I read columns too! Half for the advice, and half just to laugh at the questions. I like to listen to Dan Savage every week for the same reason. (That and he's awesome.)
I think I want to go borrow them from the library now. I love her columns quite a lot, especially when I can imagine her rolling her eyes at the writer, in a very polite way, of course.
But, yes, I have read etiquette books to learn how to deal with different social situations. They're very helpful!
She does! The titles of the ones I remember are... Miss Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour and Miss Manners Guide to Raising Perfect Children.
I bought and read the book by Leticia somebody. Only catch was that it was pretty much written by and for an uppercrust kinda crowd that was about a generation and a half older than myself. I grew up in the upper middle, so some of it applied when dealing with my parents' friends, and, in turn, parents of my schoolmates when I went to private school.
Most of my friends, and my own sensibilities, fell out of that demographic, however, as I tended (and still tend) to hang with a more liberal, alternative crowd, where the rules tend to vary quite a bit.
The thing I like about Miss Manners is that her books were written more in a way to be applicable to general situations. Lots of basic rules of politeness.
I've read etiquette books, but I haven't found them very helpful - e.g. when I tried to do the correct thing by handwriting a response to the invitation to a friend's wedding, my friend e-mailed me, very apologetically, saying that her mother had no idea what to do with the handwritten response and could I please clarify. I'm afraid to go back and re-read any of the books I've read for fear that I will learn more things that won't work with the "formality == bad" attitude of the people I know!
Yeah, sometimes it can be confusing. I was very uncomfortable with my sister putting gift registry cards in her wedding invitations because all the etiquette I've read says it's bad, but popular usage says it's good!
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I think I want to go borrow them from the library now. I love her columns quite a lot, especially when I can imagine her rolling her eyes at the writer, in a very polite way, of course.
But, yes, I have read etiquette books to learn how to deal with different social situations. They're very helpful!
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Most of my friends, and my own sensibilities, fell out of that demographic, however, as I tended (and still tend) to hang with a more liberal, alternative crowd, where the rules tend to vary quite a bit.
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it helped.
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