—he's appeared on To Catch a Predator, he's wearing a giant diamond "Open Marriage" necklace—Undateable encourages them to be shallow, closed-minded, and incredibly sexist.