Don't Forget to E-Mail Your Mother!

“Mothers have found a new way to break through the protective cordon that their grown children throw around their private lives,” The New York Times’ Liesl Schillinger writes. “It’s called e-mail.” The resulting missives have been collected in a hilarious new book, Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home, by Doree Shafrir and Jessica Grose. Sometimes mom’s suggestions are utterly kooky: One mother wishes her daughter would “grow a monobrow, like Salma Hayek in Frida.” Others are downright earnest: “Love you! Please don’t get any more kittens or tattoos this year.” Schillinger writes, “Love, Mom shows how much easier it is for everyone concerned, now that she can type it, instead of tell it.”