Customer Reviews

Class with the Countess: How to Live with Elegance and Flair

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(52)

 

 

My problem with Ms. de Lesseps is that she uses etiquette as a weapon. Etiquette has the still-relevant function of making others feel comfortable. Misanthropes such as Ms. de Lesseps are making manners seem to be outdated and pretentious. A good ettiquette book should teach you the opposite. Ms. de Lesseps missed a golden opportunity to make the television-watching public aware of ways to improve their interactions with others. She may be interesting to watch through the declasse lens of a reality television camera, but class she will never possess.

This book was pretty bad. I cringed (and yawned) while I read it. If you want to know how fabulous "The Countess" thinks she is and how marvelous she thinks her life is, then this is the book for you. Emily Post she is not. I was actually a little embarrassed for her.

Usually I'm very picky about Amazon reviews being on the actual product and nothing else. However, as the Real Housewives of NYC star that she is, I feel Luann's reputation from the show can be fairly included in my review of this book.

So I just have to say, what gave her the nerve to write and have published a book on etiquette, of all things? Watching the Real Housewives is a guilty pleasure of mine, I love to see how ridiculous these women act. It never ceases to amuse me how these women all run around pretending to be classy & ladies when their behavior is atrocious. These girls hardly act like well bred ladies of society. Please.

Luann, while not the worst offender on the show (I'm talking to you, Ramona & Kelly), lacks class and decorum needed to be taken seriously when selling a book such as this. Her regal facade slips quite often. Just today I watched her give a lunch lesson to her daughter's friends (how lucky for them, right?) on etiquette and she chastised a girl for having her elbow on the table. I kid you not, the very next episode Luann has lunch with Bethanny and had her elbow on the table practically the whole time. This book, and her personality, is preachy and condescending. She talks the talk, but she doesn't walk the walk.

Let's face the fact that without the show, no one other than her circle in New York would really know who this lady is. No one would buy this book, she's pulling a profit on this book because of the show. So it's very amusing to read this book, and then sit down and watch her behavior on tv. Calling her friend a "lucky b****" for not having a husband. Calling her friends out on their rude behaviors in public (hardly classy). Talking down to her friends and giving unsolicited advice. Berating her friends when they don't introduce her as "COUNTESS" when no one even uses titles anymore. How, Luann, do you expect us to take your book seriously?

And don't even get me started on the chapter based around snagging a man and keeping him. Yeah, very proper to use fishing terminology here because you really snagged a good one didn't you - French aristocrat! But he got away, didn't he? So, again, why do we read your advice?

Get over yourself and stop writing books on topics you clearly know very little about. Luann is bringing the real experts like Emily Post down by adding her "two cents" to the etiquette industry. We have enough etiquette books, Countess, so please keep your pretend rules and pretend class advice to yourself. No one is fooled.

After reading the book and watching her show, I find Luann a huge disappointment. No where in her book was the part about offering advice when not asked for it, speaking in condescending ways to those around you, and correcting everyone around you as much as possible. As a Native American, as she admits to being, I was raised that to speak too much was to make a fool of yourself. Perhaps she needs to go back to those childhood lessons.

This is not so much a "how to" or an etiquette book, it is, like everyone else has stated, a book about her fabulous life as the Countess.

Unless you want to learn how to transform yourself from a nurse into a Countess into a reality TV personality, or you are genuinely interested in her from the Real Housewives show, I would highly not recommend this book.

A most basic distinction in regards to class is between the powerful and the powerless. I do think LuAnn attempted to make this point painfully clear when she 'bestowed' her presence and so called 'instructions' (on class-if this wasn't so ironically awful, it would be funny), to those young girls at the inner city school. BTW LuAnn, there is this quality called humility, something perhaps you could explore, and these girls gracefully radiated it as they sat there having to politely and painfully tolerate the embarrassing, condescending performance you subjected them to. Personally, I was mortified.

Who would purchase this book? Certainly not those of the upper classes, b/c they obstensibly would not find it necessary. So LuAnn is doing the rest of the common masses a favor, n'est pas?, with her 'teachings'-----if only they buy her book and fall for her fantasy facade/overblown grandiose idea of who she thinks she is.

So LuAnn seems to have the intent to make money off of those she thinks need her instruction to live like her, and also those who have not been as 'privileged' as she seems to think she is. This is not 'class' LuAnn, this is classism. Class is elegant and classism, is vulgar for your information. Class, by its own nature is generous, the other, exploitably greedy. One is grand, the other, petty and small. 'Class' that is inherent is expansive/enlightens and informs by 'being', not by dogmatic pedantry.

