PW reviews director Louisa Ermelino wrote that the publication "ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz" when composing its list, and that "it disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male." But Cate Marvin, founder of Women in Letters and Literary Arts (and also a pretty great poet) says,

The absence made me nearly speechless. [...] It continues to surprise me that literary editors are so comfortable with their bias toward male writing, despite the great and obvious contributions that women authors make to our contemporary literary culture.

Salon's Laura Miller sees both sides of the issue. She points out that "what's at issue isn't sales or even access to readers," and it's worth remembering that women buy more books than men these days, and that many of the most commercially successful writers in English are women. But "prestige and critical recognition" still matter, and Miller acknowledges that Publishers' Weekly may be unknowingly buying into prejudices about what deserves to be prestigious. Ermelino seemed to brush off the concerns of Marvin and others by saying the PW list wasn't "the most politically correct," but Miller writes,

[R]eal, long-standing cultural biases [...] live in the heart of every critic to one degree or another, and we'd be shirking our duty if we didn't try to account for them. Writing off such qualms as mere "political correctness" is, in its own way, just as dishonest as exaggerating your admiration for a book simply because its author is female, or dark-skinned, or from a far-off nation. I don't doubt that P.W.'s editors are entirely sincere when they say their list reflects their unvarnished preferences. Still, the fact that those preferences can't encompass one woman author among 10 books (fiction or nonfiction) picked from the 50,000-plus titles they claim to have sifted through suggests that their horizons might need a bit of deliberate widening.

This is a smart point. When a list like this one draws criticism — and they have in the past — the compilers usually defend it with the argument that "this is just what we like." But what we like is subject to deeply held and unconscious biases, and when we think we're being objective, we are often praising what we're most comfortable with, or what we think is most deserving of praise based on whatever stereotypes we grew up with. Miller gets this, but she also understands how difficult it is to make a list that's both wide-ranging and true to a critic's particular tastes:

If you insist on a list that's ideally representative of gender, race, class, nationality (i.e., including at least one translation), publisher size (small as well as large), fame, length (short story collections as well as novels), region, genre and so on, you can easily wind up with, say, a list of nine books you kinda like and maybe one you truly love. That's a tepid dish to serve up to readers, and not likely to inspire much enthusiasm, either.

I'm not completely comfortable with the idea that jettisoning your preconceived notions lead to "tepid" criticism, just as I don't like the argument that approaching literature from a multicultural perspective leads to the canonization of bad literature. I think that the "deliberate widening of horizons" that Miller talks about might actually lead critics to love books they might not even have picked up otherwise, and to examine the ways in which their privilege influences their taste. But I also think that compiling, by committee, a list of the ten best books in any year is a great way to piss people off, and not a particularly great way to inform them.

I've been reviewing books for a long time, and I'm a big fan of the book review as a literary form in itself and a way of introducing readers to new and exciting work. I know that, when I review a book, I bring my own prejudices to it — I can and should try to fight against them, but I'll never completely eliminate them all. The thing is, my reviews run under my byline, and are clearly my opinion and mine alone. I'm also just making judgments about an individual book, not about what constitutes the cream of the crop of an entire year's literature. Getting a bunch of people together to pick a "best-of" list, no matter how open-minded those people are, screws up the process of criticism because it obscures it from view. We don't know who fought for what, who insisted on what inclusion or exclusion, and what those people's reasons and biases were. All we see is a collective entity that calls itself an authority and delivers a verdict not just on one book, but on all the books of an entire year (or, sometimes, decade or century). Even if we got the names of everybody on the PW panel (the entire staff? a select group?), it would be pretty hard to tease out all the different influences that lead to an all-male winner's circle.

So while I think the WILLA Wiki of great 2009 books by women is a good response to PW's dude-fest, I also know that every list excludes somebody. And I'd rather go on judging every book on its own merits than compare it to a whole bunch of other books. But of course, that's just the opinion of Anna North, a young-ish white woman from Los Angeles who's tired because it's Friday and skeptical because it's November and a little embarrassed because she hasn't read any of the books on the PW list — and who, like all critics, could easily be wrong.

No. 1 Omission From Top 10 Book List: Women [NYT ArtsBeat Blog]
A 10-Best Books List Without Women? [Salon]
Best Books Of 2009 [Publishers Weekly]
The WILLA List Wiki [Official Site]

Onetime Jezebel editor Jessica Grose writes that Karr keeps a warning above her desk: letters that spell out "HUBRIS." She might still need it. When Grose asks Karr about her conversion to Catholicism, she says,

Somebody said to me, "So, you think you've had all this success because God likes you better than other writers?" And I said, "Absolutely!" Because of my faith, I do have a sense that I'm supposed to be alive on the planet. Which, given the way I was brought up, I didn't exactly have going in.

On the one hand, Karr has struggled with alcoholism and depression (the subjects of her new book, Lit), and it's hard to begrudge or anything that has given her a sense of place in the world. On the other, it's more than a little obnoxious for a writer who has benefited from the capricious whims of the literary market to claim that her success comes from God's favor. If she's right, God must be really into Dan Brown.

