Overrated

June 26, 2010 at 6:22PM
From left: Khloe, Kim and Kourtney Kardashian are seen at the opening of their store, Dash, in Miami Beach, Fla. Wednesday May 20, 2009. The Kardashian sisters opened the branch of their LA store in the heart of Miami Beach's trendy South Beach neighborhood.
From left: Khloe, Kim and Kourtney Kardashian are seen at the opening of their store, Dash, in Miami Beach, Fla. Wednesday May 20, 2009. The Kardashian sisters opened the branch of their LA store in the heart of Miami Beach's trendy South Beach neighborhood. (Associated Press - Ap/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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

(Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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