Classism by definition Lu, is prejudice/discrimination on the basis of social class. "It includes individual attitudes that are set up to benefit the upper classes at the expense of the lower classes". Clearly the selling of your book fits in neatly here and and who profits? After all Lu, if there were no lower/middle classes you could not hawk your wares and make your almighty buck.

My southern grandmother had one word for women like LuAnn and their antics: TACKY. And my other, French grandmother would have said one is either born with class or not. Class certainly is not a set of rules and it is infinitely more than simply possessing good manners. Additionally, IMNSHO, a person of class would never lower themselves to contrived tactics and schemes to 'hold' onto a man or 'keep' another in a relationship with themselves.

Maybe a more apt title for this book would be: "You Too Can Catch a Count!: a primer on gold digging, purchasing a meaningless title, presuming to tell everyone else how to live just like you do, and making bucks off of no class fools while you're at it".

Fortunately I did not buy the book. The title and what I have seen of Lu, speaks volumes.

So sad, save your money.

Let me summarize: I am fabulous, you are not.

Did you ever hear the saying, "Do as I say, not as I do?" Maybe she will read this and learn some manners herself.

I have watched this show and have to say this woman doesn't know the first thing about manners, grace, elgance or charm. She is a pushy, insecure poseur who grew up in a working class home and trying to reinvent her life. She is obsessed with throwing her title and supposed wealth around. Whenever I hear someone use the word "classy" (as the Countess did during a RHNY reunion show), I know they dont have ANY.

Good manners is basically treating others with respect and being considerate of their feelings regardless of their title or station in life. And of course, be yourself and never brag. The End.

Buy this book for the fictional value. A book about the perfect life Countess LuAnn (hahahaha) dreams about at night where she is perceived to be "classy", alluring, man magnet who seduces and mesmerizes all who come near her!

I figured I would check this book out for entertainment purposes, because watching the real housewives of NYC is a total guilty pleasure of mine. Sadly, the entire time I was reading it, I could not get over the fact that this woman seems to have NO manners in her everyday life. It made the book comical at best.

The majority was just stories of her life, as she tried to relate them to certain manners and etiquette. The most embarrassing section of course was "how to make a man fall in love with you and keep him in love with you" or some such nonsense. Clearly, she's not really the best one to be giving advice in THAT situation, being it seemed even before they separated, she and her husband lived separately, in different countries.

I find nothing wrong with people not knowing the complete catalog of manners. Some of them have gone in and out of fashion, or are no longer relevant. When manners are used, I appreciate them instead of expecting it all the time. If you don't know or were never taught that particular etiquette, how are you suppose to use said manners. No big deal. I like to think that pointing out someone's bad manners IS having bad manners. It's rude. BUT! If you promise that you are of the utmost class and manners, you best use it in your everyday life and be a good example. The "Countess" does not do that.

She's a fashion model/nurse who married into title and money. Every time she introduces herself as the Countess or reminds someone to call her Countess on the show, I feel embarrassed for her, because it's of poor class to always be pointing that out to people. She's clearly insecure and thinks telling people her title will make her more important.

One particular incident on "The Real Housewives of NYC" still bothers me to this day, though some found nothing wrong with it. One of the other ladies, Bethenny was picking her up in a chauffeured towncar. The chauffeur got out to open the door, Bethenny introduces her as "LuAnn". The woman throws a total fit because she was not introduced as the Countess de Lesseps. I can understand if you want to be called mrs. or whatever, but she went about it the wrong way. Seriously?! The chauffeur couldn't give a flying crap who he's driving around, he's just doing his job. But to keep pointing it out and making Bethenny feel bad/embarrassed for not introducing her with her title??? That shows very poor manners indeed. A real woman of class would ignore it and be easy going and secure enough with herself to not care, and maybe mention it later to her friend in private if it really bothered her.

A 'classy' woman has flair, good manners, and ease. She does not have to struggle as LuAnn does to point out her so called 'manners', or write a book on her so called etiquette. wow. say hello to the bargain bin lady.

I would consider my reaction to this piece of work that of embarrassment for the "Countess." I heard of her appearance on a reality television show and felt that was a red flag. After reading her book, I have to wonder how she sleeps at night knowing people are able to read this interpretation of her "manners" and view her antics on network television.

I recommend Emily Post for a real lesson in manners. The soon-to-be former Countess has no business publishing her delusions under the pretense of manners. She is little more than a housewife with a publisher on speed-dial. My mother had exponentially more class and taste, and she managed to be successfully married for 31 years before my father died. Perhaps you should take notes, LuAnn.