Amy Alkon, Los Angeles-based syndicated advice columnist (“Advice Goddess”) and author of Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck (St. Martin’s Griffin), is a friend of mine, so this is a plug, not a review. But even if this were a review because I didn’t know Amy, it would read like a plug anyway. Her previous manners book, I See Rude People (2009), got rave blurbs from Elmore Leonard and Harold Bloom. I’m not in the same league as either of those, but I can say without reservation that Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck is hilarious, consistently entertaining, and, above all, wise. It’s Emily Post as a beach read.

Unlike Post, though, Amy doesn’t pretend to know, much less dispense advice about, the finer points of formal etiquette. In her opening chapter, titled “I Don’t Care Where You Put the Fork (as long as you don’t stab anybody in the eye with it),” she confesses: “I do have a grasp on certain table manner basics, like that you shouldn’t lick your plate clean unless there’s a power outage or you’re dining with the blind, but I’m basically as domestic as a golden retriever.” But as she points out: “What really matters isn’t how you set the table or serve the turkey but whether you’re nice to people while you’re doing it.” Her book, she writes, is “for people like me, who are well-meaning but imperfect…who sometimes swear (and maybe even enjoy it) but take care not to do it around anybody’s great-aunt or four-year-old.”