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Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties
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 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 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 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?
In Let's Be Less Stupid Patty addresses troubling conundrums, such 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 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?
208 pages, Hardcover
First published July 7, 2015
30 people are currently reading
626 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Marx
38 books89 followersPatricia Marx is an American humorist and writer.
Born in Abingdon, Pennsylvania, she earned her B.A. from Harvard University in 1975. Her writing has appeared in the The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and The Atlantic Monthly. Marx is a former writer for Saturday Night Live and Rugrats, and one of the first two women elected to the Harvard Lampoon.[1][2] She is the author of the 2007 novel, Him Her Him Again The End of Him, as well as several humor books and children's books (Meet My Staff, Now Everybody Really Hates Me, Now I Will Never Leave the Dinner Table).[3]
Born in Abingdon, Pennsylvania, she earned her B.A. from Harvard University in 1975. Her writing has appeared in the The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and The Atlantic Monthly. Marx is a former writer for Saturday Night Live and Rugrats, and one of the first two women elected to the Harvard Lampoon.[1][2] She is the author of the 2007 novel, Him Her Him Again The End of Him, as well as several humor books and children's books (Meet My Staff, Now Everybody Really Hates Me, Now I Will Never Leave the Dinner Table).[3]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
October 13, 2015
Patty Marx writes very funny stuff for The New Yorker, and Let’s Be Less Stupid feels like a magazine article that just grew too long. Marx has such a clever mind that I hate to give this book a lukewarm review; I just think the short magazine version (which I read) was sufficient. On the other hand, if you need a bit of diversion, you’ll find this amusing. Say you’ve been working on War and Peace or Infinite Jest and your brain is fried. You’ll finish this quickly and laugh.
Marx is very self-deprecating, and that’s a wholly reassuring accompaniment to this exploration into the failing mind that we all fear. This book is more about the "Avoid Alzheimer's" industry than it is about dementia. There are lots of quizzes and puzzles designed to test the reader’s mental capacity, but they are always intermixed with questions that are merely hilarious. The drawings are important, and I’ve been told the book does not work well on a Kindle.
You could be serious and do all the IQ quizzes she includes, but you’ll soon bump up on the mirthful ones. You can conclude, as she does, that most of the theories about keeping your mental faculties don’t work. Her final word, quoting a friend: “Forget memory – you get to my age it’s all about teeth or feet.”
Marx is very self-deprecating, and that’s a wholly reassuring accompaniment to this exploration into the failing mind that we all fear. This book is more about the "Avoid Alzheimer's" industry than it is about dementia. There are lots of quizzes and puzzles designed to test the reader’s mental capacity, but they are always intermixed with questions that are merely hilarious. The drawings are important, and I’ve been told the book does not work well on a Kindle.
You could be serious and do all the IQ quizzes she includes, but you’ll soon bump up on the mirthful ones. You can conclude, as she does, that most of the theories about keeping your mental faculties don’t work. Her final word, quoting a friend: “Forget memory – you get to my age it’s all about teeth or feet.”
July 30, 2015
Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties
Patricia Marx
Brain games or my final thoughts on Patty Marx' new book about the human brain
Last night my brain hurt. It didn’t hurt like a pulled hammy or a broken heart. My brain felt more like a piece of Play-Doh if Play-Doh had feelings and resided at a public day care center where it endured the daily torture of being squeezed and stomped and ripped apart by two-year-olds on Red Bull.
Because my brain hurt, I decided to take two Tylenol before going to bed. I set a bottle of water and a bottle of Tylenol on my bedside table. While watching a commercial on crispy fried chicken, I grabbed the bottle to shake two pills onto my hand only to feel and then see that I was pouring cold water on my palm.
With the water dripping between my fingers, I thought of Patty Marx, a staff writer for The New Yorker, a former writer for Saturday Night Live and the author of “Let’s Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties.”
Marx got the idea to write the book, a hilarious look inside her brain, after having one too many senior moments.
“I put the butter dish in the sock drawer,” Marx told me in a recent interview. She noticed other things about her aging brain as well — she forgot her brother-in-law’s name while he was wearing a name tag; while on a call, she hung up the phone to look for her phone.
Like many people of a certain age, Marx worried about the potential causes of her frequent brain farts. Did she have dementia or Alzheimer’s? When doctors assured her she did not suffer from those disorders, Marx was relieved, yet still perplexed that her brain sometimes took a nap.