Of course, Karr is right that secular people will always have some difficulty with talk about religion. She says, "Talking about spiritual matters to a secular audience is like doing card tricks on the radio. It's like, 'This is really cool, everybody,' and they're like, 'Yeah, OK!' So I know that it sounds a little nutty." As a nonbeliever, I guess I'm listening to Karr's card tricks over the radio, and perhaps I've missed some nuance in her claim about God's love. In any case, the interview is more interesting when it deals with women and memoir. Grose asks,

I've read a lot of interviews recently with young female memoirists who say things like, "I'm writing this memoir to help other people," and I always find that to be disingenuous. And I wonder if you had any insight into why female memoirists, specifically, have this need to claim altruism, why they feel that something being a good story isn't enough of a reason to tell it.

And Karr responds:

You know, I think it actually has to do with what it means to be feminine in this culture. If you betray a family confidence, it's not seen as appropriately feminine. It's one reason, maybe, that men's memoirs, especially about adolescence, are so much easier to write. Because for a man to say, "And then I pushed my father down on the ground and stormed out of the house and stole the car," is, in a way, what a man does to come of age. For a woman to betray family secrets or intimacies is seen as particularly grotesque or masculinizing.

I didn't [write] it to help anybody. I did it for the money. I did it because I'm greedy and I like living in New York.

Karr's claim that she "did it for the money" is its own kind of bravado, but interestingly, it's a kind more common for male writers, who sometimes feel the need to counteract the supposedly effete nature of artistic endeavor by making it all about cold hard cash. Karr does happen to be in the (perhaps) enviable position of being able to write for money, but there are more lucrative careers, and Karr dances around one primary motive for memoir: narcissism.

The term has taken a big beating in the media lately, but Karr is right — it's something we've always tolerated in male writers. What else but narcissism could motivate someone to write his autobiography, not to help anyone, but simply because he considers his own life a good story? Such impulses have given us some great books, and without the narcissism of artists, society would be a lot less interesting. Still, we tend to forget this when women speak up to tell their stories — we call them out for oversharing or airing the family's dirty laundry, unless of course their books are good for us in some way. Men are allowed to be entertainers, but too often, we expect women to be teachers or nurses.

So maybe Karr's hubris is actually kind of refreshing. I don't think we all need to be swaggering around like Norman Mailer, but I do think arrogance in women is so demonized that it's nice to see it flare up from time to time. Writing is a pretty useless act, on the face of it, and also very self-centered. You can justify it to yourself by pretending you're helping people, but I'm not at all sure that books written with the intent to help actually do so. The other option is just to be convinced that your bullshit is intrinsically worth reading. And in order to do this, you may have to believe something crazy, like that God actually likes you best.

God's Favorite Writer [Double X]

First of all, everyone loves the Eloise books - the multi-volume story of the terminally obnoxious, presumably neglected, ultimate city child running wild in the Plaza Hotel and abroad. Eloise is equal parts demon and adorable, bane of waiters and lover (kind of) of animals and dolls. She is, quite simply, one of the best and most complex heroines of all time. Her author was a known character - what the Daily Beast terms "one of New York's great eccentrics" who'd made a career as a bonne vivante, actress and cabaret performer before she created the Eloise alter-ego. (She plays the larger-than-life, pink-thinking Maggie Prescott in Funny Face) By all accounts, she got very involved with Eloise, falling into her voice and her mannerisms pretty often - so it's not a shocker that she'd be proprietary about her creation. Hilary Knight, the books' illustrator, and Thompson butted heads - and continue to. Says Knight, still very much working, his involvement "was the best thing that ever happened to it, though Kay wouldn't ever say so."

Since her death, Thompson's estate has the books in something of a stranglehold. As he says, "Withholding is a nice way of saying what her estate is...But Kay would not be happy with the new book, or any of the re-printings. You see, she didn't want anything done. I know deep down that we will someday see more Eloise, and I hope I'm here to do them. I would love to see an animated movie, because live-action cannot capture how terrible she really is."

Knight has become something of a New York institution in his own right: active on the social and charity scene, he has recently started blogging for Vanity Fair (his whimsical "sketchbook" is, I daresay, a reason for VF's death-defying numbers.) He writes frequently about his favorite New York haunts and even name-checlks yours truly's favorite time-warp restaurant. He also has a tres chic Myspace page, and, currently, is working on a project that will thrill a certain segment of the population that may include me more than anything in the world possible could:

a new book with June Havoc, the 97-year-old sister of Gypsy Rose Lee ("Baby June" from the musical), creating an "adult graphic novel about her life in vaudeville in the 1920s when she was a huge star. It's quite grim."

But, quoth he, "They (Havoc and Thompson) are both Scorpios. And Eloise is a Scorpio, and I am too. I've always been drawn to these strong, captivating women." Us, too.

Hilary Knight's Sketchbook [Vanity Fair]
Hilary Knight.com
Eloise At 55 [Daily Beast]

But Wood Nymph Seeks Centaur is by Francesca Lia Block — an author whose 24 spellbinding magical-realistic novels have fascinated many thousands of girls and boys since we read her award-winning Weetzie Bat young adult series as teenagers — and this book marks her first foray into the prescriptive realm. I was curious about what kind of dating advice we'd get from the creator of the stories that taught me so much about the hot, subversive, dazzling potential of love and sex when I was in my teens – so curious that I decided to put aside my prejudices about books with the word "dating" on the cover and find out what kind of mythological beasties my friends and I are.

