Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

By: Ada Calhoun

Narrated by: Ada Calhoun

Inspired by her wildly popular New York Times essay "The Wedding Toast I'll Never Give", Ada Calhoun provides a funny (but not flip), smart (but not smug) take on the institution of marriage. Weaving intimate moments from her own married life with frank insight from experts, clergy, and friends, she upends expectations of total marital bliss to present a realistic - but ultimately optimistic - portrait of what marriage is really like. There will be fights, there will be existential angst, there may even be affairs; sometimes you'll look at the person you love and feel nothing but rage. Despite it all, Calhoun contends, staying married is easy: Just don't get divorced.

Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give offers bracing straight talk to the newly married and honors those who have weathered the storm. This exploration of modern marriage is at once wise and entertaining, a work of unexpected candor and literary grace.

©2017 Ada Calhoun (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

anecdotal observational humorous real marriage

Quick, entertaining, insightful "read". Well and dryly narrated. No holds barred in a approachable way.

Highly recommend!

I just loved this. It reminds me of something Olivia Harrison said in a documentary about George Harrison and their life together. "People ask me, what's the secret to staying married? ... Not getting divorced!" There is something beautiful about honoring your vows, and that's been lost in this day and age when some people will get divorced over a ham sandwich. Ada Calhoun does a lovely job of looking back at the up's and down's of a life spent together.

fun, sometimes profound, lackluster performance

Full of surprising insights. Very honest. Sometimes hilarious. Read with a disappointing singsong rhythm, like she was bored with the whole thing.

Great pre marriage read!

Listened to this book on our vacation drive with my fiancé and really helped put a lot of articulate words to things we were both consciously and unconsciously thinking/feeling. Really brought us closer together.

Very Necessary

I have an aversion to doing what everyone else is doing. That’s why I’ve never seen Star Wars, The Terminator, or the Die Hard series of movies. It’s why I don’t have purple circle shaped bruises all over my back, or all the hair lasered off my body. And I couldn’t name for you a single song off the Hamilton soundtrack. It’s also why I am only now reading this book. I regret none of those decisions save one. I should have read this very necessary book much sooner. I believe it has saved me from divorce from so much more than my seemingly failing marriage, and brought me back to myself. Thank you for your brutally polite and beautiful honesty, Ada Calhoun. No exclamation point, because I truly mean it. xo