Say what you will about Intern Alexis (she's a cheap whore, etc.), but the girl is nothing if not courageous. If we were faced with a letter about sex from Cosmo founder and fiesty octogenarian Helen Gurley Brown, we'd most definitely turn our head in fear and send the paper towards the nearest trashcan fire. But Alexis soldiers on so that she might tell you about Brown's 90-year-old lover. After that lovely appetizer, she dines on the nerdtastic debut of former Spin editor Dave Itzkoff's column, followed by oysters and a little cronyism. Her weekly guide to the Times Book Review follows.

Letters

We'd say that we're forced to picture Helen Gurley Brown having sex probably once every eight months. But we take a deep breath, close our eyes, picture it, get a few goose bumps, vomit a little bit into our napkin, and move on. But we don't like when said image is SPRUNG on us, as it was in this week's NYTBR. As we said, we like to prepare for it, and we were not expecting our almost-yearly visitor to greet us on the letters page. In her letter regarding Toni Bentley's review of Gail Sheehy's "Sex and the Seasoned Woman," HGB writes:

Being way, way over 50 (84!), by the way, I found the book realistic and inspiring. Don't mean to sound braggy (you know I don't know how to keep secrets), but my 90-year-old playmate and I are still sexually involved pleasurably, reasonably frequently. Seems to me if we can, anybody can.

Christ. Just warn us next time, so we have a napkin readily available and we don't have to soil ourselves.


It's All Geek to Me

In this week's "Up Front" column, "The Editors" introduce Dave Itzkoff's new science fiction column, "Across the Universe." They write, "An editor at Spin magazine and the author of 'Lads: A Memoir of Manhood,' Itzkoff became a sci-fi fan while in grade school."
Oopsidoodle, we guess Tanenhaus and co. didn't get the memo soon enough that Itzkoff got the pink slip from Spin last week. Looks like Itzkoff got his new geek gig just in the nick of time! And we're happy for him. Though we couldn't care less about science fiction (it makes us nervous), and we have no clue who David Marusek is, we thought his column was well done and liked this little bit:

And if the idea of your boss surreptitiously scanning your e-mail messages strikes you as invasive, imagine how you'll feel when you begin each working day by having a small electronic probe or "potty plug" inserted into your transverse colon.

Oh, we toooootttally heard about the Spin potty plugs. Good thing Itzkoff's outta there.


The Big Oyster
 By Mark Kurlanksy
Reviewed by Elizabeth Royte

This image was lost some time after publication.

We guess that Mark Kurlansky's history of the oyster, "The Big Oyster," is a big deal, as it was reviewed in "Books of the Times" and now appears on the cover of the NYTBR and is an example of the ever-popular thing-as-social-history phenomenon and warranted the lovely picture at right. But maybe this review marks the fall of the object biography phenomenon? Writes Royte:

At times, you can hear the microfilm wheels screeching as Kurlansky, wearing oyster-colored glasses, scours diaries, menus, letters, newspapers and magazines in search of evidence. Sure, this is a book about oysters, but many of the references to oyster-love seem like padding or name-dropping. We learn that Samuel Pepys 'mentions oysters 50 times in his diaries' (but we get no more on that topic); we learn the names of, but little more about, various businessmen, actors, politicians and prostitutes who consumed oysters in the city; and we learn that the British prime minister, in 1715, ran up big bills shipping New York oysters to himself. 'Uncle!' one cries, wondering if Kurlansky was paid in oysters per word.

Also, as someone who did extensive research on how oysters spread cholera in Naples during the 1973 cholera epidemic, we appreshed the cholera shout-out. Holla, cholera!


'The Life All Around Me' By Ellen Foster
 By Kaye Kibbons
Reviewed by Lauren Collins

Speaking of shout-outs, holla LauCoCo! Turns out we're actually friends with this week's reviewer. This happens, oh, almost never — so we thought we'd take this space to say hey, what's up, your review ROCKED, hey, note our use of the Lauren Collinsism "appresh," and, hey, email us back 'cause we're so completely objective!