Divorced with two young children, Block reentered the single world later in life via online dating. This experience seems to have been exciting and traumatic in equal measure, and she has drawn heavily on her own experiences in order to devise the book's categories. The chapter that describes the male types in detail is full of girlfriendishly confidential and funny stories, and the descriptions of these types who feature in these stories ring true, though they sound a bit ridiculous taken out of context: "My Garden Elf friend was helping me shop for a vintage Chanel suit," for example, or "I liked the Urban Elf very much. But I was still rebounding from my Satyr and was soon distracted by yet another Satyr; my relationship with the Elf fell away."

But after I got past the inherent oddness of thinking of men as Giants and Werewolves, I was shocked to find how accurately Block was describing many of my exes. I experienced the same feeling of "instant relief" she describes herself as having felt after devising the system: "I recalled all my failed relationships, and when I looked at them through the lens of mythology… I felt a sense of order. Of course the Satyr left me. Of course I couldn't stay with a Faun. I was a Wood Nymph! It was like trying to date the wrong astrological sign."

Skeptics might wince at this comparison – after all, not everyone believes that the position of the stars at the time of our birth determines our essential natures. But even the most rational-minded among us has to admit that people do have essential natures. It might not matter so much whether we call someone a "Pixie," or a "classic Aries" or a "Myers-Briggs ENTJ." Also, trying to figure out what type you and your friends and your significant others are is fun. Tomboyish and energetic, with an underlying seriousness? You may be a Brownie. Passionate, ambitious, and likely to channel your anger into art? You're a Banshee. Do you love beauty, and often insult people without meaning to? It's likely you're a Mermaid. Does your crush have an intense gaze, a lean, athletic body, a comfortable bed and a great stereo? Watch out – you may have a compulsively seductive, never-faithful Satyr on your hands.

The system isn't without its weak spots. A gay friend (who I think is probably a Centuar-Faun) happened to be sitting in my kitchen when this book arrived; he's a longstanding Block fan, but he honed in immediately on how much less useful the system is for predicting the outcomes of same-sex matches. (Block provides a chapter, but acknowledges that a whole other book would be necessary to encompass all the possibilities). And the chapter about female types lacks the specificity of the chapter on males, probably because Block dates men, and only has firsthand experience of what women are like as friends. I had to combine two types to arrive at a description that seemed like it fit me, which Block says is common, but which made reading the chapter about pairings a bit less satisfying (sort of like when Susan Miller told me I had to read the monthly Astrologyzone predictions for both Libra and Aries, but I digress.)

Nevertheless, I found myself recommending the book to friends and bringing up its advice as we chatted about our relationships – and to my mind, anything that brings a fresh perspective to those conversations is worth the cover price. I also chatted briefly with Block via email about how she devised the system, her favorite breakup music, and what the future might hold for a Mermaid-Banshee/Centaur pairing (I was just curious).

How do you think people come by their mythological types? Are we born Mermaids or Werewolves, or does a combination of nature and nurture make us what we are?

I think it is definitely a combination, with, perhaps, a little more emphasis on nurture in respect to my system because in my book I'm primarily talking about how types relate in the venue of dating and often our dating persona is something we create, either consciously or unconsciously. As we get to know someone deeply we discover their true nature, which is, literally, as much about nature as nurture.

What are some red flags — detectable from an online profile or a first glance alone, let's say — that the creature you've got your eye on might be a Satyr?

Satyrs often have beautiful, soulful looking eyes, sexy voices and physical style and grace and they can throw you off. Don't just get carried away by what you see at first. Everything comes down to behavior and actions, not what someone says or how they appear but what they do.

Does he call you back? Is he attentive? Does he keep his wandering eye in check? Is he kind? Does he introduce you to his friends and family at the appropriate time? Is he sexually and emotionally respectful?

I loved the celebrity examples of different types of creatures, or different type-pairings, but I wondered, as I imagine many readers of your fiction must've wondered, what type you'd say some of your characters were. (Of course, some of them are literally Fairies or Vamps!) What's Weetzie, or Cherokee, or Violet, or Claire or Emily in Pretty Dead? (Um you don't have to answer all of these. But I'm curious about all of them!)

Weetzie is Pixie/Fairy. Witch Baby is a Wood Nymph/Banshee. Cherokee is a Pixie/Mermaid. Violet is a Wood Nymph/Vamp. Claire is a Dryad/Fairy.

Charlotte from Pretty Dead is a Mermaid. Emily is a Brownie. Thanks for this question!

I know you've written a book of poetry about an ex-lover, and obviously all fiction writers draw on their personal lives for inspiration. But even so, was it hard to be this personal about your love life? Was the experience of writing this book different from writing others? In a way, in spite of its prescriptive format, I felt like it contained peeks at what a more straightforward memoir might look like. Have you ever considered writing one?

I feel comfortable revealing my truths through my writing because I have the protection of lyrical language and literary structure. In other words, if I reveal something personal in a way that has some beauty and order I gain perspective on it and distance from it. I also consider the fact that my truth may help someone else. I have written a memoir about my first year as a mom called Guarding The Moon and I'd consider doing another.

