Review
Also by Nancy Peske and Beverly West:
The Girl's Guide to Movies for Every Mood
Available from Dell
The Girl's Guide to Movies for Every Mood
Available from Dell
Book Description
Because women read books differently than guys do...
Every woman knows ... books are more than a way to kill time on the bus — they're therapy that fits in our bag. Whether we're wallowing in a sullen perennial adolescence or our biological clock is ringing and we can't find the snooze button, books are the dog-eared friends that help us deal with our baggage as we navigate life's journey.
Now Bibliotherapy prescribes the best of classic and contemporary Chick Lit that women turn to again and again — for inspiration (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) ... for escape (Ladder of Years) ... for revenge against the patriarchy (Our Blood) ... and for bonding with our girlfriends (Waiting to Exhale).
Upper-thigh spread sparking a midlife crisis? Read A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains and remember that it's not over until the fat lady yodels. Did your pot of gold turn out to be fourteen-karat tin? Open your eyes with Awakening to the Sacred and learn to savor your rainbow. Wondering what all the fuss is about? Climb into bed with Lady Chatterley's Lover and explore your pleasure potential.
With provocative points to ponder as you read ("What is the metaphorical significance of a codpiece?"), fun quotes, and a list of books that must not be read but, in Dorothy Parker's words, "thrown with great force," Bibliotherapy ensures you'll always find the right literary prescription — no matter what phase of life you're teetering on the brink of!
Plus: Doomed but Inspired Heroes ... Books to Read When You're Sick of Your Career and Are Seriously Considering Taking Up Alpaca Ranching in Peru ... Bad Girls We'd Like to Have Over for Girls' Night ... Books That Are the Equivalent of Citronella for Men ... and much more!
Every woman knows ... books are more than a way to kill time on the bus — they're therapy that fits in our bag. Whether we're wallowing in a sullen perennial adolescence or our biological clock is ringing and we can't find the snooze button, books are the dog-eared friends that help us deal with our baggage as we navigate life's journey.
Now Bibliotherapy prescribes the best of classic and contemporary Chick Lit that women turn to again and again — for inspiration (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) ... for escape (Ladder of Years) ... for revenge against the patriarchy (Our Blood) ... and for bonding with our girlfriends (Waiting to Exhale).
Upper-thigh spread sparking a midlife crisis? Read A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains and remember that it's not over until the fat lady yodels. Did your pot of gold turn out to be fourteen-karat tin? Open your eyes with Awakening to the Sacred and learn to savor your rainbow. Wondering what all the fuss is about? Climb into bed with Lady Chatterley's Lover and explore your pleasure potential.
With provocative points to ponder as you read ("What is the metaphorical significance of a codpiece?"), fun quotes, and a list of books that must not be read but, in Dorothy Parker's words, "thrown with great force," Bibliotherapy ensures you'll always find the right literary prescription — no matter what phase of life you're teetering on the brink of!
Plus: Doomed but Inspired Heroes ... Books to Read When You're Sick of Your Career and Are Seriously Considering Taking Up Alpaca Ranching in Peru ... Bad Girls We'd Like to Have Over for Girls' Night ... Books That Are the Equivalent of Citronella for Men ... and much more!
From the Back Cover
Also by Nancy Peske and Beverly West
The Girl's Guide to Movies for Every Mood
Available from Dell
The Girl's Guide to Movies for Every Mood
Available from Dell
About the Author
Beverly West and Nancy Peske are best friends, identical cousins, and the coauthors of Meditations for Men Who Do Next to Nothing (And Would Like to Do Even Less); How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time on Five Dollars a Day; Frankly Scarlett, I Do Give a Damn! Classic Romances Retold; and Cinematherapy: The Girl's Guide to Movies for Every Mood. They live in New York City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
When You're Ready to Embrace Your Inner Bitch: Bad Girl Books
There's a reason good girls finish last.
Because a lot of times, doing what we think we're supposed to do means throwing the race.
Good girls are so busy paying the bills, getting dinner on the table, and maintaining the image of the archetypal mother, symbolizing unconditional love, selfless patience, and the compelling need for a refillable prescription for anti-anxiety medication, that they never even make it to the starting gate. With a job description like that, it gets pretty hard to imagine a walk around the block, let alone a race to the summit of our highest personal peak.
But what if we good girls started to give them all a taste of their own medicine? What if we found the courage to misbehave? What if we slipped into a pair of scuffed stilettos and stretch capris two sizes too small and, just for once, got really out of line?
The bad girl books in this chapter are about unmanageable women who pushed the limits and stood their ground. They're brash, bawdy, foul-mouthed, unladylike, and often on the wrong side of tipsy. But their misbehavior teaches us that if you want to be good — and we mean really, really good — you've got to be willing to be a little horrid.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
by Edward Albee
George and Martha, sad, sad, sad.
