We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so the only reading material around the house was either books we checked out of the local library or copies of Reader’s Digest. When my parents got divorced my mother headed off to college as part of her effort to build a new life for herself. She took a creative writing class and received a comment on her first paper that it read like a story from Reader’s Digest. My mother, not realizing this was intended as a put down, was very pleased.

Since those days, I’ve gone on to enjoy reading James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and others that are a long way from my early literary explorations. Yet I still enjoy, from time to time, picking up a story that reads like it is from Reader’s Digest.

I read a lot of books about the nature of online social networking. Tara Hunt’s book The Whuffie Factor is one of the best books I’ve read about online social networking, especially for young sophisticated geeks living in silicon valley, silicon alley, or other places such people gather. Shel Israel’s book, Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods seems the best for older business people. Shiv Singh’s Social Media Marketing For Dummies is one of the best for marketers, and the best for the general population seems to be Leslie Poston’s Twitter for Dummies.

But if you want to find a book that truly captures the power of social media in a way that your beloved Reader’s Digest reading aunt who plays the church organ out in Kansas can understand, there is no better book than Emily Liebert’s Facebook Fairytales: Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit. The stories read like Reader’s Digest stories, in a good way. They are simple, touching, well written stories about how people have used Facebook to connect with one another in special ways. They have stories about strangers becoming friends and helping one another through major life events. There are stories of adoption, organ donation and more.

So, if you are a young sophisticated geek living in a silicon region of our country and want to find a book which will communicate what is really important about what you do to your beloved aunt who is skeptical of all this online stuff, get her a copy of Facebook Fairytales. For that matter, if you are just an average reader who would like something simple and uplifting to balance out some of the bad news of the day, Facebook Fairytales might bring you a little joy as well.

As a final note, especially in terms of the latest government regulations about product endorsements: I have received copies of each of the books mentioned in this blog post by publicists looking for a good review. I actually receive many requests to review books, but I don’t like writing negative reviews, so I turn down many of the book review requests and only do occasional reviews of books that sound like I’m going to like them. That’s how I came to review Facebook Fairytales, and like the other books I’ve received to review, I’m pleased that it did not disappoint me.