You clearly know your way around heartbreak — How do you deal with breakups? Any recommended methods of coping, favorite music, etc?

Lately it has been about continuing to go out and meet new people, doing a lot of yoga, relying on my friends and writing about it. I can't listen to music when my heart hurts, unless it hurts with the joy of first love and then I can listen to sad music and cry easily. I like "Breathe Me' by Sia for a good cry. Also "Morning Yearning" by Ben Harper.,"Mad World" by Gary Jules., Michael Franti's "Hey World."'I like Frightened Rabbit's "Floating in the Forth," "Ava" by the National, "Nothing Compares 2U-Sinead O'Connor, "Thank You,," Alanis Morissette and "Love Should" by Moby.

What's your take on a Mer-Shee/ Centaur pairing? Just um randomly curious.

Just randomly, huh? He'll think she is sexy and admire her power but he might be intimidated by her unless he's found his own success through his art. She should try to tone down her ego and work on expressing love. support and compassion to the females in her life, as much as the males because it will be a way for her to find love and compassion for herself and be more ready for a healthy relationship with this attractive but sometimes difficult type. Good luck.

Wood Nymph Seeks Centaur: A Mythological Dating Guide [Amazon]

Earlier: Weetzie Bat: The Book For Girls Who Ended Up Taking A Gay Dude To Prom
F Is For Francesca, And I Wish I Were Her

Ehrenreich made her name taking on the humiliations and inadequacies of American low-wage jobs in Nickel and Dimed, and in Bright-Sided she identifies a similarly large-scale enemy — a sort of positivity-industrial complex composed of big corporations (who want optimistic, obedient workers), motivational speakers and coaches (who want to sell materials on how to be more positive), and even medical researchers (who feel pressure to support the "sexy" idea of mind over matter). These forces combine, she argues, to enforce a "deliberate self-deception" that not only masks real unhappiness but has led our country into danger.

Bright-Sided is especially strong in its critique of Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, which Ehrenreich identifies as a rehash of earlier self-help books, and even of some principles of magic. She points out that the ideas promulgated in The Secret — say, that you can "attract" a life partner by making room in your closet for his clothes, or a car by putting a picture of it on a "vision board" — require a universe in which other people are slaves to your whims. She describes an interview in which Larry King found himself in "an odd situation for a famous talk show host — having to insist that he, Larry King, was not just an image on someone else's vision board but an independent being with a will of his own." A world where no one else has free will, Ehrenreich points out, is "a god-awful lonely place."

Ehrenreich also writes persuasively that the popularity of positive thinking in corporate America — she cites the rise of "self-described management gurus" like Tony Robbins and the book Who Moved My Cheese? as examples — has served to blind workers to their ever-decreasing job security. "Outplacement" firms teach the newly unemployed to think of layoffs as a good thing, and Who Moved My Cheese? tells readers that the most successful people (or rather, mice) are those who don't "overanalyze or overcomplicate things" — with the result that workers are less likely to complain about their employers' increasingly capricious control over their lives. Ehrenreich writes,

By and large, America's white-collar corporate workforce drank the Kool-Aid, as the expression goes, and accepted positive thinking as a substitute for their former affluence and security. They did not take to the streets, shift their political allegiance in large numbers, or show up at work with automatic weapons in hand. As one laid-off executive told me with quiet pride, "I've gotten over my negative feelings, which were so dysfunctional." Positive thinking promised them a sense of control in a world where the "cheese" was always moving. They may have had less and less power to chart their own futures, but they had been given a worldview — a belief system, almost a religion — that claimed they were in fact infinitely powerful, if they could only master their own minds.

The book can be unforgiving at times. Ehrenreich writes provocatively of her own battle with breast cancer, and of the criticism she faced from other sufferers for admitting she was angry. She also notes that the (highly questionable) claims that "positive" people are healthier can degenerate into a kind of victim-blaming — one patient said, "I know that if I get sad, or scared or upset, I am making my tumor grow faster and I will have shortened my life." And she cites one study showing that women who see benefits to cancer may even "face a poorer quality of life" than those who don't. At the same time, Ehrenreich doesn't make much distinction between negative events we can resist in some way and those we simply have to accept. She mentions that breast cancer therapies haven't improved all that much since the 1930s, but this isn't for lack of effort or research, and some women thinking of cancer as a "gift" hasn't stopped the search for a cure. Ehrenreich's critique of the whitewashing of her own and other women's feelings is apt, but at the same time, a cancer diagnosis represents for many people a powerful loss of control. It's little wonder that many try to find a silver lining, and a little inhumane to discourage them from doing so.

Other forms of positive thinking, especially that imposed by employers, are far more damaging to society. Ehrenreich mentions the role of optimistic yes-men in the financial crisis and the Iraq war, but she could have condemned even more strongly the movement that seeks to convince people that losing their jobs is awesome. While looking on the bright side of a layoff may make sense on a personal level, it also discourages any sort of collective action. Ehrenreich writes in her postscript that "positive thinking has been a tool of repression worldwide" and that "the threats we face are real and can be vanquished only by shaking off self-absorption and taking action in the world." The latter seems like the real key point of Bright-Sided — that convincing ourselves that things are already good can keep us from making them better, both for ourselves and for others — and I wish Ehrenreich had made it more forcefully throughout her book, not just in the postscript. It's a message that deserves to be heard.