She writes: “Of late I’ve been worried about it. My brain, I mean. Although the combination to my junior high locker seems to be stored indelibly in some handy nook of my temporal lobe, right next to Motown song lyrics, could it be that elsewhere up there, not everything is shipshape?”
So she set out on a scientific study of the brain, her brain, to better understand its aging process.
“This study and this book,” she told me, “is not about people who have dementia or Alzheimer’s. It’s about people of a certain age with normal brain functions who begin seeing their brain slow down.”
Marx wanted to see if she could reverse the aging and, in the process, make herself smarter. She studied the research of leading neurologists such as Michael Merzenich, who theorizes that we don’t lose memories but that “we are seeing, hearing and feeling less saliently” as we age.
When in Rome
Maybe a shock to the system will help us feel more in our noggins — at least that was the belief of the Roman emperor Claudius, who pressed electric eels against his forehead. Marx chose a similar experiment, attaching the Fisher Wallace Stimulator to her head. “For at least 20 minutes a day every day, for the past four months,” she writes, “I have fastened a small apparatus to my head, treating my brain to pulses of electricity.” She could not detect any changes after those four months, but “when I tried the machine I saw a faint flickering of light due to the electricity passing through my optical nerve. If there’d been a bulb inside my head it would’ve needed changing.”
Brain games
Other experiments included learning Cherokee, writing backwards, eating super foods and meditating. Marx also spent much of her time playing brain games like Lumosity.
“Did any of these things make you smarter?” I asked.
Marx coyly held the answer from me. “You’ll have to read it in the book.”
So I did. Marx took an IQ test before she began her brain study and another after. And her IQ…went down. Okay, so maybe we can’t make ourselves smarter, but we can make ourselves wiser, right? At least that’s the question I posed to her.
Our brain on the Internet is a mess, Marx said. We’re flooded with information and we retain so little of it. And that news is not relegated to seniors.
“A recent study showed that millennials scored lower than seniors on some cognitive tests,” Marx told me.
It may sound New Agey, but the key thing I took away from the book and from talking with Marx is that it’s okay to slow down, give your brain an occasional rest and just be in the moment. You might not learn what’s trending on Twitter or ever understand what’s going on with the Greek economy, but at least you won’t pour cold water on your hand.
Patricia Marx
Brain games or my final thoughts on Patty Marx' new book about the human brain
Last night my brain hurt. It didn’t hurt like a pulled hammy or a broken heart. My brain felt more like a piece of Play-Doh if Play-Doh had feelings and resided at a public day care center where it endured the daily torture of being squeezed and stomped and ripped apart by two-year-olds on Red Bull.
Because my brain hurt, I decided to take two Tylenol before going to bed. I set a bottle of water and a bottle of Tylenol on my bedside table. While watching a commercial on crispy fried chicken, I grabbed the bottle to shake two pills onto my hand only to feel and then see that I was pouring cold water on my palm.
With the water dripping between my fingers, I thought of Patty Marx, a staff writer for The New Yorker, a former writer for Saturday Night Live and the author of “Let’s Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties.”
Marx got the idea to write the book, a hilarious look inside her brain, after having one too many senior moments.
“I put the butter dish in the sock drawer,” Marx told me in a recent interview. She noticed other things about her aging brain as well — she forgot her brother-in-law’s name while he was wearing a name tag; while on a call, she hung up the phone to look for her phone.
Like many people of a certain age, Marx worried about the potential causes of her frequent brain farts. Did she have dementia or Alzheimer’s? When doctors assured her she did not suffer from those disorders, Marx was relieved, yet still perplexed that her brain sometimes took a nap.
She writes: “Of late I’ve been worried about it. My brain, I mean. Although the combination to my junior high locker seems to be stored indelibly in some handy nook of my temporal lobe, right next to Motown song lyrics, could it be that elsewhere up there, not everything is shipshape?”
So she set out on a scientific study of the brain, her brain, to better understand its aging process.
“This study and this book,” she told me, “is not about people who have dementia or Alzheimer’s. It’s about people of a certain age with normal brain functions who begin seeing their brain slow down.”
Marx wanted to see if she could reverse the aging and, in the process, make herself smarter. She studied the research of leading neurologists such as Michael Merzenich, who theorizes that we don’t lose memories but that “we are seeing, hearing and feeling less saliently” as we age.
