Book Tantrum! ! !: December 2008

Christmas a time of giving and receiving. What - is open to interpretation. For many that morphs right into Consumerism and Capitalism, which in a state of Holiday irony had the two jaded C's receiving their grimy lumps of coal back in September when the world's markets crashed. Dirty hands mess up the ermine cuffs of the Christmas stockings of the really wealthy - they'll go for the whiz bang Kindle gadgetry. What should go into the stocking hung by the chimney with care is another matter entirely. My vote is a book, a real one with paper pages. What the book is

about is left up to the giver. Less courageous givers keep it all cool with gift certificates. Givers who want to deliver a message tailor the offering. Tis the season and books send multiple layered messages.

Ebeneezer Scrooge had to have three nightmares before getting with the program right in time for Christmas Day. Dickens sends a bell ringing message to a stingy boss or an ungrateful co-worker. Dr. Seuss makes it easy to introduce children to the spirit of the day while watching a Grinch's ten sizes too small heart do horrible things in the community. A modern Cindy Lou is out there needing some encouragement - give them the book. Truman Capote shows people how to make a holiday memory in bad times without a direct family that lasts and warms the heart. Just stay away from a fruitcake - they seem to have a perfectly rum soaked shelf life of a hundred years.

A book. The Season. Tough times. Make a memory and send a message. The giver chooses the message.

From everywhere the Obama books are rushing off the presses and onto brightly lit display tables in brick stores and featured as blinking commodities on the click sites. Michelle is in for the Full Monty Obama treatment of being stripped down and taken apart like a classic Model T. For two years, she campaigned, cajoled new voters and chalked up countless air miles all across the US & its territories to make her hubby, America's El Jefe. She of the legal mind, community organizing and social impact world is now a cross between Jackie O with the Martha Washington newbiness of being the Black First "Mrs. That One" with a dash of a heart warming Oprah thrown in to offset her Harriet Tubman laser focus. What makes her tick and tic (her kid's privacy) is explored in the newly released, Michelle: A biography by Liza Mundy. That book jacket photo - it's destroying Michelle's nascent iconic fashion creds. Yikes.

Mundy, a Washington Post Magazine reporter, is sympathetic to the next first lady but does not gush. We get the facts in this unauthorized biography, but we also get context.

We get a pretty good idea of what kind of person the next first lady is, and we get it without the portentous tone of a formal, big-foot biographer. Which is fine, since we're in a hurry, anyway. This book is a quick read, in the style of a long magazine piece so well-written that you barely notice the length as you sprint toward the end.

Mundy also is lucky in her "girl-friendy" subject, as the author calls her. Michelle Obama, no shrinking violet she, fairly leaps from the page. She is warm, funny, smart, passionate, conflicted, irrepressible, grounded, organized, maternal, authoritative, spicy, authentic and normal. (COOL Image from Paris Match)

However America chooses to purchase their latest intelligence about the new First Lady, it is selling. Elizabeth Lightfoot has her just 72 hours old book (12/11) offering with Michelle Obama: First Lady of Hope. Then, David Bergen Brophy presents Michelle Obama: Meet the First Lady is a book version for the Malia aged crowd. With corset held breaths, the fashion world is waiting to see who the designer du jour will be based on her choice for the 44th president's inaugural. The designs from some of America's best have been viewed over 4,000,000 times on WWD.

Happy Birthday Rhonda!