Bright-Sided: How The Relentless Promotion Of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America [Amazon]

In a juicy profile, New Yorker's Rebecca Mead goes inside the behemoth teen taste-maker Alloy, a sort of sinister junior Clear Channel that's responsible for much of the YA bestseller list, including the multimedia Gossip Girl and Traveling Pants juggernauts and, more lately, The Vampire Diaries. And do we ever see the pink, undead, bratty sausage being made! Here's how Mead describes the efficient hit-factory:

[Alloy] pack-ges about thirty novels a year for publishers, and also generates television shows and a growing number of ideas for featurefilms. In order to do all this, Alloy has developed a process with an industrial level of efficiency. Ideas are typically suggested in weekly development meetings and, if they gain the approval of Morgenstein and Bank, are fleshed out into a short summary by an editor. A writer is asked to create a sample chapter on spec; if Alloy executives are happy with the sample, they put her (or, on occasion, him) on contract. The writer hashes out a plot with Bank, one or two other editors, and Sara Shandler, Alloy's editorial director-an alumnus of Seventeen, who, at the age of nineteen, put together the anthology "Ophelia Speaks".

It's always kind of creepy to see unabashed marketing at work, and especially when it's aimed at an impressionable age-group, however lucrative. Of course, cash-in teen-lit has a long pseudonomynous history, from Nancy Drew to Sweet Valley. And the Alloy execs would just say they're giving kids what they want. One Alloy exec defends it thusly: "Editors and publishers can get hung up on what's good for kids...At Alloy, they always think first about what kids want to read." Which, of course, isn't always - or indeed, ever - an improving tract. And the idea that the body of literature informs and shapes said nascent tastes, paving the way for a lifetime of dutiful buying - well, that's conveniently ignored. Yes, kids want candy and Easy-Mac: because they've seen ads designed to attract them. Not because it's what's best for their development, or some genetic imperative of childhood.

Sure, some of the series sound really interesting (I really want to read the second "Wish" book that they map out in the piece), and the Alloy execs say we're moving away, culturally, from the excess of "brat lit" into Twilit territory because "more serious, angsty literature is where girls are right now. Morbid, dead-girl lit." And some of the book are even of historical interest! Mead mentions a new novel about
"a boy who acquires superhuman powers after being tortured during the Civil War." Then there's the new gilded-age Gossip-Girl-esque series, the cover image of which Mead describes:

The result is a look that no woman in the Gilded Age would have been immodest enough to wear beyond the boudoir or the brothel, though the Alloy team felt that the sartorial anachronism was entirely forgivable (much like the heroine's request for "ciggies"-slang that would take another sixty years to emerge). "Girls today would not relate to the more severe necklines and covered arms and horrible hair styles that girls were wearing at the time," Sara Shandler says. "We tried to do the imaginary-princess version." Or, as one of the publishers competing for the book described the gown, "the ultimate fuck-me prom dress."

And there, of course, is the rub. There's a continuing belief that kids can't relate to anything unlike themselves. Richer versions of themselves, 19th Century versions of themselves, maybe magic versions of themselves - but the feeling seems to be that kids are such incredible narcissists that any truly expanded horizons are more than they can handle. And the problem, of course, is that it's self-fulfilling. The other day I passed a poster at the bus stop bearing a still from the new Where The Wild Things Are movie. "Read," it ordered - seemingly without irony. Alloy would totally agree.

The Gossip Mill [New Yorker]

Actually two investigations: Jonathan Birchall of the LA Times reviews Why She Buys and Women Want More, two books on the 50% of the American population that apparently controls 72% of the spending. This statistic alone (from the second book) explains why Wal-Mart directs its ads at moms and not dads. But while Women Want More also posits that women's spending will help end the recession, neither book seems — at least from the review — to offer much concrete information about women's buying habits.

Why She Buys, by Bridget Brennan, is apparently "fun and anecdotal," and the author tells a little story about rejecting a sports car because the cup holders are too small. Brennan isn't swayed by the dealer's "dismissive response that Europeans don't drink coffee in the car" — but really, who would be? This tidbit doesn't really show that women like cupholders or creature comforts, as much as it shows that they don't like bad salesmanship.

Women Want More, by Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre, seems to offer slightly more hard data. Using a study of a study of 12,000 women in 21 countries, the authors find, according to Birchall, that, "'Demands on time' are the top challenge for 47% of respondents; 72% say their mother is the dominant person in their lives; 42% are made extremely happy by pets but only 27% by sex." This is potentially interesting data, but except for the first statistic, it's not clear how these numbers affect shopping. The authors also break women down into six consumer "archetypes," including "fast tracker" and "making ends meet." Unfortunately, Birchall doesn't really explain these archetypes, or what and how they buy.

Part of the review's vagueness may stem from space concerns, but its unintentional message is that despite their research, none of the authors actually have that much to say about why women buy things. It's tempting to respond that women just buy for the same reasons men do, and that it's pointless to break down consumer research by gender. However, given that most companies still use the "make it pink" philosophy of appealing to women, it would be nice if they had a little more data on what women actually want. Corporations may feel that women's buying preferences, like their sexuality, are unknowable and shrouded in mystery. But while some women may buy for different reasons than some men, our reasons are no more difficult to understand.

