Sunday, December 02, 2007

#23: Falling Out of Fashion, Yampolsky

I'm going to keep this one short, for two main reasons:
1. I finished this book about 10 days ago and have almost completely forgotten what happened.
2. I am no longer allowed to bitch about these awful chick-lit books if I'm going to continue to read them, knowing full well that they're going to be awful.

So, Falling Out of Fashion: in a word, ridiculous. The book was written by Karen Yampolsky, Jane Pratt's former assistant. (For those not in the magazine world, Jane Pratt was the editor of Sassy and Jane.) I am not intimately familiar with the details of Pratt's story, but from what I know and could tell, Yampolsky followed her bio pretty closely. I got the feeling that Jane Pratt signed a promise-not-to-bitch contract when she left Jane, so her assistant decided to write a defensive book for her. And clearly the assistant loved Jane Pratt; she is portrayed as an absolute angel whose vision was destroyed by the corporate machine. (Personally, I loved Sassy as a teen, but thought Jane was awful. It was like the white kid who wears his baggy jeans around his knees, hoping to convince you he's an absolute bad-ass, and just ends up looking pathetic. Jane deserved its early retirement.)

Having said all that, Yampolsky put together a well-written book. Hopefully next time she'll just create original material.

Next up: The Namesake, which I finished yesterday afternoon.

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