Thank you, Brooke Allen!

Please Excuse My Daughter B&N Review

Two recent women’s memoirs have caught my fancy. The first is Please Excuse My Daughter by Julie Klam (Riverhead Books). With wry humor and a pleasing way of combining self-criticism with a genuine forgiveness for her feckless younger self, Klam describes her upbringing as an overindulged and overprotected Jewish-American Princess in the wealthy WASP enclave of Bedford, New York.

Klam’s glamorous mother raised her only daughter to be the kind of pampered wife she had been herself, constantly dragging her away from school for shopping sprees at Bloomindale’s and Bergdorf’s. Well-dressed but painfully unprepared for the world, Klam floundered for years after leaving college until marriage, motherhood, and real financial responsibility forced her at last to grow up. Klam is sweet and charmingly self-deprecating — one suspects that she was never quite as much of a loser as she claims — and by the time I finished the book I felt as though I had a new friend.

I just received a copy of the August/September issue of BUST magazine (with the lovely Eva Amurri on the cover) which included my new favorite review of Please Excuse My Daughter... here’s the highlight:

“Klam is a hilarious writer: self-deprecating, wry and dry as a mid-day martini… The Sex and the City story has you cheering her on like an old friend. By the last page, it’s as if you have chatted with your pal long-distance for hours but you don’t want to put down the phone.”

THANK YOU SO MUCH, Alyson Palmer and BUST! And feel free to call any time!!

Howcast — the phenomenal website where my husband Paul is Supervising Producer was ranked #2 in Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2008. That’s quite amazing! And you can vote to keep it there by clicking here. No bias, but the site is informative and hilarious. (And they have some extremely talented people there like fellow author’s Heather McPherson, Edward McPherson and a Pizza costume.)

Sometimes Paul will excitedly screen a video for Violet and I and we just keep watching more videos, cause we can’t stop ourselves!

Her favorite is How to Make A Baby Headed Dancing Frog. Mine is How to Prevent Identity Theft though I also like this animated one How to Avoid Getting Sick on Amusement Park Rides because the character looks a little like my Paul.

When the site first went up, Violet would watch endless craft videos. One night I put on How to Fold An Origami Swan and went to fold laundry, when I came back she was glued to How to Make a Bearnaise Sauce.

I know I said I wasn’t going to litter the blog with my reviews but this one is the best I have or will ever get and I want to make sure you see it.

Head Butler is the brilliant website of Jesse Kornbluth, a great writer with (if I may say so) impeccable taste. I get the daily emails and the writing of the reviews is as smart and crisp as the object of the review. Check out the smartness right here  PEMD on Head Butler.