When in Rome
Maybe a shock to the system will help us feel more in our noggins — at least that was the belief of the Roman emperor Claudius, who pressed electric eels against his forehead. Marx chose a similar experiment, attaching the Fisher Wallace Stimulator to her head. “For at least 20 minutes a day every day, for the past four months,” she writes, “I have fastened a small apparatus to my head, treating my brain to pulses of electricity.” She could not detect any changes after those four months, but “when I tried the machine I saw a faint flickering of light due to the electricity passing through my optical nerve. If there’d been a bulb inside my head it would’ve needed changing.”
Brain games
Other experiments included learning Cherokee, writing backwards, eating super foods and meditating. Marx also spent much of her time playing brain games like Lumosity.
“Did any of these things make you smarter?” I asked.
Marx coyly held the answer from me. “You’ll have to read it in the book.”
So I did. Marx took an IQ test before she began her brain study and another after. And her IQ…went down. Okay, so maybe we can’t make ourselves smarter, but we can make ourselves wiser, right? At least that’s the question I posed to her.
Our brain on the Internet is a mess, Marx said. We’re flooded with information and we retain so little of it. And that news is not relegated to seniors.
“A recent study showed that millennials scored lower than seniors on some cognitive tests,” Marx told me.
It may sound New Agey, but the key thing I took away from the book and from talking with Marx is that it’s okay to slow down, give your brain an occasional rest and just be in the moment. You might not learn what’s trending on Twitter or ever understand what’s going on with the Greek economy, but at least you won’t pour cold water on your hand.
December 16, 2015
This book reads like a proposal the author/her editor forgot to flesh out before sending out for publication.
April 9, 2018
To demonstrate how much I needed this book and how bad my memory is, I actually mixed this up with the book "one day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter" because 1) that title also has words crossed out and 2) a pink cover. Definitely NOT the same book. *sigh*.
Patricia Marx is a great writer and loved this more than I thought I would. Also pointed out the difficulty in figuring out what research is good (and not) about memory/neuroscience/behavior research. It was encouraging, and funny and sprinkling of good information. Would recommend for anyone who likes comedic writing, a non-scientist interpretation of science, and anecdotes of how she experiments on herself.
Patricia Marx is a great writer and loved this more than I thought I would. Also pointed out the difficulty in figuring out what research is good (and not) about memory/neuroscience/behavior research. It was encouraging, and funny and sprinkling of good information. Would recommend for anyone who likes comedic writing, a non-scientist interpretation of science, and anecdotes of how she experiments on herself.
March 29, 2019
Thoroughly enjoyable writing style. Ms Marx adds humor to a subject not usually thought of as humorous- our aging brains and what we can do to make them better. She attempts to make herself smarter over a period of time where she has brain scans before and after to see if brain areas change with learning. Many kinds of learning are attempted and most are included along with humorous tests for us to test ourselves.
I loved her sense of humor and would love to go have a beer with her to hear all this in person. If you are looking for something different to change up your pattern of reading only certain kinds of books, try this. It made me want to read all her other books next.
I loved her sense of humor and would love to go have a beer with her to hear all this in person. If you are looking for something different to change up your pattern of reading only certain kinds of books, try this. It made me want to read all her other books next.
December 6, 2015
"If grown men can have bar mitzvahs, grandmothers can give birth, and Mick Jagger can sing 'Time Is on My Side,' then can't I have the mental prowess of someone who looks young enough to be carded?"
This is really a padded magazine article rather than a book. Slight but entertaining.
This is really a padded magazine article rather than a book. Slight but entertaining.
April 29, 2016
Cannot warn people strongly enough to avoid this joyless, witless piffle. It has a smart, clever jacket, but everything is downhill from there. There's a special shelf in hell for books like this one.
July 20, 2015
This is a cute book to read if you've never thought about your brain or your IQ. I have, so this book was only mildly humorous.
August 17, 2015
Let's be more funny.
April 20, 2017
This was halfway between a non-fiction educational and a fiction comedic short novel. I did not like this combo. There are all these little quizzes to see if you are in a state of mental decline, and while some of the questions seem valid, others are clearly sarcastic. I would have preferred if this book had leaned harder one way or the other. There are no references which makes me think that this was all humor. However, it wasn't that humorous.
October 15, 2015
A short look at brain cognition from a SNL writer. It was mildly amusing and somewhat informative. It would have been better shortened to a magazine article. Bottom line: there's not much you can do about cognitive decline as you age. Rats!