Martha, the heroine of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is a blowzy, obnoxious, disappointed, desperate, and sadistic alcoholic, who is, despite her shortcomings, one of the most vicariously thrilling bitches in the history of the American theater.
What woman doesn't long to experience Martha's primitive abandon, if only for a moment — to be able to get drunk, and we mean really drunk — to loll about barking orders at our husband with a martini in our hand, gin trickling down our chin, stuffed into a catsuit two sizes too small stretched over our aging but profuse seductiveness?
Okay, so maybe most of us would stop short of doing the hootchy-koo with the history professor who is married and twenty years our junior. But which one of us wouldn't love to be able to toss off a line like "if you existed I'd divorce you" without batting a false eyelash?
Martha's not just a bitch, she is the bitch goddess — a plump, fickle, spoiled, foul-mouthed, and irresistible Circe, randomly bestowing her favors or turning men into pigs, according to her whim. So while Martha is a pathetic, desperate, and drunken grotesque who brutalizes her husband because he has committed the unforgivable sin of loving her, Martha is heroic too. Her sheer unmanageability — her willingness to not only speak her mind but to slur it at full volume from the front porch in a sleepy suburb at midnight — is the act of defiance that liberates us all.
Read this one when you're feeling the need to perform a group exorcism. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? chases all the demons into the light of day.
Points to Ponder
1. Discuss the use of flowers in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? For example, what is the significance of snapdragons and strolling Mexican flower-sellers in this play? (Hint: They are not just thrown in for set dressing and multicultural appeal.)
2. Putting the inevitable hangovers aside, do you think that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has a happy ending or an unhappy ending? Why?
Bad Girls We'd Like to Have Over for Girls' Night
The Wife of Bath
Chaucer's classic bad girl taught us that things would be much better for everybody if husbands the world over just shut up and did what their wives told them for a change. She has a standing invitation to any of our get-togethers.
Lady Macbeth
Shakespeare's legendary power bitch would be fun to have around if we wanted to defy right reason and overthrow the divine right of kings. But there are hazards whenever you stand in opposition to nature. So if things go awry, and fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair, we wash our hands of the consequences.
Madame Defarge
It's always nice to have a motherly type around who can knit a secret code into an afghan, just in case you need to launch a spontaneous revolution, or the temperature drops suddenly.
Maggie the Cat
While a cat on a hot tin roof is not the most relaxing element to introduce into an evening of self-rejuvenation, something about that faded Southern belle ambience just helps the hours, and the bourbon, flow sweetly.
Molly Bloom
James Joyce's symbol of eternal regeneration and the undiscriminating receptiveness of female fecundity is welcome at any of our soirees. You can ask Molly anything — she always says yes, yes, yes.
Salome
We'll invite this veil-dancing bad girl if we've had a bad day and are in the mood to serve somebody his head on a platter.
Gone With the Wind (1936)
by Margaret Mitchell
The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by the gentle admonitions of her mother and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
Sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara knows from her mammy's and mother's teachings that her job in life is to be a graceful lady who quietly runs the business of her husband's plantation. But Scarlett also realizes that the real fun is in the husband catching, and at this she's an overachiever extraordinaire. When she's in her characteristic Southern belle overdrive, Scarlett knows just when to show her dimple, how to sway her hoopskirt, and how to wrangle a marriage proposal out of a man and then keep him dangling while scoping out the other possibilities. And when we see her manipulate the entire male population of Clayton County that afternoon at the Wilkeses' barbecue, we realize that whatever her challenges, Scarlett's going to rise to the top and become the CEO of her own life.
So survival isn't always pretty. All of us who've been in that wretched and barren garden at dawn, rising from the spewing of our own bile to shake a fist at God and declare that we will never be hungry again, know that sometimes a gal has to lie, steal, cheat, and kill to get where she's going. It's just that most of us don't take that quite as literally as Scarlett does. She steals her sister's beau, backstabs her best friend, throws herself at a married man even though she's already got Clark Gable at home, slaps around the help, allows her sadistic foreman to starve and beat her workers, treats her children like annoying little rodents, and if you try to come between her and her goals, she'll blow your head off, search your pockets, and bury you out in the arbor. So don't mess with Scarlett!
Yet despite how much we love and admire Melanie, a well-bred good girl who, inspired by Scarlett, finds an inner strength to stand up for those she loves, it's Scarlett who draws us in. Frankly, we wouldn't trust Scarlett O'Hara with our man, our money, or our friendship, but somehow, we can't help loving her. She's the part of us that's the spoiled, selfish brat, who can't be bothered worrying about what other people will think or whether their feelings will be hurt. She moves full speed ahead, taking no prisoners, on a linear course to her own goals, unimpeded by kindness or grace.