Of course, for all shoppers, motivations differ according to the purchase at hand. Very different thoughts go through my head when I'm picking up toilet paper than when I'm, say, shopping for a new book. But all the same, I'd like to offer those hapless consumer researchers a little help in understanding the complex female brain. So taking a page from Latoya, I'll list a few general things that convince me to buy an item:

— I need it (toothpaste, soap, MetroCards, beans)
— I want it (books, dessert, an LP record with owls painted on it)
— it sucks less than what I currently have (electronics)
— it's pretty (dresses, art exhibition postcards I will promptly lose, NOT electronics)
— it's cheap (headbands with cherries printed on them and long weird tails that are maybe supposed to tie under my chin)

And here are some reasons I don't buy stuff:

— I have no money
— it has a big fat logo on it
— part of it breaks off in my hand
— it has Bible verses printed on it (especially true if product has nothing to do with religion)
— a salesperson is pushing me to buy it

Feel free to add your reasons.

Getting A Handle On What Drives Women To Buy [LA Times]

There is a part, in Betsy in Spite of Herself, when everyone in Betsy Ray's Deep Valley High School class is required to read Ivanhoe over the summer. Betsy is one of the few who has, but when she sits down to write a synopsis of the novel, she is so overcome by her desire to do it full justice that she chokes and doesn't manage to complete the assignment. I feel her. This is exactly the feeling I have sitting down to put my thoughts on Maud Hart-Lovelace's series into words.

This feeling about the books - which start when Betsy's 5 and follow her through her early 20s and the beginning of World War I - is not unique to me. Perhaps because you grow up with them, age along with the characters and the writing, the affection you feel for the world of the books is very intense. It's also an intensely appealing universe; the autobiographical stories are set in a a world of happy families, safe streets, and a tight circle of friends known as The Crowd.

A lot of writers have talked about how meaningful Betsy-Tacy was to them growing up. In fact, the new editions, which properly classify the books as "modern classics" and are beautiful and dignified and almost make one forget the treacly atrocities of the past decade's children's edition, feature prologues by Anna Quindlen, Meg Cabot, and Laura Lippmann. All the women talk about the fact that, although she is growing up in the early 20th Century, Betsy always assumes - as does her supportive family - that she will have a career. Sure, she likes boys and fashion, but there's never any question that she'll have an independent life as a writer and world-traveler, just as her sister will become a professional singer and they'll all go to college.

And Betsy is a great heroine: relatable, complex, smart but prone to errors of judgment and famously bad at math. The Crowd, as one friend told me, shaped her idea of teenage life - and she was forever disappointed that she wasn't able to find such a cohesive, supportive group of friends. Because the way friendship is portrayed - between girls, and between the sexes - is really nice. There's rarely jealousy or pettiness or back-stabbing, despite the fact that the characters feel real (as, if you read The Betsy-Tacy Companion you'll find they all are.) The author was clearly someone who loved people and loved life, and this comes through. This is also probably why the books are particularly wholesome to read at a young age - although make no mistake, they hold up, and there's no better comfort read. Betsy and Joe is my particular poison, although I also have a fondness for the spin-offs Carney's House Party and Emily of Deep Valley. Comforting, yes - and by the way, the food and clothes descriptions are great - but also inspiring. I've joined the Betsy-Tacy Society, and I want to go to Mankato someday and see the author's real house. But in a way, these early loves are always personal, and even as it's wonderful to share them with fellow nerds, you know that your relationship with Betsy is special. Read - or re-read - for yourself, but I've tried to, well, "hit the high spots."

When you're a teenager, it's de rigueur to be pointlessly contrarian, slaughtering sacred cows and bursting the bubble of people's complacency. You loudly and publicly decry Life is Beautiful or Nine Inch Nails or Magic Realism or whatever feels most outre at the moment. You get over this.

There are, of course, people who don't, who never lose the idea that not liking stuff makes you smarter, and that criticizing things near to people's hearts doesn't make you an asshole, but rather a truth-teller. For most of us, tearing down the stuff people love loses its charms. One derives no pleasure from telling one's nonogenarian grandfather that the book he loved was derivative drivel or the friend who loves Harold and Maude that you find it completely unwatchable except the score, which is admittedly really good. As Morrissey would have it, it's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate, and there's no justifying the things you like. When that liking is backed up by a chorus of critics and line-quoting fans and theme-parties, well, there's just no point.

And so we hold our tongues. And the walls rise around us, hemming us in with assumptions and collective cultural love until we can no longer take it. Daniel B. Smith came to this point after having to read Eric Carle's iconic picture-book to his two-year-old daughter with mind-numbing regularity. I can't share Smith's passion about The Very Hungry Caterpillar - these things tend to be idiosyncratic, hence the fear of speaking out - but I have betes noires of my own.

