How long does it take to read Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant??
Roz Chast
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast takes about 4 hours 11 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 11 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2014. 228 pages, about 62,700 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 58 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 11 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 37 minutes |
The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the 'crazy closet' -- with predictable results -- the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chastian in their idiosyncrasies -- an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades -- the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. A portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, this book shows the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller. - Publisher.
Subjects: Adult children of aging parents, Aging, Adult Children, Psychology, Graphic novels, American Authors