August 31, 2015
This was quite funny and entertaining, if a bit pointless.
Read
January 17, 2018Enjoyed it! A quick read and entertaining. The memory activities are hysterical!
August 16, 2015
This short book touches on some memory issues, and one’s general ability to learn or understand stuff (I.Q.), in a soft and light mirth style; although she often includes some contemporary, if not avant-garde, neuroscientific theories and discoveries (briskly), most of the book deals with her forgetful mind and ever-present need to know her intelligence quotient. There are plenty of quizzes and puzzles designed to test a person’s mental status, for those who desire to engage in such things, with some humor attached, although not much; one funny passage occurring late in the book is, “Overall, I spent so much time trying to improve my brain, that I had no time left to use it”. Such funny lines, however, are few and far between in this book. Of course, the author does not attempt to provide meaningful scientific evidence regarding forgetting and memory, and she doesn’t. The book, to me, reads like one of those Reader’s Digest blurbs of the past-- fluffy anecdotes that are just long enough to get you through the wait in the doctor’s office, but forgotten shortly thereafter.
September 24, 2015
A funny but not earth shattering book, Let's Be Less Stupid is written by Patricia Marx, a former writer for Saturday Night Live. She is concerned that as she ages there is greater evidence of brain decline - a view bolstered by taking an online IQ test that shows her score to be 75. Looking for cognitive rejuvenation, she looks for ways that we can all increase our intelligence with chapters like "I Get Me Smarter Soon". Marx finds interesting tidbits like there are 6000 videos posted to YouTube per minute and that in our olditude we get better at big picture thinking. Marx also concludes that high IQ people are more likely to be:
left- handed, tall, thin, blue-eyed with oldest children who are:
atheist, liberal, prone to lying,drinking, drugs and have a cat.
To become brainier you can practise writing backwards with your non-dominant hand, rearrange the furniture and join a cult, then quit.
This was a laugh out loud kind of book.
January 17, 2016
A little book that comes in at 186 pages, this is one to be borrowed from the library - I wouldn't spend any money on it. It is a cute book about memory with some helpful studies and some exercises that are a bit annoying, as they are often just made up by the author as a way to be funny - I found myself just glancing at them and moving on. Not so funny, really. For those who study memory, you may find that the studies the author refers to are not news but rather the foundation of what we know already. For those who are just starting out and want an overview of what memory is all about, by all means check it out. I did find it interesting, that after it was all said and done, the before and after tests the author took before really trying to improve her memory actually showed a slight decline in memory versus a better one. Hmmm . . .
March 25, 2016
This book about being less stupid is well...stupid. For someone who wrote for SNL, it's not surprising that the author continues to not be funny in this book, despite desperate attempts. It seems like she is an anxious person that got worried about the effects of cognitive decline due to age one day. So, hey, why not write a funny little book on it quickly? She completes an mri, fmri, and a psychological evaluation at the start and end after spending weeks trying to improve her mental capacities through brain games, learning a language, etc. She is far from an expert in what she writing about and it's sloppy. I'm a psychologist so I know about the subject she is writing about and there were just so many issues with the book. The lame brain games and attempts at funny quips didn't redeem any of it.
November 15, 2015
Every once in awhile, I like to read something funny. Dave Barry writes funny. Lewis Grizzard was a master at writing funny. This, not so much.
I came across this book in a NYT book review. The teasers were great. I should have remembered that, like the previews of a movie, all the best stuff is in the teaser. The first couple of chapters were hilarious. After that it seems a little as if Ms Marx got tired of coming up with good one-liners. Half of the book is filled with doodles of Ms Marx' brain, weird quizzes, little drawings and odd crossword puzzles that supposedly make you smarter. There are some interesting factoids scattered throughout.
If you want to read this, borrow it from the library or a friend. It costs too much for what you get in return.
I came across this book in a NYT book review. The teasers were great. I should have remembered that, like the previews of a movie, all the best stuff is in the teaser. The first couple of chapters were hilarious. After that it seems a little as if Ms Marx got tired of coming up with good one-liners. Half of the book is filled with doodles of Ms Marx' brain, weird quizzes, little drawings and odd crossword puzzles that supposedly make you smarter. There are some interesting factoids scattered throughout.
If you want to read this, borrow it from the library or a friend. It costs too much for what you get in return.