Like I said, Ferris Bueller. I loathe it. I find it humorless and charmless and people intoning "Bueller" is for me tantamount to nails on a chalkboard. Or Whit Stillman's movies, which have always struck me as the cinematic equivalent of the mixology trend. While we're at it? M.F.K. Fisher, who, while a good stylist, conveys a palpable chill that's always put me off. There, I said it! I don't like The Gastronomical Me with its icy narcissism, lack of discernible appetite and stony-faced infidelities!

When I posed the question of private sacred-cow slaughterhouses to the rest of the editorial board (or equivalent) the response was overwhelming, ranging from The Godfather, James Joyce,Breakfast at Tiffany's, Elvis Presley, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, jazz, The Sound of Music, Margaret Atwood, The Lord of the Rings, SNL, Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression on SNL, Wuthering Heights, The Rolling Stones, Where the Wild Things Are, Manhattan, and, um "custard squares" (which is apparently a major deal in New Zealand.) The last word goes to Anna: "SEINFELD. I HATE SEINFELD."

Of all these things, I will quote Smith when he says "I recognize that this viewpoint would appear to be contradicted by ample evidence." But that is the point. Are they in fact "good?" Are you wrong, or just the one declaring that the emperor is naked? After all, going along with things, as human history tells us, can be dangerous. On the other hand, college freshmen calling Jane Austen "bourgeois" or saying that Fleetwood Mac was better before Buckingham-Nicks even though they've never listened to Tusk,
are tiresome.

The Very Grouchy Daddy [Slate]

Writing on Ditchwalk, Barrett quotes several news sources implying that Sarah Palin knuckled down and wrote her very own 400-page book in four months. Perhaps the most ridiculous is her publisher's statement, repeated without criticism by ABC:

Gov. Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project," Jonathan Burnham of HarperCollins told the Associated Press. "It's her words, her life and it's all there in full and fascinating detail."

ABC also mentions that Palin worked with "collaborator" Lynn Vincent, but what no one's really saying is that in all likelihood Vincent wrote the whole fucking thing. Barrett is especially critical of this line from the ABC piece: "Once the manuscript was complete, Palin then reportedly spent several intense days in New York working with her editors at HarperCollins." Barrett writes,

First, the intent of that graph is to get readers to believe that Palin was ‘intensely working on the manuscript', when what she was probably intensely working on was a double-secret plan to combine PR-driven hype with a juicy talk-show-circuit revelation just as the book is getting ready to hit store shelves.

Second, note the inclusion of the word ‘editors' in the quote: as if an actual editor was working on the manuscript with Palin herself in the room. Because I'm betting nothing like that actually happened, or came close to happening. In fact, if Palin, anyone with content-editing experience, and a copy of her manuscript were all in the same room at any one time I would be shocked.

Palin may have had a little bit more involvement in her book than, say, Paris Hilton had in designing her fragrance, but to hear Barrett tell it, the endeavors are actually pretty similar. He writes,

[T]he publishing world is not genuinely concerned with ideas and authors, it's concerned with selling objects (books, magazines, etc.). To the extent that hyping specific authors is done at all, it's done to create bankable stars in the same way that Hollywood wants, needs and hates bankable stars because they attract customers. In the publishing biz these stars might be literary stars (proving the industry cares about artistic authors), or genre stars (proving the publishing industry cares about entertainment authors), but in all cases the caring is ultimately sales-based, not author-based. Proof of this, if it's needed, is found in the simple fact that when it makes sense to lie about authorship in order to increase sales, the entire publishing industry eagerly turns a blind eye.

Simply put, Sarah Palin is a brand, and HarperCollins knows that brand will sell books. So that's what goes on the cover of Going Rogue, even though Lynn Vincent did the actual writing. As Barrett points out, it's interesting that the publishing industry, the snootiest arm of the entertainment business, is the one that's cool with this type of lying. Pop stars don't get songwriting credits unless they actually write songs, and when celebrities direct films, they do actually have to show up on set. Perhaps the reason ghostwriting is so accepted is that prose isn't particularly valued just now, and audiences are very interested in books written by people famous for things other than writing. This is especially problematic when the celebrity in question is famous for things that are basically the antithesis of good writing — like relying on bizarre metaphors, not reading the newspaper, and being generally inarticulate.

It's certainly no surprise that Sarah Palin needed a ghostwriter, but just because it's expected that doesn't mean it shouldn't be condemned. Barrett points out that failing to acknowledge "collaborators" like Vincent — she's not on the cover, and she's not on HarperCollins's webpage for the book — ignores the work of the actual author in favor of the big name that gets slapped on the book when work is done. If we want the felicitous use of the English language to be respected again (and Sarah Palin has certainly worked hard against this), we need to honor the people who actually know how to use it. As Barrett says, "ghostwriting is lying, and it's the kind of lying that devalues every author. It's time to give up the ghost."

Giving Up The Ghost [Ditchwalk]

Sarah Palin's cover is very simple, almost deceptively simple. We've got blue sky, red fleece, and not much else. However, Palin's book jacket clearly comes from a long history of portraiture. It is possible to compare this image to anything from Velasquez's grandiose portraits of Philip IV to August Sander's humble photographs of German citizens. Every great leader has, at one point or another, had a photograph or painting done of them almost exactly like this one, but despite the relatively restrained design, there are a few notable things about Palin's choice. This book shows us exactly how Palin wants to be viewed by the public, so let's see what subliminal messages are hiding in plain sight on the glossy jacket.

