There’s no shortage of people ready to tell you how to be a better you. Teachers, bosses, spouses, parents, grandparents, little sisters, big brothers… even cousins you see maybe once a year. But few can do it as succinctly, entertainingly and spot on accurately as Clifton Kelly.

As co-host of TLC’s What Not to Wear, Kelly routinely transforms fashion disasters into well-groomed, confident success stories. But looks can only take you so far. To help transform just about every other aspect of your life, he gives us the unapologetically confidently titled Freakin’ Fabulous: How to Dress, Speak, Behave, Eat, Drink, Entertain, Decorate, and Generally Be Better than Everyone Else.

And in about 250 pages, he delivers on all the promises the title makes. Freakin’ Fabulous is the really helpful older sibling or worldly wise aunt telling you what to do with your napkin in a restaurant [place it in your lap as soon as you’ve been seated]; all those little grammatical quandaries you slept through in school [like who vs. whom, fewer vs. less and lay vs. lie]; and that fashionably late only applies to cocktail parties.

Only Kelly is much more entertaining than your sibling or aunt. Continue reading “Don’t just live well—live better than practically everybody else” →