French women do it right

Even the book is slender and graceful.

"French Women Don't Get Fat," I mean -- Mireille Guiliano's irresistibly titled book published last week by Alfred A. Knopf and already selling like butter-smothered, maple-syrup-laden hot cakes.

I felt like popping a wedge of gooey, dripping reblochon cheese into my mouth at the sight of the word "French," but instead I sat down and started reading. Seventy pages into the book, I scooped up a handful of organic baby carrots and resumed consuming some of the most common-sensical advice I've ever read or heard.

I don't do diet books. Don't read them, write about them or recommend them. "French Women Don't Get Fat" may well be filed with the diet tomes in bookstores, but it's not a diet book. It's a philosophy book, and proof of its effectiveness can be found on the streets of Paris or Aix-en-Provence, along the coast of Brittany or the shores near Cannes.

French women are slender, not fat, and, by and large, they don't diet. I was just about to start the chapter called "Bread and Chocolate," on page 181, when I realized I needed to pre-empt what I'd planned to write about today and tell all of you who already have broken your New Year's diet resolutions about Guiliano's very pleasurable lifestyle.

I snapped the book shut, looked at the joyful illustration on the cover and chuckled to myself: Even the book, the very book itself, is slender and graceful.