'I Used to Miss Him' and 'Guide' offer relationship advice

If you consider yourself a Diva, enjoy indulgent shopping sprees and loathe the trauma following a breakup, "I Used to Miss Him...but My Aim is Improving" packs plenty of advice between its pastel covers just for you. Author Alison James equips you with what she terms "arrows" for your handbag, available conveniently for slinging when the ex happens by. Breakups take on complex and ever-different forms, and they do not ever bloom into euphoric, sighing resolution after a pill and 48 hours of rest. They typically hurt, sometimes a ton. James imagines a number of methods for Divas (her tag for stylish, confident women) to lessen the impact. First, she offers advice in identifying signs from cryptic and ambiguous male "communication" that point to lagging interest or impending dumping, breakup. After all, avoidance is much more preferable to coping. Everyone would rather dump than be dumped. Regardless of how sensitive women are to the ridiculous language of men, it is impossible to always see the breakup coming, and even the best and brightest Divas are left asking, "What just happened?" or "What did I do wrong?" It is to these cases that James devotes the remainder of "Miss Him." You follow her explanations of coping, fortifying yourself against relapse, managing various breakup scenarios, rebound guys, keeping and returning stuff and eventually working back into your beautiful, empowered, goddess, Diva self. Aside from the vibrant reliance on vindictive and aggressive revenging (and I am not discounting the potential for invigorating power in it), "Miss Him" relies on sound principles that might be found in a more buttoned-up guide. However, James delivers more fun in her unorthodox approach-one that I think would appeal to women from about 18 to, well, 35 or so. If you have not mastered some sort of technique for dating by 35, I am doubtful that the often sarcastic and syrupy tone of "Miss Him" would appeal to you as a source for inspiration or help. Then again, I am not a woman, and while my own inner-relationship-guru feels perfectly confident, I am stuck in the "D'oh" realm with the rest of the jerks who make women write, read and recommend books like "Miss Him." But please, buy this book if your Diva confidence is waning, if your voodoo doll is not working, if you adore the advice columns in Cosmo and Seventeen and the like and if you have oodles of fun trashing the next guy unfortunate enough to dump you. On an applicable but different subject, another book, titled "Guide to Getting it On!" is self-proclaimed to be "The Universe's Coolest and Most Informative Book about Sex." Although those are some sizable shoes to fill, "Guide" does this and more, all remarkably well. Guides should be informative, easily referenced and thoughtfully constructed. Guides do well on sensitive subjects if they are full of helpful detail but present it in a non-threatening and interesting way. Most guides benefit from illustrations, maps, pictures and visuals. Books, guides included, are so much better if they remember to be honest and to be entertaining. In "Guide," the author is hilarious and yes, there are pictures. The nearly 800-page book covers everything from the subtleties and history of romance to fetishism and kissing techniques. That said, I know no one who could not learn something useful from "Guide." The problem is that as phenomenal a book as this guide is, sex remains taboo in much of our moral, Christian society. While thumbing through a pornographic manga on a commuter train in Tokyo is not uncommon or necessarily impolite, sitting with the same comic at a public place here is bound to elicit disgust or shock, if not provoke some sort of sexual harassment claim. Fortunately "Guide" remains quite open about things, noting that sex is perfectly natural and that even the Christians who advocate sexual interaction only between married couples could pick up a tip or two about something that would help make their experience with their special someone more mutually pleasurable. That is, if they could get over the anxiety surrounding buying a copy. The rest of us should have no qualms about finding "Guide" and sticking it on our bookshelves, precisely because of its exhaustive content. Those people finding "Guide" on our shelves should have some respect for our education and our trying to get better at "getting it on" in the many areas of romance. For all of us, paranoid or not, thankfully there are a number of online bookstores that are happy to ship you a copy discreetly. Considering this convenience, $20 seems like a decent outlay for 800-pages of sexual education.