Overrated
It's gotten so I can't even see a capital letter "K" on a gossip website or magazine cover without crossing my eyes. Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian, I Kouldn't Kare less about you. From a dubious initial fame connection (being the daughters of O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian) to a narcolepsy-inducing reality series to Kim's publicly complaining about women breast-feeding when she flaunts her own barely human ta-tas at every opportunity, the Kardashian sisters personify the very worst of Hollywood pop culture. But they're not the villains here -- it's the editors who choose to slather them all over their covers.
UNDERRATED
When it was published in 1958, Elaine Dundy's best-selling novel "The Dud Avocado" drew sneers from some of the less secure members of the cognoscenti, most notably her eventual ex-husband, British theater critic Kenneth Tynan. But the delightful tale, laden with mid-century hip lingo, proto-feminist attitude and naughty fun, is beloved by in-the-knowbodies everywhere. Thanks to the New York Review of Books' paperback reissue, more generations of young women who dream of being on the lam on the Rue St.-Germain can live vicariously through Sally Jay, a complicated American actress who gets herself into all kinds of fabulous social scrapes and sexcapades in 1950s Paris. It's the ultimate beach read for the thinking adventuress, plus anyone who's a sucker for Euro-nostalgia.
KRISTIN TILLOTSON
about the writer
Star Tribune writers showcase Minnesota architecture.