Dave Barry Turns Forty

by Dave Barry

"Just the ticket for the '90s."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
If you're too young for a nursing home yet too old to be a rock star, if your marriage is as exciting as scraping grass off the lawnmower blades, then this hilarious book by Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist and author is for you. Put on your protective eyewear and take a probing look inside your increasingly Spam-like body at: The Midlife (Yawn) Marriage; Wise Financial Planning for Irresponsible Scum Such as Yourself; Sex After 40 (or, Sex? After 40?), and other harsh, but amusing realities that leave you laughing, crying and drooling.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Comedy, Essays, Autobiography, Short Stories, Politics

179 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Dave Barry is a humor writer. For 25 years he was a syndicated columnist whose work appeared in more than 500 newspapers in the United States and abroad. In 1988 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Many people are still trying to figure out how this happened.
Dave has also written many books, virtually none of which contain useful information. Two of his books were used as the basis for the CBS TV sitcom "Dave's World," in which Harry Anderson played a much taller version of Dave.
Dave plays lead guitar in a literary rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose other members include Stephen King, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson and Mitch Albom. They are not musically skilled, but they are extremely loud. Dave has also made many TV appearances, including one on the David Letterman show where he proved that it is possible to set fire to a pair of men's underpants with a Barbie doll.
In his spare time, Dave is a candidate for president of the United States. If elected, his highest priority will be to seek the death penalty for whoever is responsible for making Americans install low-flow toilets.
Dave lives in Miami, Florida, with his wife, Michelle, a sportswriter. He has a son, Rob, and a daughter, Sophie, neither of whom thinks he's funny.

Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I also turned 40, but this book is not written for me. It is for Boomer men who turned 40 in 1987. At that time, people seemed to regard turning 40 as the current equivalent of turning 90. I can remember my dad having a 40th birthday party and receiving tubes of Bengay and t-shirts that said "Over the hill." People don't really do that stuff anymore, and I wouldn't say this book has a lot to offer in terms of real advice or reflection (other than a brief, serious essay about Dave's aging parents, which was quite good).

But that's not the point. The point is that Dave Barry is really funny. I always loved his newspaper columns when I was a kid, even thought they were also not written for me. This book is basically a vehicle for jokes about getting old, fat, wrinkled, senile, uncool, and incompetent. It's also a reminder that people like Willard Scott once existed. Barry is at his funniest when he goes off imagining long, deranged scenarios, such as this one from a quiz about maturity.

You are in a very important, very serious corporate meeting attended by major, high-level officers. During a momentary silence, one of the participants—the chief executive officer of a firm that your company desperately wants to win as a client—emits a brief but fabric-rendingly-loud burst of flatulence. What do you do?

a. Act as though absolutely nothing has happened.

b. Titter involuntarily, but quickly regain your composure.

c. Lunge for the 179-page market survey report in front of you and hide your face behind it and make a desperate but clearly hopeless effort to remain silent while your body vibrates with pent-up laughter that finally erupts with a violent, wet gasping noise like several dozen whales surfacing simultaneously, accompanied by a rivulet of fast-moving drool trickling out from under the report and making its away across the conference table and finally dribbling into the lap of the potential client’s attorney, at which point you emerge from behind the report and attempt to apologize to seventeen stony, staring corporate faces, who unfortunately serve only to remind you of the awesome, nearly life-threatening humor of the situation, so that all you can say to them— to the people who hold your professional future in their hands—is, quote, “WHOOOOO,” after which you pull your head, turtle-like, back into the report, and the only noise in the conference room, aside from the labored, gurgling gasps that you continue to emit, is the sound of the potential client picking up his briefcase and marching grimly and permanently from the room.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of his essays here on middle age are hysterical. I especially loved the completely surprising serious bit on caring for aging parents. I was touched and his guilt and sorrow in those few pages really seared my heart. Of course, being Barry, he immediately bounded to more funny business in the next chapter. But his little unexpected cul de sac of grief and remorse was further proof to me that it is darn hard to find humor in caring for your parents in their old age. It is just too sensitive a topic for anyone who has ever done it -- or who is left with the guilt of having avoided it.

