Ponder Post: I Need a Lifeguard ...

I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere but the Pool by Lisa Scottoline and her daughter Francesca Serritella is a collection of humorous essays - most of which are very much in the category of chick lit. Lisa Scottoline is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and these essays read pretty much like a collection of newspaper columns. In fact I just learned the column written jointedly with her daughter is indeed titled Chick Wit. Alas, most of the essays, probably a compendium of those columns, were from the vantage point of a several-times divorced woman or her still single and half-heartedly male-seeking daughter. Though I would not be so harsh as to call them man-haters, they each do sprinkle their essays with barbs and jabs at the male gender, intimating views different from me who has been married to the same man for 42 years.

 

I've read two other books by Lisa Scottoline of a more serious bent, Look Again and Save Me, and reviewed them in my post for August 30, 2017. They were a two novels combined in one binding, which was an impulse purchase off a Costco warehouse sale table. Costco carries what is popular and I reason if it is popular, most people like it and so there is good chance I will too. This logic does not always hold true but it really is not bad as a first brush stroke. Look Again was a reasonably good thriller and Save Me less so, but I thought I would try a Scottoline humorous book as a contrast. I did not buy the lifeguard book, but instead checked it out of the library. I am glad I did not make the investment. Her humor is not for me.

Some of the entries I found very amusing. I could resonate with essays about body image. As a fellow non-athlete, I could also relate to her description of her angst when she was asked to throw out the first ball at a Philadelphia's baseball game. I could be grateful I was unfamiliar with the experience and could be educated vicariously by an ongoing saga of her garden being invaded by snakes, complete with detailed information on their bizarre mating and reproduction habits. Apparently females can store the sperm and impregnate themselves at will. Most of the other essays, however, pretty much fell flat for me. 

To avoid biasing myself, I usually defer any research on the author or any Amazon reviews of the books until I have made up my mind for myself. More often than not, I wind up discovering, "Oh, is that what I should have thought?" I looked up Lisa Scottoline on Wikipedia. She has a collection of non-fiction co-authored with her daughter but I think I will avoid those books based on their comedic slant.

Scottoline is a very prolific author but is best known for her legal thrillers. She has books on the New York Times best seller list from two series, Rosato and Associates and Rosato and DiNunzia about women partners at a law firm. I think I will pass on those, as well. My unconfirmed conjecture is that I will not like the female attitude toward men in these legal themed books. There actually is a law firm with the surname Rosato. I suspect it is no relation to the book but it is a funny coincidence that the heading graphic on the Rosata website was the Charging Bull bronze sculpture associated with Wall Street. Anyone who has seen the movie Hitch cannot forget the scene where the womanizing jerk Vance gets booted face first into the rear end of this statue by the lead female, Sara.

Aside from legal themes, Scottoline also has several stand-alone fiction novels on the New York Times best seller list. Maybe I will give another of those stand-alone novels a try. Our library has a whole shelf full of them. But for now I will give this author a rest. I think I sometimes do myself an injustice by reading several books by the same author in succession or so close together I get bored or disillusioned.

I gave this book to my daughter-in-law as a birthday gift without having read it first. Sorry about that. But then again my daughter-in-law is only six years from her bachelorette days so maybe she and the younger co-author Serritella will be more on the same wavelength. At least each chapter is short enough that perhaps my daughter-in-law can enjoy each in snatches between running after a 3½ year old and a 1½ year old.