Last night I sat down with my fat new Atlantic Monthly, which I just started getting at home a couple of months ago, convinced that I needed more super smart writing about the world in my life. I couldn’t stop myself from digging right into a story that seemed completely out of place in these fancy pants pages, Lori Gottlieb’s piece about why women should just marry the first dork that seems halfway decent, so they can have a nice, safe, thoroughly boring family life. Settling is the smart thing to do, says Gottlieb, and she weighs in as an authority on the subject, having had a child on her own and then, apparently, spent the following months and years having mate-envy at the park. See, if she had a husband, he would watch the kid for 20 minutes while she ate lunch and chatted with the other moms. And that, apparently, is worth compromising what she now considers rather foolish standards in mate selection. This includes seeking someone at least as intelligent as yourself who is decent to waiters.

Full disclosure: I’m a single mom, never married, who passed on a couple of opportunities to settle. And my kid is almost four years old and I have no regrets. Mostly I look at the mated Moms and Dads at the park and think, huh, is he having an affair? Or is she? And who will instigate the divorce? I know, cynical right? And really, only half of marriages end in divorce.

But because I’m so happy with my choice, Gottlieb’s piece was particularly grating to me, both the point it was making and its fluffy, girly, pop culture tenor. Also, I have a memoir coming out in June on single motherhood, and I was struck with the fear that if I were so lucky as to be reviewed in the New York Times, they’d probably choose Gottlieb to do it. And she’d impose her own Daddy-lust on my very different story and trash me. Because that’s what critics do. I should know.

In that spirit, the first thing I did this morning was send an irate email to my friend Sara Catania, a journalist — and of late, a memoirist, working on a book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux — in LA. I knew she’d have something smart to say once she read the piece, but I didn’t realize she’d already written it and posted it on her blog, SeeHowWeAre. And it’s a great read. So check it out here.

This falls under the category of a shameless plug for an old friend and Contra Costa Times colleague, Ethan Rarick, whose new book about the Donner Party, Desperate Passage was just reviewed in Sunday’s New York Times (quite favorably) as well as in the CCT by regular books contributor Peter Magnani. I’m going to hold off on buying it until Ethan’s reading at Cody’s on Fourth Street (March 11 at 7 pm), but I’m really looking forward to reading it.

And I want to ask Ethan if he’s had any queries from Hollywood about making it into a movie. There was an American Experience film about the Donner Party in 1988, and something called Necrosis — which sounds wicked good — with a snowy cannibalism theme is currently in production. Then there’s Alive: The Miracle of the Andes, which I remember being dragged to by my friend Mark way back in 1993 and then enjoying tremendously. But can’t you see a 21st century Donner Party movie, maybe starring Russell Crowe as a shaggy flesh-eater? Or Christian Bale? He’ll do anything for his art. Maybe directorPaul Thomas Anderson could helm; he’s in a period pic frame of mind these days (he could call it There Will Be Blood in the Snow…sorry, tasteless). Or Andrew Dominik, who made The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford look so wintery and wild. If I were someone who optioned things for a living, I’d get on the phone to Ethan’s agent…