[Elevetha · Rating 3 out of 5]

2023 review

Aged well for me. Bumped up a star. I was dying laughing in a few sections, and obviously crying when he talked about caring for your parents and his mom.


original 2013 2-star review
I may be 15 but most of the humor is not lost on me, though it's not as applicable to me as it would be to someone older, say my dad.

That being said, it wasn't Barry's finest.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. I may have grown out of Dave Barry humor.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not making this up: A few weeks back I was given the David Sedaris book I recently read. Sedaris is sort of the most respected humorist of the day. I mentioned Dave Barry to the gifter, and like too many people these days, they said, “Who?” So, remembering that I happened to have a duplicate copy of Dave Barry Does Japan, I offered it to them so they could begin to correct their horrible oversight. But when I got home I realized I had already given away my duplicate copy, two years ago. So I resolved to get them a different duplicate copy, since the local library has used books for sale and often has Dave among its selections. I find a copy of Dave Barry Turns 40 (the book I’m obviously reviewing right now). This is the book, you’ll remember, that the ‘90s sitcom Dave’s World said it was based on in the credits every episode. So I figured that it would make a better introduction to Dave. But when I get home? I realize I don’t have it. I hadn’t even read it myself yet. So I give the now-single copy of Dave Barry Does Japan anyway, and keep this baby for myself, thank you very much.

Anyway, this book was published way back in 1990. Dave is now spritely in his seventies. In the book he imagines, as many do, that his forties were the beginning of old age. This makes it an ideal early example of Introspective Dave. Still funny, still identifiably Dave Barry, but also the rare peek behind the curtain. We even get a serious glimpse into his private life, a glance at his aging mother. It’s not uncommon for Dave, certainly in his later books, to step away from humor, but this whole book, even as he’s nose-deep in silliness, where we get his always valuable perspective on the boomer generation, what it was actually like for them getting older, what it was like, essentially, for the wild ‘60s child to finally, reluctantly, grow up. And it kind of unlocks the whole code of what makes Dave so wonderfully Dave.

And it’s also, for those not hopelessly devoted to Dave, a book about entering your forties, when it’s suddenly clear you’re not really young anymore. It’s also a wonderful time slip of an era (really, only one reference has slipped into incomprehensibility in the past thirty years). And, yeah, it’s another great example of what has always made Dave so reliably readable.

So maybe I should have given it to my acquaintance. Or maybe I should just hope that the library still has that other Dave Barry it did when I picked up this one. Which was, and I swear I’m not making this up, Dave Barry Does Japan.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I just turned 40 this year and I love Dave Barry. So this feels like a good one to read right now. :-)

EDITED:
The book was written in 1990, so it's a little outdated (Barry turned 40 in 90, while I was in college and just turned 40 in '08). So, there's a lot of stuff that didn't quite meld with today's 40--the music, styles, politics, etc.--but there WAS a lot of stuff that still resonates today with turning 40. The chapter on marriage and sex was hilarious, and the chapter on sports was spot-on (especially in talking about youth sports. I could so see my husband and I in that chapter!).

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Dave Barry book, titled "Dave Barry Turns 40," was quite funny. I very much enjoyed the booger joke on page 37. Numerous parts, including that part about breakfast cereal, were especially funny! I laughed aloud! Haha!

At the end of the book I was left with the sense that, although I'd just been entertained for an hour and a half, that I'd basically been doing the literary equivalent of shoving peeps up my nose. Peeps the candy, not the slang word for acquaintances.

Dave Barry is exactly as funny here as he was in Dave Barry Turns 40, which means quite a riot! Haha!

You're right, I haven't read this one since I was about 15. How did you know?

