AND ONE MORE THING...: A Mother's Advice on Life, Love, and Lipstick

Styled as a question-and-answer session between a grown daughter and her mother, Jakobson's first book offers nothing novel as she dictates advice on such subjects as entertaining, beauty, health, decorating and "men and how to survive them." Forgetting that less can be more, Jakobson attempts to cover too much ground and includes unnecessary detail, even discussing subjects she professes to know little or nothing about (e.g., "What is the deal on thread counts and sheets? I have no idea what that means. Something about the higher the thread count, the finer the sheets"). Her real-life daughter does not appear by name in the book (except in the introduction). Many of the questions posed seem forced and somewhat unbelievable ("Men always took care of you. Why shouldn't that happen to me?"), and the responses are often uninteresting (e.g., the daughter replies "whatever" to an answer Jakobson gives her regarding Christmas trees). Jakobson tries to keep things light while imparting serious information, and her humor shows promise in chapters like "Sex," where she advises, "My first rule would be not to fill your mother in on all the grisly details." Illus. Agent, Robin Straus. (Apr. 14)