Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties - Tapa blanda

"Frothy, funny, and abounding in quizzes, exercises, and questionnaires...A sly, irreverent take on the latest obsessions regarding self-improvement."--Kirkus

"Equal parts sarcasm, silliness and smarts...Throughout, 'Middle-Age Mad Libs' mock brainteasers and ludicrous quizzes are filled with sharp sendups of our cultural obsessions... anyone clever enough to write Let's Be Less Stupid is clearly still firing on all cylinders."--NPR Books

"Patty Marx's unending wit, comedy, insight, and panic are here on display in her new, exciting, book."--Steve Martin

"Patty Marx's new book on the mind and its slippages is one more welcome Marxian performance: fascinating truths, offered with wit, and wonderful wit, with truth inside it."--Adam Gopnik

"Patty Marx is one of the funniest, smartest people I know. I am pretty sure I have gotten smarter, or at least less stupid, since reading this book. You will too!"--Roz Chast

"I've long had a nagging suspicion that I'm getting stupider by the day. But not until giving myself over to the program put forth in this book--call it "Patty Marx's Bootcamp for the Brain"TM--did I fully grasp the extent of my cognitive decline. I can't remember most of what's in it, but I can say that it's the feel-good read of the season. Especially for people who don't know what season it is." --Meghan Daum

"If you had a conversation with your funniest, smartest friend about your secret fear of losing your mind, this is what it would sound like. Marx's book is hilarious, engaging, and jammed with wonderfully oddball science, delivered with her inimitable wit. A must-read for anyone who has a brain."--Susan Orlean

"Smarten up with Marx's quizzes, brainteasers, anecdotes, and self-help guides while giving your funny bone a witty workout."--Elle

"This 'sub-primer' on the neuroscience of intelligence and memory by New Yorker staff writer and master humorist Patricia Marx delivers salutary cognitive jolts amid the general hilarity... If you regularly arrive in rooms with no memory of what you were looking for, this one is for you."--Nature

"Patricia Marx is my favorite kind of humorist. A funny one."
--Omnivoracious

Now in paperback: former SNL writer and The New Yorker staffer Patty Marx employs the weapon she wields best--not that weapon; Patty believes in gun control. Instead, she uses her sharp-edged humor to tackle the most difficult facet of aging: the mind's decline. From forgetting her brother-in-law's name while he was wearing a nametag to hanging up the phone to look for her phone, Marx confesses to her failures, and not only to make you feel better about yourself.

In LET'S BE LESS STUPID Patty addresses troubling conundrums, such as: If there are more neural connections in your brain than stars in the Milky Way, why did you put the butter dish in your nightstand drawer? Patty's quest to get smarter includes just about everything: learning Cherokee, popping pills (not the good kind), and listening to--who's the guy who didn't write dum de de dum but the other one?