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite being over 20 years old this still hits the mark about turning 40. Relative little is really dated. Has a surprisingly touching and serious section on his parents. Which says despite being a humorous look at turning middle age their is a serious side too. Highly recommended if your looking for something lighter in tone to read:

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember more details about my Dad turning 40 in 1990 than when I did six years ago. Boomers made a huge deal out of it. Mom brought us by his work and there were black balloons and lots of gag gifts. One of those was Dave Barry's book on the subject (on tape!). I don't know if my Dad ever even listened to it, but I, as a 13-year-old boy who loved Dave Barry and did not care that the subject matter was decades beyond me, did, many times.

This year my wife hit 40, so I snagged a copy of this for her as also a sort of gag gift, which I didn't know if she was actually going to care to read (though she did). But like my Dad's copy, I wanted to read it, even if I was now a few years overdue. (I also picked up Dave Barry Turns 50 to read in a few more years...)

Absolutely worth the two-hour reading time for many very silly jokes and a lot of Boomer and Barry nostalgia. Other than one memorable and serious chapter about Dave's widowed mother and relating to one's aging parents (in short: you can't entirely--you've never been the age they are now), it largely makes no attempt to impart real life lessons about entering one's fifth decade. I think Dave would be proud. It's really by a Boomer, for Boomers, specifically Boomers on the receiving end of black balloons (and generally men), to enjoy some chuckles and come to grips with their tendency to believe everything is and always will be for them by default. As Dave says as early as page 3, "I think the entire Baby Boom generation is having trouble letting go of the idea that it represents The Nation's Youth and has an inalienable right to be wild and carefree." I guess not enough people read this book because we're another thirty years on and I'm not sure that attitude ever entirely went away. I imagine Dave would still make fun of them for it.

[Gale · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Help me--Dr. Ruth or Dr. Joyce Brothers!"

A rollicking, roller-coaster of a read which definitively proves
that it IS all downhill after the big 4.0! And since the alternative is not worth considering, bring it on! This deliciously-irreverent guide to a guy’s midlife crisis fearlessly treads where bigger fools have sunk in the quagmire of Denial. Shamelessly baring the facts of middle-age-hood (along with his chest) Barry examines signs of aging, safer games, coping with the new era of Disrespectful Kids and their weird music (unlike Ours, of course).
Now don’t expect to find much advice about sex after 40 though… I love the cover photo, but the author’s face of strained angst introduces
every chapter; it would be cute if his expression of pained stoicism
worsened (or improved) with each succeeding chapter. Be assured, however, that the writing style remains consistently and deliciously humorous. Highly recommended for all men approaching 40--and those who refuse to admit that they passed it a decade since.

August 1, 2015

[Cirilio · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was literally the last interesting I could have to go to sleep at night. Dave Barry Turns Forty is a somewhat relatable book about the experiences one might go through as they age, including topics like weight, looks, love and so on. Barry has done a well and intriguing job for this lecture as he adds his notorious humor into the topic. I personally found some of his humor to be cringy at some moments, but other times I still laughed out loud. I glad I found this book in my classroom because not only was it something that could actually keep my eyes glued, but it also has made me take into consideration my future such as what happens to stored fat when you age, and how exercise is a vital aspect. I can also say that I respect his way of trying to communicate with the reader by making them take test; not many authors will attempt to do that, so I figured I might as well try to get at what hes doing for the reader. This is a book I'm very glad to have found and I'm happy to have enjoyed reading it.

[Shannon Cooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Make no mistake -- this is not a book about turning 40. This is a book about Baby Boomers turning 40. The generation aspect is rife throughout the book, drowning out any reflections that might be more timeless. In fact, when Barry does attempt to find something that applies to all generations, it often is more typical of his generation than his age. I read this upon turning 40 myself, and I couldn't help but remark at how little really felt familiar.

One thing to be aware of -- the typical hyperbolic humor holds for 95% of the book, but a section of the penultimate chapter gets unexpectedly real, dealing with his mother's depression and suicide. It was out of place, but an utterly beautiful passage that is worth the price of the book.

Recommended for Boomers who want to remember the glory days of their forties, not for Gen X'ers or Millennials reaching that age.

[Aaron Ambrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boomer humor, rescued from the discard box at the library where I vacationed this week. I've enjoyed Barry's columns in the past, and this seemed like a breezy end-of-summer read, so I fished it out. It was indeed breezy and amusing, although his tactics for generating laughs become clear and predictable when you ingest more than 20 pages in a sitting. It's still funny, but less so when the mechanics are on display. The humor also deflects from true thought and feeling, except for one strikingly serious passage describing his mother's path after the death of her husband. Barry is a smart, entertaining writer, but there's not much depth here, and that's not his intent, anyway.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Dave Barry - I find him absolutely hilarious so pretty much any & all reviews from me are going to read the same unless I manage to find something of his that is actually not funny but that would probably occur in an alternate reality. I would also recommend watching the movie Big Trouble that was adapted from Dave Barry's book of the same name - the cast is all-star [including Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Zooey Deschanel, Stanley Tucci] and is great Dave Barry fun. Of course, if you don't get his humor, then none of this works and you just need to keep looking.

[Deborah Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, YES, I'm officially reading too many books at once. But what you have to understand is, these books are all in *different rooms*. And/or different forms -- one of my "currently reading" books is the audio version, which I only "read" when I'm doing the dishes. Another is only on Kindle. Yet another isn't allowed to leave the bathroom. And I'm actually finishing one or two titles a week. So calm down. Sheesh.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of book I would have found stupid and banal when I was in my 20s, 30s and even 40s. Now that I'm in my 60s, I enjoyed it quite a bit. As someone who is about the same age, and definitely the same generation as Mr. Barry, I can understand and relate to just about everything he's saying. I don't think a younger person would enjoy this book. While there are no guffaws here, there are plenty of chuckles, and it was a very fast read.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so maybe the book is a little dated, being like 20 years old, but it still had me laughing so hard that I had to put the book down so I could breathe again. At one point every new sentence just increased my laughter... and I was reading it while in public, rather hoping I didn't look deranged.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a Dave Barry fan since the first thing I read by him. I've read quite a few of his books since then, as well as his newspaper column before he retired. This book made me laugh a lot because I saw so much truth in what he said about reaching your 40's. I'm over 50 now and need to read his book for that age still. I definitely recommend this book.

[Steven Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Dave Barry turned forty he was at the top of his game... weren't we all.
He was sharp, his jokes were on point, and his ideas were clever. I read this book and loved it. Then I turned forty myself and realized that I not only loved it, I admired it.

[Alan]

One of my favorites. Explains "How to tell if you're becoming a Republican". Has the explanation of why, when you are trying to remember the name of the person you are talking to, all you can remember are the words to Pineapple Princess. Tells you how to be a geezer. Great stuff.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though the book is over 20 years old, not much has changed about turning 40! Lots of out-loud laughing reading this book. Would've given it 4 stars, but felt that 4-star books should be more literary! Hilarious book!

[Denise Chojnacki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another rib tickler by Dave Barry! He has a way of presenting topics that elicit chuckles and laugh out loud moments throughout the book. This particular subject matter had me laughing out loud in places and made me smile throughout. Thanks for the laughs Dave!

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been a while since I read Barry. This entry wasn't as guffawably hilarious as his others that I own, but there were some pretty choice bits. I also loved that he got serious for a section... I was kind of floored by it, actually. Overall, a good time.

[Maurean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Barry never fails to make me giggle - this hilarious take on middle-age was no exception! His chapter on parenting literally brought tears to my eyes, I was laughing so hard

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, quick read - I love Dave Barry's humor. Perhaps I should read this again as I hit the same milestone...

Update: I read this one again in honor of my 40th and it's still as funny as ever!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another laugh-out-loud book by my favorite humorist, Dave Barry.

[Shira Ohayon · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only thing that really got my attention in this book was when he wrote about his mom committing suicide. Not the best thing for a satirical book.

[Kelly Kazek · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can't go wrong by buying a Dave Barry humor collection.

[Tracie Sneed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Use to read his syndicated column for 10 years before he "retired." I love to laugh and he made it happen.

[Dorothy Timm · Rating 4 out of 5]

typical humorous Dave Barry read.