Costco Connection - June 2007

book
pick

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FRANCE FREEMAN

Keeping it real
Southern life meets modern celebrity

Pennie Clark Ianniciello Costco Book Buyer

REMEMBER my New Year’s resolution to laugh more? My June pick, Celia Rivenbark’s We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier, is just what the doctor ordered. I made the mistake of reading this collection of essays on an airplane—when people don’t always appreciate listening to their neighbor laugh so hard she snorts. Had they been reading humorist Rivenbark’s take on The Sopranos, shotgun weddings and “granola moms,” my fellow passengers would have laughed just as hard. We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier is available at most Costco warehouses and at costco.com. C

By Chris Penttila

WITH CELIA RIVENBARK, what you see is what “Everything was very unstructured and very you get. She’s a straight-talking, delightfully quirky lazy,” Rivenbark tells The Connection. “Everybody Southern woman with an easy laugh. And she does knew everybody and everybody else’s business.” more than embrace her country roots; she squeezes By age 7 she knew she would become a journal-the life out ofthem in We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier: ist. As she tells it, every Sunday afternoon she Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle, this month’s accompanied her sister and father to a Laundromat, Book Buyer’s Pick. where she’d run off to read the Raleigh

The book’s essays focus on the News & Observer. “Some people were absurdity ofeveryday life—from choos- watching cartoons and all that, and I ing a preschool to dieting to grits— would memorize bylines,” she says. with humorous references to Barbra “I mean, what a sick pup!”

Streisand,Tom Cruise and The Sopranos Rivenbark was accepted by the thrown in for good measure. Her writ- University of North Carolina but deing style has been described as Erma cided not to go, opting to get started in Bombeck meets Lewis Grizzard: one journalism. She took writing classes at part witty, one part sarcastic, 100 per- a community college and wrote the col-cent real. lege’s press releases, which led to a re-Rivenbark is flattered by the com- porting job at the Enterprise in Wallace, parison to these two writing legends, North Carolina. For the next eight years although she sees her writing as edgier she covered every kind of story, from than Bombeck’s. Nor does she hide her ^Celia ^Rivenbarkmurder scenes to women’s club socials. love of lowbrow entertainment. “I’m a big pop-cul- “I don’t think there are many jobs where you start ture nut, so I tend to write about things that are hap- the morning with a dead body and end it with pening right now. I probably watch way too much punch and cake,” she says.

GRAY WELLS PHOTO

TV,” confesses Rivenbark, who makes her home in Her next stop was the Wilmington, North Wilmington, North Carolina, with her husband, Carolina, Morning Star, where she worked, rather Scott, and 9-year-old daughter, Sophie. unhappily she admits, as a copy editor. She wanted

Rivenbark was born 50 years ago in Rose Hill, to write restaurant reviews, but compromised with North Carolina, and raised down the road in Teachey, her boss by writing a humor column. She quit her where her favorite pastime was catching lightning job at 40 to focus on her new baby, but used nap-bugs in mayonnaise jars. When she wasn’t catching time to write a syndicated humor column about bugs, she was riding her bicycle down dirt roads, motherhood that still runs weekly. Some of her gathering eggs, sucking on wild honeysuckle blos- essays were grouped into her first book, Bless Your soms or running next door to visit her grandmother. Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments.

Rivenbark remains matter-of-fact about her approach
to writing. “It’s not like there’s some high purpose,”
she says. “I just wanted to make some money and
eligible to win. One entry per make people laugh. Is that so bad?”
household. Entries must be To paraphrase an old saying, you can take
received or post- the lady out of the country, but you can’t
marked by July 2, take the country out of the lady. Rivenbark
2007. Winners will be remembers a few years back telling everyone
randomly selected and that their new Wilmington home had two
notified by mail on or bathrooms. “My husband finally took me
before August 1, 2007. aside and said, ‘Honey, please stop telling
The value of the prize is people that. Everybody has two bath-
$12.95. Void where pro- rooms,’” she says with a Southern drawl
hibited. Winners are and a hearty laugh. “But I didn’t know
responsible for all applica- that! I thought I was stepping in high
ble federal, state and local cotton. Isn’t that awful?”
taxes. The decision of the Actually, it’s awfully funny, but that’s
judges is final. Employees just the way she’d like it to be. C
of Costco or St. Martin’s Press and
their families are not eligible.

Signed book giveaway

COSTCO HAS 10 copies of Celia Rivenbark’s We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier to give away. To enter, print your name, membership number, address and daytime phone number on a postcard or letter and send it to: Celia Rivenbark, The Costco Connection, P.O. Box 34088, Seattle, WA 98124-1088, or fax it to (425) 313-6718.