The Modern Girl
The Modern Girl's Guide to Life,' based on Style Network's show of the same name, takes the advice that trend correspondent and author Jane Buckingham offers with her fellow modern girls on the show and puts it in book form so that busy modern girls with no leisure time on their hands, who have prematurely been struck with amnesia, can refer back to it whenever they find themselves in a state of emergency. But don't pick up this book if your idea of a state of emergency is that your meeting minutes are not precisely up to date. The advice Buckingham dispenses is far more significant and life-altering; if you find selecting the right bra, being a superb hostess, and furnishing your pad without breaking your back or wallet, to be a top priority in your life.
Truly modern girls, meaning those who don't really know how to cook, iron or clean, will thoroughly enjoy Buckingham's playful voice, girly tips, and straight-to-the-point words about everything from things you need in your kitchen to how to oven-roast a chicken, what to wear at the opera, and what type of lingerie to buy. If your society has already forced you to cook and clean, but you don't think you're quite suave enough at it, by the end of the book, Buckingham can turn you into what she likes to call a 'domestic diva.' And what makes the book even more fun and personal is hearing the author admit her own faults in the kitchen, living room, garden, and even in the bedroom.
Modern girls don't have time to read books, you may say, but Buckingham's paperback is no Harry Potter. Though it looks thick (307 pages not counting the bibliography and index), the font is fun and the pages aren't filled with paragraphs and paragraphs of gibberish. Each syllable the scribe has written down is substantive and interesting and meant to expand your domestic horizons. Plus, the chapters aren't set up like regular old books- the pages are instead filled with bullet-point style sentences and tiny side-notes from the author, which take up the space where words in a normal novel would go.
Another good thing about this book is that, unlike a Danielle Steel novel, you can skip chapters and read only the ones which excite you and you'll still get the general point. For example, if you're already a pro at writing thank-you cards and have thrown a million bridal showers and know all the games by heart, then you can skip some of the pages in Chapter 3. If you think your wardrobe is already fabulous, you have the first part of Chapter 5 already down.
The less you already know about home life, the more you'll gain at the end of this modern directions-to-being-a-domestic-diva-for-dummies-esqe book. And the next time someone tries to refer to your job as a homemaker, you can hold your head up high and say 'That's domestic diva to you!'