Much as we embrace those two virtues, we know there are times when we've got to access our own inner Scarlett and go forth unapologetically. No wonder many of us return again and again to Gone With the Wind. Granted, some of us get more than a little obsessive about our Scarlett than others. This novel of survival is a touchstone that reminds us that we can't do it all and be a paragon of feminine nurturing at the same time. We may discover Gone With the Wind in adolescence, when it first hits us little Ophelias that being nice and achieving our goals are often mutually exclusive; or we may discover it later in life, when dealing with a great loss or betrayal that leaves us feeling furious and powerless. Either way, Gone With the Wind is there to remind us that the bitch prevails, and what's more, she deserves to be loved.
Points to Ponder
1. Will Scarlett ever feel, like Rhett, that it's time to incorporate grace into her life? And do you even want her to?
2. What's the real reason that Scarlett is singing the morning after Rhett ravishes her?
Notes from Nancy's Reading Journal
Personally, I finally recognized my addiction to Gone With the Wind after I'd read the book more than twenty-five times; don't even ask how often I've seen the movie. It all started when I was twelve and my grandmother brought me to a Saturday matinee. As soon as I got back to school, I checked out the book, read it straight through, took it all in for about five minutes, and started over again at page one. I was thrilled to discover that there was more to Scarlett and her world than the movie could begin to fit in, even at a four-hour length, and I learned one of the great truths about chick lit: The book is almost always more satisfying than the movie.
Another thing I learned from reading Gone With the Wind over and over is that a great book tells a story many different ways. I'd read it from Scarlett's point of view one time, and Rhett's the next; I'd read it to try to imagine what it was like to be a Confederate watching my world crumble, then I'd read it and identify with the slaves, whose choices were so limited. I'd put it aside for a few years, then rediscover it. I'd be disappointed at its racism, then I'd reread it and be amazed by Margaret Mitchell's psychological insights. The last time I read it I was shocked to realize what an incredible bitch Scarlett was. Hmm, where had I been? Probably envying her gumption s...
When You're Ready to Embrace Your Inner Bitch: Bad Girl Books
There's a reason good girls finish last.
Because a lot of times, doing what we think we're supposed to do means throwing the race.
Good girls are so busy paying the bills, getting dinner on the table, and maintaining the image of the archetypal mother, symbolizing unconditional love, selfless patience, and the compelling need for a refillable prescription for anti-anxiety medication, that they never even make it to the starting gate. With a job description like that, it gets pretty hard to imagine a walk around the block, let alone a race to the summit of our highest personal peak.
But what if we good girls started to give them all a taste of their own medicine? What if we found the courage to misbehave? What if we slipped into a pair of scuffed stilettos and stretch capris two sizes too small and, just for once, got really out of line?
The bad girl books in this chapter are about unmanageable women who pushed the limits and stood their ground. They're brash, bawdy, foul-mouthed, unladylike, and often on the wrong side of tipsy. But their misbehavior teaches us that if you want to be good — and we mean really, really good — you've got to be willing to be a little horrid.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
by Edward Albee
George and Martha, sad, sad, sad.
Martha, the heroine of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is a blowzy, obnoxious, disappointed, desperate, and sadistic alcoholic, who is, despite her shortcomings, one of the most vicariously thrilling bitches in the history of the American theater.
What woman doesn't long to experience Martha's primitive abandon, if only for a moment — to be able to get drunk, and we mean really drunk — to loll about barking orders at our husband with a martini in our hand, gin trickling down our chin, stuffed into a catsuit two sizes too small stretched over our aging but profuse seductiveness?
Okay, so maybe most of us would stop short of doing the hootchy-koo with the history professor who is married and twenty years our junior. But which one of us wouldn't love to be able to toss off a line like "if you existed I'd divorce you" without batting a false eyelash?
Martha's not just a bitch, she is the bitch goddess — a plump, fickle, spoiled, foul-mouthed, and irresistible Circe, randomly bestowing her favors or turning men into pigs, according to her whim. So while Martha is a pathetic, desperate, and drunken grotesque who brutalizes her husband because he has committed the unforgivable sin of loving her, Martha is heroic too. Her sheer unmanageability — her willingness to not only speak her mind but to slur it at full volume from the front porch in a sleepy suburb at midnight — is the act of defiance that liberates us all.
Read this one when you're feeling the need to perform a group exorcism. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? chases all the demons into the light of day.
Points to Ponder
1. Discuss the use of flowers in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? For example, what is the significance of snapdragons and strolling Mexican flower-sellers in this play? (Hint: They are not just thrown in for set dressing and multicultural appeal.)
2. Putting the inevitable hangovers aside, do you think that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has a happy ending or an unhappy ending? Why?
Bad Girls We'd Like to Have Over for Girls' Night
The Wife of Bath
Chaucer's classic bad girl taught us that things would be much better for everybody if husbands the world over just shut up and did what their wives told them for a change. She has a standing invitation to any of our get-togethers.
