No one will be fooled by this little piece of ephemera. This is not anything like a new Bridget Jones book. It's a revisiting of old jokes, old characters, old stories. That said, there's something curiously addictive about Helen Fielding's creation, and this bonbon should satisfy a Jones jones until the (inevitable) next full-length novel comes along. The Guide to Life is a brief (64 pages) how-to manual from the notoriously inept singleton. To wit: In her chapter on homemaking (titled "The Fragrant Home"), Bridget gives her reader advice on the atmospheric charm of a cozy fire. "The key words here are 'in the grate.'" As to food, she largely confines herself to finding a piece of old cheese in the fridge and cutting off the moldy bits. She does, however, get in one really useful suggestion when she explains how to play the parlor game Shag, Marry or Push off a Cliff. The rules? "Each of the players suggests three names.... The person on the player's right must then decide, if they absolutely had to shag one of them, marry another, and push another off a cliff, which it would be. It is usually best to pick three which are similar in some way." Examples: Russell Crowe, Mr. Darcy, Hugh Grant. Or, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Ayatollah Khomeini, Idi Amin. The author then adds a caveat of typically Jonesian sensitivity: "It doesn't matter if any of them are dead as it is only a game." For those who cry foul at Helen Fielding's cashing in on her phenomenal franchise, it should be noted that some of the proceeds from the book will go to Comic Relief. That's the very organization, incidentally, that the author sends up in her non-Jones novel Cause Celeb--a smart, highly entertaining book that also makes a decent stopgap for Bridgetphiliacs. --Claire Dederer

FROM OUR EDITORS

After reading every self-help tome ever published, sassy singleton Bridget Jones tries her hand at dispensing advice in this witty little volume. Jones offers guidance for all areas of life -- from housekeeping and cooking tips that will surely make Martha Stewart cringe to sidesplitting suggestions for everything from personal accounting to mending relationships. Highlights include Bridget's list of possible responses to the dreaded question ("Why aren't you married yet?") frequently posed by Smug Marrieds, her lesson on adapting recipes to suit one's own needs and limited culinary skill, and her technique for creating a better weight-to-height ratio.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

She'll help you get your life in order. She'll help you get your home in order. Or she'll at least help you place a take-out order.

"Cuisine is not merely a question of ordering a pizza—no! Many factors come into play—including finding the pizza menu, decision-making, and obtaining a clean knife with which to cut it.

How true this is of all life."

In this elegant and practical handbook, Bridget Jones—the intrepid thirty-something Singleton on a permanent but doomed quest for self-improvement—offers a road to perfection in the fields of cooking, streamlined inner thighs and poise, spiritual and romantic nirvana, accounting, an understanding of Feng Shui, what men think they might feel they want, and creating a fragrant home. She's read the self-help books—all of them. And committed most of them to memory. Now Bridget breaks out on her own to give readers the benefit—benefit?—of her rich experience.

FROM THE CRITICS

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