I don’t know if I entirely agree that the show was about Carrie finding a husband. After all, she rejected marriage to Ethan and a partnership with the Russian guy whose name I can’t remember. It was about a woman seeking romance, sure, but she most certainly didn’t define success in her life by whether or not she had a ring. (She wanted one, yes, but a big focus of the show was Carrie finding fulfillment in her friends and career, etc.)

As to Carrie’s understanding of a successful relationship, it may be true that she drank the patriarchal kool-aid as an adult. But do we really think that she would define HIGH SCHOOL relationships as unsuccessful if they didn’t end in marriage? She seems more realistic than THAT, surely?

Finally, Charlotte is WAY less self-confident and WAY more defined by relationships with men than Carrie IMHO.

But other than that, I agree with the rest of your point.

I’ll admit the books can be “fun” in the sense that they could be quite funny, but I think by “fun” before, I really meant “satisfying.”

But I think you’re kind of missing my point about how the series was about Carrie’s search for Mr. Right, meaning A HUSBAND: that’s how CARRIE and thus the series defined a successful relationship. As such, I really don’t think a pre-TV book *could* fit the parameters you have. Any book about a young Carrie would need to set the series up, so she would thus need to finish hs and college feeling unsatisfied herself, therefore leaving the audience that way, too. In order for your premise to work, it would need to NOT be about Carrie so that the CHARACTER would have the freedom to feel satisfied even if she didn’t marry the guy. And I’ve read books and seen movies like that and enjoyed them, found them *quite* satisfying- but they were their own entities, meaning the characters weren’t already pre-determined.

So as for Carrie herself, I think out of all of the main women in that show, she was the LEAST self-confident and defined herself more than the others by her relationships with men. Not to say that was ALL she put into her identity, but keep in mind she made her living writing a column about her search for Mr. Right. So again, since that is how we see her as an adult, it wouldn’t fit for her to be MORE confident as a teenager- unless something totally scarring (that for some reason never was brought up in the show… hm…) happens, in which case the books would *still* be unsatisfying, because then we’d see her character move backward over a tragic event.

Um… the assumption that a look at Carrie’s “unsuccessful” high school relationships wouldn’t be fun contains within it the hidden assumption that relationships that don’t end in marriage are “unsuccessful.”

How many young girls caught up in high school hormones dreaming of Mr. Right (or Mr. Big) could benefit from reading the story of a girl like Carrie, who goes through romantic follies and remains self-confident, who is interested in guys and dating (ie: not some anti-feminist stereotype of a man-hating lesbian) but who does not *define her self-worth* through those guys?

I know I could have used those books when I was younger.

However, if it really is just a commentary on the things she sees and observes, maybe it won’t be as whoa-is-me so much as, “Wow, these people are idiots!” If that’s the case, I’d be able to stand it.

SPOILERS

She’s at a party and having the time of her life because she’s still single. Then she falls out of a window because she was so busy having that good, single time, she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going.

Or the one where they visit the old friend that has had a baby and is pregnant again or something like that. She used to be the wild one and now she’s not and can never again be because she’s married with kids, so when she tries to strip like in the good old days, instead of getting whoops and encouragement, everybody is uncomfortable and looks at her like she’s out of her mind.

I agree, movie or show titles don’t always say it all, but I really think this one was meant to, or at least meant to say most of it. Like “Friends.” That’s pretty straight-forward, as casey said. Or “The Terminator” or “The Hunt for Red October.” Yeah. Duh.

Titles can also have multiple meanings, of course. “Home Improvement”: Tim was the host of a home improvement show (for “men,” heh… I really loved “The Man’s Kitchen”- how awesome to have one’s own personal butcher!), but it was clearly a show more about his family relationships and all of the work he was doing on his own metaphorical home to keep it strong and together. So in the case of SATC, mayhap “Sex” and “City” are symbolic of other things, too, in addition to the more literal meanings.

But this begs the question: will the new teenaged book series have “sex” in its title at all if it really *won’t* have any actual sex? And if so, what’s the point?

For example, _Tremors_ isn’t really about actual earthquakes.

It’s about giant sand worms that _cause_ earthquakes.

I hope that clears it up.