Something For The Chicks On Your Christmas List

Sun., Dec. 24, 2000

By Susan English susane@spokesman.com

If you’re looking for a last-minute gift with a feminist twist, we suggest a couple of fun new books.

“Women Who Love Books Too Much: Bibliophiles, Bluestockings & Prolific Pens from the Algonquin Hotel to the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” ($16.95) is a collection of mini-profiles. Author Brenda Knight says she focused on female readers and writers whose literary lust drove them to extreme behavior.

“It’s a Chick Thing: Celebrating the Wild Side of Women’s Friendship” ($15.95) is an eclectic collection of essays and thoughts about women and their friends. “It’s a Chick Thing,” edited by Ame Mahler Beanland and Emily Miles Terry, is more for browsing than reading.

* Get into the spirit: There are so many ways to participate in a season of giving and thanking. Oprah Winfrey offered a few suggestions in the December issue of her magazine, O:

* Bake a cake or cookies and drop them off at a nursing home.

* Give a compliment to someone who doesn’t expect it.

* Create intimate time for you and your mate.

* Make a gratitude journal for someone you love, listing the reasons you are grateful to have him or her in your life.

And that’s just a start. (From December O)

* Odd and apparently true: Half of Americans surveyed for Philips Consumer Electronics’ Pronto universal remote control admitted they had slept with their remote control in bed.

* Pick that date carefully: Fishing and hunting fanatics need to plan other important events in their lives with foresight. For example, start by planning your wedding date appropriately, says Lenny Rudow, who writes a fishing column for Boating magazine.

“Don’t forget, you’ll be committed on that day for the rest of your life,” he says. “Never get married on, say, opening day of the spring trophy striper season.”

And, furthermore, he advises that when you decide to start a family, “practice safe sex … until late February or early March. If conception occurs then, your bundle of joy will be born in late November or early December. However, if birth occurs in April, you’ll be stuck inside during prime (fishing) time,” Rudow says.

And, worst-case scenario, if you get married in mid-April, and your children arrive at that time, you can kiss the opening of fishing season goodbye for a very long time. (From the Philadelphia Inquirer)

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