It's not easy growing older, but for Patricia
Marx, the decline of the mind provides fodder for a smart, often
laugh-out-loud exploration of the human brain—"the three-pound wrinkly
glop of glopoplasm in your skull" that contains "about a hundred
billion neurons." In Let's Be Less Stupid,
Marx--a curious, comic writer and contributor to Saturday Night Live, The New Yorker and
the author of Starting
from Happy--presents a candid, loosely structured memoir about her
four-month mission to better understand, sharpen and boost her brain, which she
claims is, "the size of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's fist, the consistency of
flan, and weighs as much as a two-slice toaster." She states, "if you
were a plastic surgeon, you'd say my brain needed a facelift."
Marx believes the modern world inundates minds,
especially hers, with an overabundance of information--"the shoe size of
my ex, the names of Sarah Jessica Parker's children, the calories in cottage
cheese"--and, with age, the brain becomes a clogged think tank where
"our cerebrums are filled with more facts than are contained in all the
editions of Trivial Pursuit." Thus, she sets out to examine and test ways
of transforming and rejuvenating her "ol' noggin'." She offers a trove
of neuro-knowledge factoids and clever self-help strategies fortified with
statistical data, word problems, quizzes, brainteasers and "Middle-age Mad
Libs"; graphics, doodles, photographs and charts; physical and nutritional
enhancements, medical tests and meditations. These accoutrements illustrate,
reinforce and/or dispute theories Marx encounters amid her hilariously
sophisticated, often literally mind-boggling, "get-smart" crusade.
Publication Date: July 14, 2015
To order this book via INDIEBOUND
link HERE
Daniel Menaker believes that "Curiosity is the basis of good conversation." And he should know. After all, he's an expert now that he has written a book called A GOOD TALK: THE STORY AND SKILL OF CONVERSATION. Menaker is a former editor from The New Yorker Magazine and Random House, where he edited Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Elizabeth Strout, among others. Menaker is also an accomplished author himself, who has written a novel (The Treatment) and two wonderful collections of short stories (Friends and Relations and The Old Left). In addition, he was the host of Title Page TV, an on-line program featuring in-depth discussions of books and authors, which was pulled after it ran out of funding. Drats!
The act of conversation is minimalized every day thanks to technologies like email, text messaging and Twitter. But Menaker's book offers an exploration of conversation as an art form. It is a smart, witty and very insightful account of the history of conversation, and Menaker also offers advice and strategies for how to talk to people you don't know very well. Topics include how to deal with bores, interruptions, name-dropping, repetition, ordering in restaurants and topics of discussion to avoid. Menaker even offers transcripts of actual conversations he has had and then distills them to discover hidden meanings, agendas, and glaring faux pas. As an inquisitive person and a writer who is fascinated by dialogue and how people communicate with each other (things said vs. things not said), it was a fascinating and entertaining read. Be sure to tune in to the video on Mr. Menaker's website, where he undertakes to promote the book via a very clever interview - with himself!