The composition of Going Rogue immediately brings to mind photographs of another famous maverick: Amelia Earhart. Earhart is frequently shown framed against a vast expanse of blue sky, hair tousled by the wind. Palin, too, stands against a background of nothing but clouds and sky, staring gamely at something far away, something above the viewer, that only she can see (Russia, perhaps?). Palin is the entire foreground-we see nothing but her brave figure silhouetted against the open Alaska sky. The aviation symbolism is clear: Palin is ready to take flight. Tired of being hemmed in by lame-duck governorship and the twistings and turnings of the liberal media, Palin is ready to fly off on her own, forge her own path into the future.

Palin would no doubt like her audience to think of her as the continuation of a long line of fierce female warriors. Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that her book cover is so reminiscent of WWII recruiting posters. Many of these posters feature a single woman from the waist up, standing against a background of either blue sky or Old Glory. Like Going Rogue, for the most part, these women are not shown straight on, but rather from a slightly lower angle. The viewer is placed below the figure, which adds height and stature to their slight feminine frames. Unlike the images of Amelia Earhart, these women are all dolled-up, lipstick-on and ready for battle. While Palin is not dressed quite as sharply as her predecessors, her hair is flawless (as is, naturally, her lipstick). Luckily, she managed to pose for this photograph on the most windless day in Alaskan history, because nothing short of Photoshop could explain such perfection, and since we all know how much Palin appreciates truth, it is doubtful that she stooped to such low measures to manipulate her image.

In a similar vein, the color scheme of the cover brings to mind another set of propaganda posters. In the 1960s, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong commissioned a series of posters and "large doses of didactic politicized art" in an attempt to "inoculate" the peasantry. These images show Mao looming large against a red and blue sky. Like Palin, he does not deign to make eye contact with the viewer, but looks out at something in the far distance. However, the most striking similarity between these images appears in the colors. Palin is surrounded by a white and blue, with her jacket as the sole bright spot of red. But notice that this is not one of her fancy, several-thousand dollar jackets: Instead, Palin wears a humble fleece. (Maybe she wants to remind us of her "Real America" roots. Certainly she doesn't want her customer base thinking of her as Designer Barbie Palin. Especially since, as Amazon shows, her biggest fans are currently too busy preparing for the end of the world to worry about fashion. Customers who bought this item also bought: How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Catastrophe, and, because everyone needs a little light reading, Glenn Beck's Common Sense.)

And, finally, one of the most important features of any book cover is the font. As typophiles know, the font sends an important message about the quality and type of publication. While we might have expected Palin to choose a bold and unadorned font like Impact (or perhaps Comic Sans), Palin's team went instead with Linotype Didot. According to Typedia, the Didot family of fonts comes from the Didot family, who lived and worked in Paris in the 19th Century. While Pierre Didot published books and prints, Firmin Didot designed the typefaces. Linotype Didot was added much later, drawn by Adrian Frutiger in 1991. Typedia informs us that this font, with its vertical emphasis and bold strokes, is the "right choice for elegant book and magazine designs, as well as advertising with a classic touch." However, as Anna notes, for all its elegance, Didot is only one "i" away from idiot. And you'd think that is one association she'd rather avoid.

Going Rogue [Amazon]
Linotype Didot [Typedia]

In an interview for Elle magazine, Ehrenreich blasts the ideology surrounding thinking positively which changes an optimistic outlook into a demand for complacency in the face of life struggles. She argues the need for people to silence those who are critical is stifling the development of society. However, what I found most compelling is what she says in Elle about the impact "positive thinking" has on social justice:

BE: Two weeks ago, I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, at a meeting where people who were about to be laid off told their stories. A woman next to me said that when her unemployment insurance runs out, she'll live in her car. Then, another woman said, "Well, we have to remember to be positive, and that means don't watch the news, don't read the newspaper, just concentrate." Oh my God, I ask, how can this be happening? It's about how unattractive whiners and complainers are, and how they should be shunned.

ELLE: Can we draw out any other dynamics between positive thinking and the kind of winner-take-all social order we've shaped ourselves into, beyond the way business has employed the doctrine to manipulate employees and sell mortgages?

BE: You don't worry about social inequality if you're a positive thinker, because you, too, can become rich just by modifying your thoughts. So why be concerned that some people are off in the stratosphere in their personal jets while you're waiting for the bus?

ELLE: And if you're poor, you must not be thinking right.

BE: It's your own fault. In fact, most of the measures of quote-happiness-unquote that positive psychologists offer are really about how much we can accept the status quo. So even though I consider myself a fairly energetic and upbeat person, I never do very well on happiness tests.

ELLE: Surveys are always showing that conservatives are happier than liberals, traditional moms are more happy than feminist moms.

BE: If you're not at all bothered by human suffering – great. But if you have a vision of human happiness that includes all those people who are currently suffering, you've got to do something about it.

I believe, in some ways, agitating for social change is the most positive form of thinking there is. In order to do so, we must believe that one person can make a difference, that our opinion is worth voicing, and that the world can become better – if we are willing to make an effort to shape it that way.

Bright Sided [Barbara Ehrenreich]
Positively Perverse [Elle Magazine]