[Books] Lady Penelope's Lifestyle Secrets

When we decided to drop by this year's Summer Komikon, we only had a single title in mind. I never would have imagined myself to end up going home with a book as ridiculously pink as this one. And really, this book is super pink and it's not like it's a small pocketbook-sized affair either.

But how could I say no to the one and only Lady Penelope? Sure, compared to modern entertainment standards she may look a little creepy, but that's ultimately sort of a marionette kind of thing. Within the context of the show, she's quite gorgeous and her beauty easily shines through.

So I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from a book that proclaimed to reveal her lifestyle secrets, but one thing led to another and I found myself holding a copy of this little book, Lady Penelope's Lifestyle Secrets. I'm enough of a Thunderbirds fan to appreciate the subject matter plus it was pretty clear that this was not the sort of book one would encounter all that often, especially in this part of the world.

Synopsis: Lady Penelope's Lifestyle Secrets is a guide to her life and her sense of style. The book is written from the perspective of Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward herself. For those who are unfamiliar with her, she performs the role of London Agent for the Thunderbirds on the classic TV show.

As a first-person guide to the life of Lady Penelope, this book is an interesting little adventure into her wardrobe and beyond. The book is divided into several segments, each focused on a particular part of her life including her clothes, her personal style tips and the men of her life, in a manner of speaking.

The first segment on her wardrobe is actually quite awesome. It's filled with various images of her different outfits on the show and it all gives you a good appreciation for just how much work went into making her character such a style icon. You'd think that this London Agent was really some sort of a supermodel but in the end she's just a woman with good taste.

Accompanying all the images, of course, is a pretty fun description of what was going on along with various anecdotes and references to TV episodes. There are even little exclamations in larger fonts that add to the light, humorous tone of things. Also, don't forget to read the captions of each photo as well given there's a lot of fun to be found there.

As much as this is a book about Lady Penelope, one cannot avoid talking about the Thunderbirds. And that's what the chapter on the men in her life really tackles in-depth - talking about the Tracy family with respect to their relationship with Lady Penelope. It was nice to their character profiles in the book as well as it helped round out the whole experience.

The book is longer than it appears to be but is ultimately rather brief, as it is something generally marketed towards children, in a way. But at the same time, we are talking about the show from the 60's and so the way it was written wasn't overly simplistic either and certainly kept me engaged.

I really enjoyed Lady Penelope's Lifestyle Secrets and I'll concede that a lot of that enjoyment was probably because of my love for the show. Obviously if you've never watched the show, then this book will not make any sense to you. Thus the book gets a great 5 fashionable outfits Lady Penelope wore on the show out of a possible 5.