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confessions part 2

I got an email yesterday from a woman at some company that makes signs offering me window clings to give away so that more people will read this blog.

So, question: if I offered you the chance to win some window clings, would you send your friends my way?

(That is rhetorical.)

Although, what if I just start giving away the randomest shit I can think of?

Window clings, a year’s subscription to Guns and Ammo, a litter of naked mole rats, a flugelhorn.

I could be that blogger who gives away weird stuff. That could be my schtick.

I hear that, to get more people to come to your blog, you’re supposed to have a schtick.

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I’m reading Slow Love, by Dominique Browning, who was the editor of House and Garden until it folded in 2007. I thought it was going to be one of those nice books that tells you to calm down and sip tea and plant hydrangeas, or something, but I’m halfway through it now and it turns out to be about this affair she had with a man who wouldn’t leave his wife, and also how hard it is when you have to pare down all your expensive belongings to fit in a bungalow by the sea, and also how people at Conde Nast were mean to her because she didn’t wear enough designer clothing. Plus she obviously knows I am judging her, because she keeps talking about what a feminist she is. As in: “I’m a feminist, but I still believe in Prince Charming.”

I mean, that’s cool.

I’m a feminist, and I still believe in the Easter Bunny.

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Anyway the point of all this is that Dominique has a blog, also, on which she talks about getting pedicures with her friend Byron. I found said blog when I googled her because I am shallow and wanted to see what she looked like, not realizing that there was a picture of her sipping tea in front of hydrangeas on the back of the book.

Said blog, to my knowledge, does not offer the opportunity to receive window clings.

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I wonder about memoir, about memoirs by women in particular, about why I tend to feel so annoyed as I read them–Eat Pray Love syndrome, or something. Which is interesting, because anyone who looks at this blog for three seconds could tell you that frivolity doesn’t bother me. I love frivolity! I traffic in frivolity! And there are some lady memoirs–BK’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, for example, or I Was Told There’d Be Cake–that absolutely destroy me, that I force on my friends, that make me want to find their authors and invite them to sit at my lunch table in perpetuity. I think what irks me most is the idea that for a memoir to be serious or good, first the author has to convince us how Hard her life is, and what Problems she has. Dominique Browning’s life isn’t hard–anyone who devotes ten pages to shopping for Brooks Brothers pajamas does not have a hard life–and that’s totally fine, but let’s just put that out there before we start extolling the healing powers of Bach and long strolls through Central Park.

I don’t know. Maybe I should read some Mary Karr or something. That chick is messed up on the real.

Or maybe I should just go watch Bones.

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Hey reader types: let’s talk about this. What are your favorite memoirs?

First three people to comment will receive a cassette tape of Ace of Base’s 1994 classic The Sign.