‘Bibliotherapy’ a woman’s guide Authors offer points to ponder from literature to match life phases

BIBLIOTHERAPY: THE GIRL’S GUIDE TO BOOKS FOR EVERY PHASE OF OUR LIVES by Nancy Peske and Beverly West, Dell Publishing, New York, 257 pages, 2001, $13.95.

As we grope our way from adolescence to midlife and beyond, books can be a girl’s best friend. So why not tailor our reading lists to the life phase or crisis we’re dealing with at the moment? Call it “Chick Lit: 101.”

Much more than a way to kill time while waiting for an appointment or trying to fall asleep, books are what we turn to while working through life’s larger issues, such as coming of age, menopause or the realization that it’s time to take charge of our personal finances.

As Nancy Peske and Beverly West put it in their introduction: “Books accompany us as we progress from the why-can’t-I-get-a-date stage to the why-are-all-my-dates-jerks stage to the why-are-all-men-scum stage to the I’m-going-to-take-charge-of-my-own-happiness-and-just-forget-about-guys stage, and they are at our side when we start all over again back at the beginning.”

Let’s face it. Who among us hasn’t felt – or acted – like “bad girls” or “martyr queens”?

Truth is, for many women a good read with a great plot interspersed with pearls of wisdom can be as therapeutic as a therapist’s couch. And we women tend to experience these phases and crises in groups, sort of like the way some of us bring our best buds on a visit to the powder room. Far from a mere bibliography of the authors’ favorite women’s literature, “Bibliotherapy” is a lot like dishing with that best girlfriend you love for her refreshingly unvarnished take on life, but about books rather than men or work.

In some respects, books that feature strong women heroines or role models help us see just how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.

Along with quick recaps of the plots of many of the works Peske and West revisit are a series of tongue-in-cheek lists. There’s “Literary Heroines We’d Like to Go Bar Hopping With” (Scarlett O’Hara, Bridget Jones and Moll Flanders are among the picks), and “Plucky Prepubescents We’d Like to Invite to a Tea Party” (wouldn’t Nancy Drew, Jo March, “Harriet the Spy” Welsch and my own favorite, Anne Shirley of Green Gables fame, be fun?).

And then there are books to avoid like the plague, or “Books to be Thrown with Great Force,” the real stinkers that you regret choosing from the library stacks or bookstore bins. Contenders range from “On Your Own” by Brooke Shields, which Peske and West conclude is more about how to maintain a “hyperscrupulous” beauty regime than the guidebook it purports to be for coeds striking out on their own for the first time, and “Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives,” a book for those among us who derive a weird satisfaction from wearing hair shirts.

From fiction and biography to self-help and classics, these “identical cousins” as Peske and West call themselves, seem to have read them all with a critical eye, offering readers points to ponder such as: Will Scarlett O’Hara ever feel that it’s time to incorporate grace into her life and do we even want her to? You can relive the feelings various favorites evoke through notes from the authors’ reading journals.

After reading this book, you can’t help but add a few of your favorites or work up entirely new lists of your own. Heck, why not get some of your best, well-read gal pals together some rainy weekend afternoon and work up a few lists together?

Beware: I’ve just dusted off my old copy of “The Portable Dorothy Parker.” You have been warned.