A Dog in Heat Is a Hot Dog and Other Rules to Live By (1996)

On her TV advice show on the America's Talking Network, she tells it — or, rather, yells it — like it is, often while standing on the furniture. You think E. Jean Carroll is either intoxicating or just intoxicated. Most of A Dog in Heat Is a Hot Dog and Other Rules to Live By consists of letters and responses culled from her Elle advice column, circa 1993-95. Here is E. Jean on everything from becoming a topless dancer (''I think every now and then a Magna Cum Laude needs to snap on a G-string'') to mothers' boyfriends (''Such chaps should be kept in hotels on the outskirts of town and fed a strict diet of oysters and tequila''). Her answers are witty and wise, but what really (as the author might put it) yanks our love chain is the all-too-brief, autobiographical sketches at the beginning of each chapter, including her edgy encounter with Lyle Lovett and her escapades with Romero, the male escort. Advice to E. Jean: Next time, more of this.