Meghan Gurdon had a very funny, smart Valentine’s piece in the D.C. Examiner on chick-lit advice books:

And it’s a measure of American womanhood’s rejection of feminism’s false promises that so many are unhappily groping their way back to a traditional understanding of virility with the help of an entire genre of mortifyingly-titled books….
“These books are a rip-off,” scoffs my friend Colleen, who admits to having paged through a few. “Once you’ve read the title, you’ve read the book.”
Ah, but isn’t that the source of their curious genius? The grimly unpoetic, baldly explanatory titles of these books amount to a small silver hammer tap-tap-tapping women on the forehead as if to say, “Wakey, wakey! Everything. Gloria. Steinem. Ever. Said. Was. Wrong.” Men like to chase women (don’t phone them). Men like to chase women (don’t sleep with them on the first date). Men like to chase women (never accept a date for Saturday night on Saturday morning — really). And if a man seems lukewarm? He is! Move on!
That last is the punitive message of the latest success in the genre, the onetime samizdat sizzler, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” which is now in its 14th printing. Never before in the history of writing can so much text – 165 pages – have been spun from such a gauzy filament of nothingness, and yet contain a profound truth.
Just as Jesus’ injunction to “love thy neighbor as thyself” contains manifold worlds within it, so “he’s just not that into you” cuts, with through the whole hideous tangled panoply of bad boyfriend behavior. With that one phrase, authors Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo douse innumerable heated female theories about men having “commitment issues,” or “emotional baggage,” or “busy schedules.” Nope. He’s just not that into you.

More here.