Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller
Find it in a WorldCat library
Compare prices at major online bookstores
|
|
|
|
Both Landers and Martin have gleaned the files of their syndicated newspaper columns to present two entirely different approaches to the advice business. Landers draws on 40 years of letters, essays, and poems from readers who have made her, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the best-known syndicated columnist in the world. Martin relies on letters from the readers of her internationally syndicated column and her own witty essays on topics ranging from "A Brief Definition of Etiquette" to "The Good, the Bad and the Vulgar."
Chicago housewife Eppie Lederer became Ann Landers on October 16, 1955, when the Chicago Sun-Times published her first column. She replaced the newspaper's original Ann Landers, who had died suddenly, by winning a contest. Lederer had never held a job, and she had never written for publication.
"When I started writing the Ann Landers column, I had no intention of hanging around for 40 years," the author writes in her foreword to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee!. "The phrase that came to mind was 'Be careful what you pray for. You may get it.' "
Faithful Landers fans will find most of their favorite columns in Wake Up and Smell the Coffee!, and even readers who aren't diehard Landers fans should enjoy the humor, insight, and compassion that is the hallmark of her life's work.
Fellow columnist Judith Martin has an equally entertaining way with the delicate issues of etiquette, both historical and modern, and she delivers her finest work to date in Miss Manners Rescues Civilization.
Martin's eighth book runs the gamut of what is and what isn't considered proper in today's world of free love, free speech, and free anything you like, which can confuse even the most sage residents of the realm. For instance, how do you handle an old friend's insistence on nudity when he and his wife visit your home? The inquiring reader complained that she couldn't get an appropriate answer out of her mouth before the guest ripped off his clothes, but Miss Manners had no problem delivering a retort in her inimitable tongue-in-cheek manner. "When you invite them again, you should take care to specify that 'We'll be dressing for dinner,' " she writes.
Not one to ignore the future, Miss Manners also tackles the sticky issue of cyberspace etiquette. She declares it to be uncharted territory, but she warns that "nowadays it is only the fuddy-duddies who fail to understand the relevance of etiquette to truly modern society." Etiquette fans will love Miss Manners Rescues Civilization, and any "gentle reader" looking for entertaining summer fare should equally enjoy Martin's deft style.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.