Lady Macbeth
Shakespeare's legendary power bitch would be fun to have around if we wanted to defy right reason and overthrow the divine right of kings. But there are hazards whenever you stand in opposition to nature. So if things go awry, and fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair, we wash our hands of the consequences.
Madame Defarge
It's always nice to have a motherly type around who can knit a secret code into an afghan, just in case you need to launch a spontaneous revolution, or the temperature drops suddenly.
Maggie the Cat
While a cat on a hot tin roof is not the most relaxing element to introduce into an evening of self-rejuvenation, something about that faded Southern belle ambience just helps the hours, and the bourbon, flow sweetly.
Molly Bloom
James Joyce's symbol of eternal regeneration and the undiscriminating receptiveness of female fecundity is welcome at any of our soirees. You can ask Molly anything — she always says yes, yes, yes.
Salome
We'll invite this veil-dancing bad girl if we've had a bad day and are in the mood to serve somebody his head on a platter.
Gone With the Wind (1936)
by Margaret Mitchell
The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by the gentle admonitions of her mother and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
Sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara knows from her mammy's and mother's teachings that her job in life is to be a graceful lady who quietly runs the business of her husband's plantation. But Scarlett also realizes that the real fun is in the husband catching, and at this she's an overachiever extraordinaire. When she's in her characteristic Southern belle overdrive, Scarlett knows just when to show her dimple, how to sway her hoopskirt, and how to wrangle a marriage proposal out of a man and then keep him dangling while scoping out the other possibilities. And when we see her manipulate the entire male population of Clayton County that afternoon at the Wilkeses' barbecue, we realize that whatever her challenges, Scarlett's going to rise to the top and become the CEO of her own life.
So survival isn't always pretty. All of us who've been in that wretched and barren garden at dawn, rising from the spewing of our own bile to shake a fist at God and declare that we will never be hungry again, know that sometimes a gal has to lie, steal, cheat, and kill to get where she's going. It's just that most of us don't take that quite as literally as Scarlett does. She steals her sister's beau, backstabs her best friend, throws herself at a married man even though she's already got Clark Gable at home, slaps around the help, allows her sadistic foreman to starve and beat her workers, treats her children like annoying little rodents, and if you try to come between her and her goals, she'll blow your head off, search your pockets, and bury you out in the arbor. So don't mess with Scarlett!
Yet despite how much we love and admire Melanie, a well-bred good girl who, inspired by Scarlett, finds an inner strength to stand up for those she loves, it's Scarlett who draws us in. Frankly, we wouldn't trust Scarlett O'Hara with our man, our money, or our friendship, but somehow, we can't help loving her. She's the part of us that's the spoiled, selfish brat, who can't be bothered worrying about what other people will think or whether their feelings will be hurt. She moves full speed ahead, taking no prisoners, on a linear course to her own goals, unimpeded by kindness or grace.
Much as we embrace those two virtues, we know there are times when we've got to access our own inner Scarlett and go forth unapologetically. No wonder many of us return again and again to Gone With the Wind. Granted, some of us get more than a little obsessive about our Scarlett than others. This novel of survival is a touchstone that reminds us that we can't do it all and be a paragon of feminine nurturing at the same time. We may discover Gone With the Wind in adolescence, when it first hits us little Ophelias that being nice and achieving our goals are often mutually exclusive; or we may discover it later in life, when dealing with a great loss or betrayal that leaves us feeling furious and powerless. Either way, Gone With the Wind is there to remind us that the bitch prevails, and what's more, she deserves to be loved.
Points to Ponder
1. Will Scarlett ever feel, like Rhett, that it's time to incorporate grace into her life? And do you even want her to?
2. What's the real reason that Scarlett is singing the morning after Rhett ravishes her?
Notes from Nancy's Reading Journal
Personally, I finally recognized my addiction to Gone With the Wind after I'd read the book more than twenty-five times; don't even ask how often I've seen the movie. It all started when I was twelve and my grandmother brought me to a Saturday matinee. As soon as I got back to school, I checked out the book, read it straight through, took it all in for about five minutes, and started over again at page one. I was thrilled to discover that there was more to Scarlett and her world than the movie could begin to fit in, even at a four-hour length, and I learned one of the great truths about chick lit: The book is almost always more satisfying than the movie.
Another thing I learned from reading Gone With the Wind over and over is that a great book tells a story many different ways. I'd read it from Scarlett's point of view one time, and Rhett's the next; I'd read it to try to imagine what it was like to be a Confederate watching my world crumble, then I'd read it and identify with the slaves, whose choices were so limited. I'd put it aside for a few years, then rediscover it. I'd be disappointed at its racism, then I'd reread it and be amazed by Margaret Mitchell's psychological insights. The last time I read it I was shocked to realize what an incredible bitch Scarlett was. Hmm, where had I been? Probably envying her gumption s...
