They Call Me Naughty Lola: Review

I suscribed to the London Review of Books for several years. It gave me a little thrill to tell my hubby that I was reading "my literary magazine." (A little joke to counter all his financial magazines.) I loved the reviews. But the first thing I read in every issue? The personals. The LRB attracts its own brand of lonely hearts ads and they are usually hilarious. They Call Me Naughty Lola by David Rose (ed) is a tribute book to those ads--chock full of some the best personals 1998-2005. It is a marvelous collection of the funny (and sometimes down-right weird) side of love. As the book flap says, "The ads have been called 'surreal haikus of the heart,' and in an age of false advertising, the men and women who write them are hindered neither by high expectations nor by positivism of any kind." David Rose is funny in his own right. The introduction is just as much fun as the ads he has chosen for this small volume. The best part? I actually remember some of these ads from the issues I read. It was like recognizing old friends. A fun, little read that's been on my TBR list for a long time. I'm glad the library finally decided to put it on the shelves. Four stars out of five.