Just Another Self-Help Book Pretending It's A Novel...

How to Be Single (released in June) is written by Liz Tuccillo, one of the authors of He's Just Not That Into You. If that doesn't get alarm bells ringing, then you my friend are not paying attention.

At first glance it seems like a worthy enough read - a single publicist in New York sets out to write a book seeing if women in other countries, specifically France, Italy, Brazil, Australia, Bali, and China, have healthier ways of dealing with being single. I'm always up for widening the awareness of Americans to the rest of the world (yeah, you know, those other billions of people who don't think God looks like Uncle Sam), and I am indeed sick and tired of the odd resemblance of the discourse on being single to the discourse on infectious disease.

So yes, worthy premise. The trouble with How to Be Single in practice, is the eventual conclusion of all this soul-searching research and exotic travel on the part of the heroine is...well, less than original. Or helpful for that matter. Essentially Tuccillo's heroine concludes that being single sucks everywhere, and despite their different ways of dealing with it, every single woman past a certain age is desperate with longing for a man. So the correct answer to the question of how to be single is just not to be if you can help it.

Um...huh? So the result of a quest to empower single women is to conclude that all the power is with the men? So there is no way to be single, happy, and a strong woman all at once? Screw that! Pretty much Tuccillo rehashes parts of He's Just Not That Into You and makes them into a work of fiction, and honestly, if I'd wanted to read a stupid self-help book, I would have.

I guess it's easier to say when you're in your twenties, as I am, but being single is just not that bad. I'd go so far as to say it's pretty awesome. I know I'm perfectly happy not having to deal with a male ego on a regular basis, and I am especially happy not to have someone giving me shit about how busy I am (as I did the last time I almost decided to not be single - just say no to codependent men). So ladies - don't listen to Liz Tuccillo or anyone like her. Sit back and revel in spending your time exactly as you choose, having sole title over TV and music choices, not cooking when you don't feel like it, and most of all, not compromising yourself or your dreams for anything other than someone worth the exchange.

Oh, and please, please, please, don't read How To Be Single unless you need a good "laugh because it's funny, cry because it's true" moment. Seems to me the last thing the world needs is another book equating being single with failing at life.