Books |
You Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time: Rules for Couples
Patricia Marx & Roz Chast
By
Published: Jan 03, 2021
Category:
Humor
This reader review tells you all you need to know: “I quit marriage therapy after reading this book.”
When “You Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time: Rules for Couples” was published in January 2020, the publisher’s hope was for Valentine Day sales. That happened. Then the pandemic descended. And now Valentine’s Day is coming around again.
But why feature this book as Butler’s first real recommendation of the new year, a month before anyone’s thinking about Valentine’s Day? Because… the pandemic. The second round of the virus. The second lockdown, which, thanks to the government’s unsurprising failure to get the vaccine into our arms, threatens to continue for months. Wherever you are right now, whoever you’re with… that’s where you’re going to be.
The first time was new and shiny, and although it was a tragedy, if you didn’t get sick and had some money and weren’t sharing a studio apartment, it was kind of an adventure. You baked, zoomed, Peletoned, marveled at My Octopus Teacher and watched all of Borgen.
Come the fall, you were ready to resume life as you knew it.
Instead, life got worse.
Now, if you’re like me, you’re scared witless every time you go outside.
Is it better inside?
If you’re living with someone, you’re trapped. You can’t break up. You can’t cheat. What can you do? Enjoy this book… together. Note how your quirks aren’t yours alone. Share a rueful laugh. And, for at least as long as an episode of “Atypical,” feel better. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Patricia Marx and Roz Chast work at the New Yorker, where Marx writes funny pieces and Chast makes cartoons you cut out and put on the fridge. They play in a ukulele band. They’ve been friends since the 1970s. This book was, clearly, no chore.
For a preview, click here.
Sample captions:
It is easier to stay inside and wait for the snow to melt than to fight about who should shovel.
As long as we love the dog more than we hate each other, we will never break up.
The person who ordered the egg-white omelet has to keep their skinny paws away from the other person’s French fries.
Sexual favors in exchange for cleaning up the cat vomit is a good and fair trade.
Whoever cares the most that there are crumbs in the toaster gets the de-crumbing job.
If you keep buying things from Amazon ten times a day even though there’s no more room in the house, you must buy a storage unit. And live in it.
Do not walk ten feet in front of me unless you are checking for land mines.
When you do something wrong and there’s no fixing it, apologize twenty times a day for being such a dick and soon I will become so sick and tired of hearing you babble, you will be forgiven.
Falling in love is easy. Agreeing on how to load the dishwasher is hard.
It is easier to stay inside and wait for the snow to melt than to fight about who should shovel.
I swear I’m not guilty of any of these. Except for this: Marriage is one of you secretly turning the thermostat up and the other secretly turning it down and so on and so on until one of you dies. How did they see me? And how much do they know about you?
