In today's Miss Manners column, advice columnist Judith Martin responds to a reader who received a "friends and family" letter from a colleague that turned out to be a thinly veiled book advertisement ...

I always thought that you should face the people you are passing (showing your prettier side), but a lot of people turn their backs.

Am I out of line to have taken this as a breach of etiquette? Is this mixing of personal and commercial now proper?