October 30, 2015
Read a review and got it from the library -- disappointing. It is too cute by half and approaches silly-dumb sometimes (she should have paid more attention to her own title). Her four-month program to increase her IQ or mental acuity has some interesting tidbits -- she had MRI's before and after -- but her mental "quizzes" are . . . stupid. She reaches a good balance in the chapter on meditation -- funny without being silly or snarky. Her main intent is humor for the sake of humor, not humor as she explores the science and controversies of brain augmentation. Nothing's wrong with that, but read another book instead of this one.
February 26, 2016
This is one of those books that is trying so hard to be funny it just kind of falls flat. I feel like the author had some interesting information, and did a huge amount of research, but then she tried to be slapstick about what she was doing and it just wasn't that interesting. There was not enough science to be interesting from a psychological standpoint, and not enough humor to make it funny. Also, I read this as a library book, so all the quizes were pretty pointless as I couldn't mark the book.
Not badly written enough to rate one star, but definitely not worth the time to read.
Not badly written enough to rate one star, but definitely not worth the time to read.
September 23, 2015
I actually didn't finish this book. It was witty, smart, and intriguing, but it is NOT meant to be a library book. Repeat: NOT. It is replete with quizzes, multiple choice games, and cosmo-style multiple choice questions, that would probably have been fun if I owned the book and was marking it up, but just caused me to skim ahead otherwise. Very clever, topical and fun, but my take is that it was probably more entertaining to write than to read.
August 21, 2015
I was underwhelmed.
I was also really glad I didn't pay for the book.
It's a mildly humorous book about cognition, but not that funny and not that well written and not that informative and not that interesting. Had it been what it should have been (an article in Time or Slate or something) I would have read it and sighed about lower standards in journalism these days.
Also, at least two of the answers to puzzles are wrong. Probably more. It's not a well edited book, either.
I was also really glad I didn't pay for the book.
It's a mildly humorous book about cognition, but not that funny and not that well written and not that informative and not that interesting. Had it been what it should have been (an article in Time or Slate or something) I would have read it and sighed about lower standards in journalism these days.
Also, at least two of the answers to puzzles are wrong. Probably more. It's not a well edited book, either.
January 8, 2018
Combination of musings on declining brain function and a comedy act in book form; neither objective really works for me ( not the brain function info., nor the jokes). The comedy would likely come across better in person, although according to her experiements with various brain strengthening regimens there is not much we can do to improve brain function and be less stupid. So, all we can do is keep a sense of humor about it? I guess so.
September 3, 2015
For half of the book, I was on the fence about whether it was supposed to be funny or not. Ended up speed reading it as it just didn't hold my attention. Attempting to seriously read it possibly made me more stupid! Good for a few laughs. Good for a moment as a comment and balancing perspective on all the brain enhancing promises in the marketplace today.
August 30, 2015
I appreciate all the delving into unusual information for the "tests" in the book, and for her joyful sense of humor about life, and the "tests." Really made me think, and realize how little information we get from mainstream news, TV, etc.
Short book, but highly entertaining and must have taken the author years to get all the pertinent information in the book. She is a driven personality.
Short book, but highly entertaining and must have taken the author years to get all the pertinent information in the book. She is a driven personality.
December 10, 2015
Marx takes us from her own funny experiences with memory loss to explaining proven neuro-scientific discoveries and theories. She explores ways one can attempt to become smarter and/or at least try to stop the decline. The quizzes were clever and her humorous tone was present throughout. In summary: decline is inevitable.
July 30, 2018
This book was not for me. It was originally a gift and I thought it would be a light read. The author is best known for her work in The New Yorker and on SNL. But I failed to catch on to the humor. It seemed like one joke that just went on way too long! Some of her sentences were funny but it was just too much. I'm sure its the right book for many people, just not me.
August 10, 2015
I was intrigued after reading an NPR review of this book and because I've been feeling pretty stupid lately anyway. There's some interesting brain facts, but this is mostly Marx's humor and sarcasm on display. Which is why the CIP is PN6231, amirite?
August 12, 2015
Meh....not too informative; most everything I'd heard before. And also not very funny, as I expected it to be being written by a former SNL writer. I felt
like she tried too hard to be funny, ending up not.
like she tried too hard to be funny, ending up not.
September 2, 2015
If you have a fear that you are losing your mind and are overwhelmed by your own thoughts.....read this book. It is funny with some facts and some non facts! I felt "normal" after reading it and realize sometimes it is what it is.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews