Relationships, love, hooking-up and sex are the basis of the current literary phenomenon, which began with Sex and the City, exploded with He’s Just Not That Into You, and continues its upward trend with The Hookup Handbook, hot off the press this month.
On a quest to define the term “hooking up,” writer Jessica Rozler teamed up with college friend and co-editor of her college campus newspaper, Andrea Lavinthal. What resulted was their new book, The Hookup Handbook.
“I wanted to publish my observations about the dating world because there were plenty of books out there about planning a fairytale wedding, snagging the ‘perfect man,’ and becoming some sort of sexual dynamo, but there was nothing out there that dealt with the gray area between love, dating, sex and happily ever after,” said Rozler. “That’s what hooking up is.”
According to Rozler, her book is much different from any of the other dating books out there right now, especially ones which serve as a straight up “how-to” for women.
“It’s more of a tongue-in-cheek field guide to the culture of hooking-up,” said Rozler. “And it’s more about giving women something they can laugh about and relate to.”
The book has only been out for a couple of weeks, but the response to it has been mostly positive, especially among college students and women in their twenties and thirties.
This past fall, to the authors’ surprise, Mandalay Entertainment optioned film rights for the book.
According to Rozler, “an option doesn’t necessarily mean the film will get made, but even the slightest prospect is exciting.”
Not many Fairfield students have had a chance to read it yet, but of the few that have, the responses are encouraging
“I thought it was hilarious,” said Elizabeth Orgera ’06.
Lauren Donaldson ’06, agreed.
“I laughed the entire time I read it,” said Donaldson. “I think that someone who reads it 20 years from now will really understand what the hook up scene was like for us college students.”
Lavinthal lives in New York City and is the beauty editor for Cosmopolitan magazine. This is their first book.
Rozler, who has learned much from her own personal hook up experiences, offers some advice for us college females.
“Not every hookup leads to a relationship,” she said. “Have fun, but proceed with caution because some hookups are easy to handle, while others are much more complicated and can wreak havoc and unleash Lifetime-movie caliber drama.”
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