Just in time for graduation, a rollicking, mostly painless guide to personal finance. It’s an eBook, it’s $2.99 (or less) and it will, I guarantee you, convince whoever reads it to start a retirement account. Or cease considering misguided get-rich-quick schemes like hocking her vital organs for wise and easy solutions.

Ladies, this is my best impression of Suze Orman, as I am not a billionaire and I do not have a crazy person’s inflections but I do have a 401(k) and I know how to use it (i.e. you don’t, not for a long time). Parents, this is your opportunity to trim the apron strings. Current Girl’s Guide owners, the info in here is all updated for the present day (or, wherever the economy and student loan rates were a couple months ago) so it might interest you if you’ve been following the advice in the book and want some fresh intel.

You can get this It’s Your Money, Honey! in just about any format:

• Google
• Barnes & Noble
• Kobo
• Amazon Kindle
• Powell’s

xo Melissa

Take it from Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes, the book that inspired the movie Mean Girls:

“This is the first book to explain such critical subjects as a Roth IRA and a bikini wax with equal clarity. It’s funny, irreverent, wise, thorough, and empowering. Women of any age will find this book incredibly helpful. It’s like having a guru girlfriend who won’t make you feel dumb for asking the questions you don’t want to admit you don’t know…The Sexual Bill of Rights is my personal favorite. I laughed out loud. And couldn’t agree more.”

Get The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything from Amazon now. (Kindle edition available, too!)

A classic women’s magazine piece from the August 2010 Glamour by Genevieve Field, featuring my debatably indispensable two cents on embarrassing sex situations.

Download the pdf to read the whole article.

Add the blog to your Google Reader and we’ll be back soon.

Blogging! It’s so 2007! But this site needs an overhaul. I know it, you know it, it’s getting obvious even to those who have been in deep denial about it. Until then, because I know you’re dying to know what you should be reading, listening to, watching, &c.

What’s Consuming Melissa/What Melissa Has Consumed Lately:

Books:
Commencement, by J. Courtney Sullivan
My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor
Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill
This Is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper
The Heart of the the Buddha’s Teaching, by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery
Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, by Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield
A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore

Music:
Laura Marling
Florence + the Machine
Gossip (Music for Men)

TV:
Friday Night Lights
Peep Show, Series 6
Mad Men
Glee (”You know what Sue Sylvester’s never done? Paid income tax.”)
Project Runway & Top Chef (even though I can feel the inanity brittling my bones)

Movies
Slim pickings lately. I’m excited about a screening I’m attending today, but it’s a surprise for a friend so maybe I can post about it later. Also anticipating The Fantastic Mr. Fox eagerly.

I’ve become one of those people who makes a lot of smoothies since Lynn gave me a Vita-Mix and it changed my life forever.

I’m going to be blogging occasionally on The Interdependence Project blog at Beliefnet. I’ll try to update here when I do. I meant to blog about A-Rod’s Sudden Buddhism, but, Q.E.D., I’m not the most consistent blogger. Still, it’s a good blog to add to your feed if you’re feeling like you don’t have enough to consume already.

A swell review from On the Shelf:

They pop up like dandelions every spring: guidebooks for the graduate.

Whether junior is saying goodbye to her high school pals, facing the job market with a philosophy major or simply moving to first grade, publishers purport to have a product for everyone.

Most of the books feature a compelling cover, fit easily into a gift bag and aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. “The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything” is the exception, and a perfect present for this year’s crop of co-ed grads.

L to R: Melissa Kirsch, Michael Narducci, April Wilder, student moderator Josh Duke

“It’s what occupies the space of a literary life outside of New York,” wrote a wistful Richard Ford in the New Yorker in 1998, remembering neither Yaddo nor Shakespeare & Co., but the 1977 Southern Methodist University Literary Festival in Dallas. This was the glittering annual colloquium where Ford first met Raymond Carver—and where Carver first met his second wife, Tess Gallagher—where Cheever, Styron and Bellow headlined readings and their liquor-soaked afterparties. Alas, due to lack of funds and other bureaucratic hurdles, the Fest has lain dormant for over a decade.

Read the rest of the story at Galleycat.

I’ll be “appearing” (like a vision from heaven) at the SMU Literary Festival April 16-17. It’s going to be pretty fantastic, and it’s no secret how much I love Texas.

Here’s the schedule. You might consider getting a cheap flight to the Big D even if you’re not in town, because my brilliant comrade April Wilder will also be there and she’s nothing less than a rollicking good time.

Here’s the schedule:
Thursday, April 16th
2:00 pm: Student luncheon with the Writers (Dallas Hall Reading Room)
4:30 pm: Informal Panel Discussion with Melissa Kirsch, Michael Narducci, and April Wilder, Stanley Marcus Reading Room, DeGolyer Library

Friday, April 17th
5:00 pm: Reception, Texana Room, DeGolyer Library
6:00 pm: Tracy Winn reading, Stanley Marcus Reading Room, DeGolyer Library
7:00 pm: Intermission, Texana Room, DeGolyer Library
7:30 pm: Scott Blackwood reading, Stanley Marcus Reading Room, DeGolyer Library

I’ll be the one having a rib-eye for breakfast.

Yay! The Breakfast Manifesto, New York magazine’s breakfast extravaganza to which I contributed the piece on eggs has been nominated for a James Beard Award.

I love eggs. I love that the whole cholesterol/fat stigma they used to bear has been proven inaccurate. I love a hard-boiled egg more than maybe any other food. I love a farm-fresh egg and yes there is a difference between the supermarket eggs and the greenmarket ones, in taste and nutrition. If I had anything approaching a green thumb, I’d move to upstate New York and be and be a farmer and raise chickens. Maybe.