Half Broke Horses is “a true-life novel,” the life story of Lily Casey Smith, writer Jeannette Walls’s grandmother. It begins in Texas during Lily’s childhood before World War I and ends with the birth of Jeannette Walls. If Walls intended to write a Great American Novel, she succeeded.
Half Broke Horses is honest and vibrant. The [...]

The Opposite of Me, Sarah Pekkanen’s debut novel, was one of those books I wanted to like but was worried I wouldn’t. The conclusion seemed so obvious: workaholic less-pretty twin Lindsey Rose is fired from her New York City advertising job and moves to her childhood home (and Pekkanen’s current home) in Bethesda, MD, where [...]

Kim Elsesser has an Op-Ed in the New York Times today, where she suggests that we should no longer divide the Academy Awards acting awards by gender. Female thespians are shunning the use of the word “actress” and instead prefer the term “actor.” Elsesser claims that respect for women in film has evolved such that [...]

Here’s my second episode verdict on BCM: If it’s going to be contrived, why was it contrived without Miss A? You see, she was called a “cougar” in the press and on Late Night Shots, and boy, could this episode have used one.
(Side note! In Real Life, Miss A ain’t no cougar. She doesn’t need [...]

I was one of the metro DC residents lucky enough to never lose power during the two blizzards that struck during the past week. Last Thursday, when we were staring blizzard #1 in the face, I stocked up on books and DVDs, planning on being snow-bound for at least four days. Four has turned into [...]

Long before Robyn Okrant began Living Oprah, author Cathy Alter used the wisdom of the almighty O – and 13 other women’s glossies – to fix her shipwrecked life.  At age 37, Cathy was working a toxic job, eating her lunch out of vending machines, severely in debt and partying recklessly, all while cavorting with [...]

 
This is how busy Andrea Rodgers is: Not only do I review the newish books that publishers send to us occasionally, but I also review the books she has had on her shelves and hasn’t managed to get to yet. Which is how I came to be reviewing Candace Bushnell’s novel, Lipstick Jungle, a year [...]

Let’s get a couple of things straight from the beginning. There is the TV Show, “Blonde Charity Mafia” and then there is the real life clique of blonde girls that Andrea Rodgers labeled the Blonde Charity Mafia. Aside from Krista Johnson and Katherine Kennedy, the other members of the real BCM are not involved in [...]

I can’t remember the last Christmas when I didn’t go see a movie with my cousins. We stuff ourselves full of turkey, mashed potatos and apple pie, then limp through a bucket of popcorn at the cinema. This year, we saw Sherlock Holmes.
Producing a Sherlock Holmes flick was a stroke of genius. The time is [...]

For the past four months, I’ve been obsessed with an internet “chick lit” book about divorce. It’s ok, though, because with Dahlia Lithwick of Slate as the author, it has liberal intellectual cred.
Lithwick’s usual job for Slate is covering the Supreme Court, but editor David Plotz has all these newfangled ideas about using the internet [...]