Party on, without fearChristopher Lowell, the Hassle-Free...

Party on, without fear

Christopher Lowell, the Hassle-Free Host

Christopher Lowell

Clarkson Potter, $29.95

In this fun-to-read, hint-heavy guide to throwing a party at home, the entertaining TV decorator tells you what you suspected all along: The experts cheat. To make a rectangular table cozier, Lowell says, plop a piece of round plywood on top. “Who cares what’s under the tablecloth?” he declares.

Come to think of it, who can even see the tablecloth when they’ve assembled one of Lowell’s legendary “tablescapes?” (Only the intrepid and self-deprecating Lowell could convince America that half a watermelon makes a great vase for flowers.) As varied as fireside jungle-theme dinners and floral fantasy brunches, Lowell’s inspired tabletop tableaux will have you running to the crafts store to stock up on fabric, hot glue and -- everyone’s favorite -- florist’s clay. Fortunately, his idiot-proof recipes for jambalaya, curry and a “fancy schmancy” five-course din-din won’t take nearly as long.

Party perfectionists might find it more motivational than challenging, but if your idea of entertaining is a thin-crust pizza in front of a flat-screen TV, Lowell’s easily digestible instructions and mouth-watering food photography make “The Hassle-Free Host” worth knowing.

David A. Keeps

*

An easy online sell

Buying & Selling

Antiques and

Collectibles on eBay

Pamela Y. Wiggins

Thomson Course Technology, $19.95

If you’re not one of the more than 114 million registered users who buy or sell $1,020 worth of goods every second on EBay, this book will help you jump right in. The 311-page tome also will work for those who’ve made selling on EBay a full- or part-time calling, as more than 430,000 people in the U.S. do.

The author, an antiques collector since age 8, covers plenty of how-tos: how to research what you’re buying or selling, how to better gauge condition and provenance, how to entice buyers to bid. (Keywords are vital, and being more specific can broaden your search to pull in collectors as well as casual buyers.)

Step-by-step instructions, using sample pictures of EBay pages, help the would-be entrepreneur set up shop. The paperback also has a useful index that guides the reader to pages on grading china, researching an item’s condition or shipping products. The chapter on other sources is also a good reference in itself, covering such issues as websites that specialize in shipping materials and foreign-language translators.

-- Kathy Bryant

*

Puffed up

and pretty

Decor

Meredith, $14.95

Like toile? You’ll love this. The premier edition of Decor magazine represents a radical departure from the usual homespun how-to stuff found in such Meredith publications as Better Homes and Gardens, Country Home and Traditional Home. This yearbook, says editor-in-chief Linda Hallam, is designed to “showcase beautiful but comfortable interior design trends across the country.”

Unencumbered by advertising (at just under $15, it had better be), Decor has no advice columns, no do-it-yourself tips, and, most shocking in this age of shopping magazines, absolutely no where-to-buy-it credits. Though Decor reveals the elegant classicism of furniture designer David Easton and gives nods to the Hollywood deco revival and the Western-meets-primitive look, most of Decor is smothered in luxury, like a wedge of iceberg lettuce drowning in Roquefort.

The lavish spreads on homes published in other Meredith magazines feature priceless antiques, ornate furniture and lush floor and wall coverings put together with great finesse but with little indication that people actually live with them.

For a publication devoted to home design, the trends are more grandly implied than analyzed, as when chintz-throwing decorator Charles Faudree, author of “French Country Signature” espouses, “Every room should have a touch of red and every home should have a red room.”

-- David A. Keeps