A surprise to no one who has lived there: NYC is a terrible place for a straight single woman who wants to marry a straight single man. I had a very unusual experience of dating in New York. I never went on a blind date or tried online dating. Six months after the end of a six year relationship, I met my husband through mutual friends. According to Birger's thesis, a key to this success was that my husband didn't live in New York, and we were willing to have a mixed-education marriage (what a sacrifice! Insert eye roll). This is a big focus of Date-onomics: more women are going to college and college graduates liked to marry each other. There aren't enough male college graduates, particularly in urban environments like NYC, and this has impacted how people date (and "moral" norms). If you think society is going to hell in a hand basket, this might give you a new way of looking at it.
Disclaimer to 30-something women of New York who would like to marry a college-educated man (and this book sort of strangely assumes that that's a given): are you looking for some motivation to get out of New York? This might be a good book to read. Are you committed to staying in New York (work, family, insert your reason here) and don't want to be more depressed about the dating scene? Maybe don't. Want to know which states are "more single-woman-friendly" without having to read this book? Colorado, Vermont, Maine, Washington State, California (specifically Silicon Valley), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and South Dakota. And the suburbs. Want to read the best chapter without committing to the whole book? Time published an excerpt.
Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman by Brooke Hauser
I read this book because Gurley Brown is originally from Arkansas, spent many years in New York, and I didn't know much about her. This book was okay. I have never read Sex and the Single Girl and would now like to. There is a reference to Franke's Cafeteria and positive support of archives and archivists. But unless you are a Cosmo fan (Gurley Brown was the editor-in-chief for over thirty years and created Cosmo's iconic style and voice) -- and I never was -- this is not an especially compelling read.
My Not So Perfect Life: A Novel by Sophie Kinsella
This book hits all the good marks of Kinsella's best works and was a delight to read.
Wedding Night: A Novel by Sophie Kinsella
This one is a just okay Kinsella novel - the characters (or at least one of the two narrators) is more likeable than Becky, but it wasn't one of my favorites. If you are horrified by people purposefully sabatoging people with allergies - skip it.
I'm SO CLOSE to finishing Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. Maybe I should have done that instead of writing this blog post ...
In the queue for March (pre-ordering books on Amazon is a dangerous thing. And delightful! Books you forgot about arrive in the mail!):
- Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
- Damion Searls, The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing
