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Summary
Summary
From New Yorker and Onion writer and comedian Blythe Roberson, How to Date Men When You Hate Men is a comedy philosophy book aimed at interrogating what it means to date men within the trappings of modern society.
Blythe Roberson's sharp observational humor is met by her open-hearted willingness to revel in the ugliest warts and shimmering highs of choosing to live our lives amongst other humans. She collects her crushes like ill cared-for pets, skewers her own suspect decisions, and assures readers that any date you can mess up, she can top tenfold. And really, was that date even a date in the first place?
With sections like Real Interviews With Men About Whether Or Not It Was A Date; Good Flirts That Work; Bad Flirts That Do Not Work; and Definitive Proof That Tom Hanks Is The Villain Of You've Got Mail, How to Date Men When You Hate Men is a one stop shop for dating advice when you love men but don't like them.
"With biting wit, Roberson explores the dynamics of heterosexual dating in the age of #MeToo"
-- The New York Times
Author Notes
Blythe Roberson is a writer and comedian whose work has been published by the New Yorker, The Onion, ClickHole, VICE Magazine, and others, and has been mentioned by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and New York Mag. She works as a researcher at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Blythe is the author of How to Date Men When You Hate Men.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Roberson, a researcher at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, looks through a millennial lens at modern love in this laugh-out-loud commentary on dating and her lack of success at it. Peppering her narrative with references to sociological studies and quotes from literature (on unrequited love, for instance, she looks to Walt Whitman: "I loved a person ardently, and my love was not/returned"), Roberson emphasizes her main point that dating is equally painstaking endeavor and joyful venture. She lays it all out on the table-including a list of men who she believed to be flirting with her, but later found out, in one example with a guy who liked all her tweets, that he was "just on my phone a lot" checking Twitter. Mixed in with the amusing anecdotes are thoughtful observations on the classic pitfalls of dating-like the fallacy of the "you deserve better than me" breakup line or the misogynistic connotations behind being told that love will come "when you least expect it." This is a perfect book for women of all ages who have found that, despite their best efforts, dating men rarely works out in their favor. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A frank battle cry from a 20-something woman in the modern-dating trenches of New York City.Roberson, a freelance humorist and researcher at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, wields generous self-criticism to chronicle the current state of affairs among heteronormative singles on the hunt for love and/or just enough interaction with the opposite sex to keep the conversation about male idiocy going. Despite the catchy title, this book is neither a polemic against men nor a navigational how-to tome filled with advice. There is no narrative arc (chapters include, among others, "Crushes," "Flirting," and "Breaking Up"), catalyst for personal or romantic evolution, or tests of any real consequence for the author. Readers in search of deeply personal revelations should look elsewhere, but those seeking relatable accounts of just how unromantic the pursuits of romance actually are will be richly rewarded. Roberson's great strengths are her blistering comedic sense and her cringeworthy, unexaggerated insights into her dealings with men. By "men," clarifies the author, "I am talking in most cases about straight, cis, able-bodied white menwho have all the privilege in the world"traits Roberson admits could be used to describe her. The author is as forthright about her sexual desires and lack of understanding of "ANY text ANY man" sends her as she is about her lack of experience with intimacy. Throughout the book, Roberson provides plenty of reasons for readers to laugh out loud. In a list of ways to kill time while waiting to answer a text, for example, she includes "Be in Peru and Have No Wi-Fi" and "Think About a Riddle." She also satirizes The Rules, the notorious bestseller with archaic advice about how to catch a husband, and seamlessly weaves in pop-cultural references to countless sources. The so-called conclusion is a misstep; this book isn't a story so it doesn't have a beginning or end. Roberson doesn't have a vendetta against men, only an understandable wish that they would be clear about their intentions and then take action.Smart but meandering, inconsequential entertainment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The title of Roberson's first book sounds like a dating manual; it is so much better than that. Instead of useful advice, she offers a survival manual for cis straight women living in a patriarchal society that undervalues their work but who still want to smooch hot guys. She starts with a deep analysis of levels of good and bad crushing, then explores the emotional labor of flirting, applies literary theory to texts from dudes, contemplates the horrors of (theoretical) cohabitation, and ends with a quasi manifesto for making art out of one's love troubles. Roberson is a self-described "horned-up perv," but she's also well versed in feminist literature and is lethal with a non sequitur. She upends conventional tropes of romantic comedies in a thoughtful, nonshaming way (spoiler: Tom Hanks is the villain). She helps the reader digest ideas about soul-crushing systematic oppression with her absurdist humor. She makes a roughly equal number of references to Roland Barthes and Timothée Chalamet. There are no pithy conclusions here, but Roberson's fresh approach to romantic love will nonetheless satisfy readers of Phoebe Robinson and other feminist comedy writers.--Susan Maguire Copyright 2018 Booklist