actually in this usage of the word, ie in greek life, youth group settings etc, it is spelled adviser. i dont know why, all i know is my yearbook adviser in high school was very adamant about us knowing she was an adviser, not an advisor.

I went into a bookstore and read the first 5 pages of the book. I was quite disgusted. She used a respectful neutral tone, but chose words that typecast sororities into elitist groups and the members into wannabe trophy wives. She describes the plethora of expensive name brand outfits, and coifed hairdos as a hideous drawback of sorority life. Um, have you ever been to LA? Just walking down the street you will find more women with an LV handbag than you would at a college. Generally, I disagreed with her description. The girls at my school spend more time in Express or Forever 21 than they do in Neiman Marcus.

She made fun of colors for godsakes! Like calling red and yellow "cardinal" and "straw" (which btw changes the color), was elitist. Um, the colors were picked by 17 year olds in the late 1800's. Making fun of that is like picking a fight with your 85 year old grandmother.

All in all, I didn't like the book because her account is so different from the experience I had and the experiences everyone I know had in college with their sororities. Not only that, I thought she was NOT open minded when it came to developing her opinion of the sorority, and the claim that she respects our organizations is just lipservice.

ps- can someone write a book where they discuss the dark side of the publishing industry so we can outrage the book company?

unfortunately i think that book would put people to sleep. not much controversy in publishing companies. most controversial thing recently was that in some publishing co in england some guy stole chapters of the fifth harry potter book.

There's an excerpt from the book on MSN today:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4741466/?GT1=3256

In this excerpt she says that "not many of her friends are sorority women" which leads me to conclude that at least one of them is. I wonder what she thuinks of this book.

Also, she apparently had concern for these women who let the auther into the "secret world of sororities". Well frankly these 4 women do deserve to have their membership revoked.

There was a media blackout long before Sorority Life. Sassy did a really ghastly article about rush at UGA around 1993 or so. There had been previous articles in Seventeen that were generally positive, but Sassy just raked the rushees, the sorority sisters and the school in general over the coals. Apparently they had sworn up and down they were going to do a positive article and it was completely one-sided. I think this is when the NPC groups started saying "no comment" about everything.

And again, I think that "Caitlin" and "Vicky" are sisters of "Jimmy" the 8 year old heroin addict...because even if they were real and they or their sisters wouldn't come forward, someone from that school would recognize Robbins and say something. Look at how quickly we find out all sorts of stuff about the people on Survivor, Real World etc - and they're supposed to be "anonymous" which is why they don't use last names.

Paging TheSmokingGun.com......

Read it.

Looked good.

I think we are completely undervaluing the fact that Alexander Robbins looks really cute in her publicity pics.


That should be an important mitigating factor when considering her book. :)

You just called her Alexander - that's a guy's name. Freudian slip? bwah hah hah hah hah hah haha

Okay, I read the blurb on MSNBC. I don't believe a word of it. Sounds like she got confused between a GLO and woman's prison. (and not a real one at that, only the ones you see in B-movies).

Nice try honey. I'll leave the book on the shelf, and spend my $ elsewhere. Can't wait to see your next offering.

I'm not sure who did the interview (I'm not a regular watcher of the Today Show), but the interviewer was a female, so it might have been her?

She acted very fake-surprised... which is kind of hard to explain, but she was like "Oh really?" when Robbins would start spouting all the junk from her "book"

lol, i was looking through very OLD email this morning, and found two from the author trying to get me to give her info. I had seen a posting of hers several years ago when she started the project and had emailed her expressing interest (this was before I really knew better... sense has since been smacked into me). Lol, she said we could talk over phone, email, or even IM.

Research for a book over IM. The academic in me just isn't too sure about that.

How does she have ANY idea of the stuff she's been told has any speck of truth? Writing a book about things people told you on the internet........

:: going through my APA/MLA handbook to see how to cite an instant message convo as a reliable source::

I say how can anyone disagree with the book or be negative about the autor without READING the book first. I know the cliff notes may not be in the scholarhsip room, but come on how can any intelligent dialog go on w/o actually experiencing the story.

And to those who refrain from comments because it should go through "headquartes" first--please be an independent woman and have your opinions heard.

That last post was trollerific. Trolltacular even!