Things You Should Know by Now: A Mini Life Manual for the Quarterly Aged [Paperback]

Jason Boyett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2003

Let's face it: You don't know half as much as you let on. Sure, you were able to skate through college based on a decent work ethic and the ability to use words like "postmodernity" in appropriate situations. Also, you had good hair. And maybe you're still afloat after a couple years on the job, despite having just recently discovered that a 401(k) is not quite the same as the 4-1-1, yo. But now life is catching up with you. You're realizing that last night's pizza is probably not the healthiest breakfast food. That romantic relationships are hard. And that credit cards can be trouble.

So basically you've got two choices. Option A: You ride this seat-of-your-pants thing as long as possible until you lose your pants altogether. Good luck with that. Wear clean underwear.

Or Option B: Buy this book. It's helpfully titled Things You Should Know by Now: A Mini-Life Manual for the Quarterly Aged. Inside you'll find a collection of tips, suggestions, step-by-step outlines and self-important asides from twentysomething author Jason Boyett, all intended to help you navigate the choppy waters of love, work, money and healthy living. It's entertaining! It's occasionally insightful! And there's a chapter on How to Cook Eggs! Things You Should Know by Now is, in fact, the instruction manual on how to live and actually enjoy life, and that's not just back-of-the-book boasting. OK, it is, but still... you need to read this. Seriously.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jason Boyett is the co-author of Cheap Ways To... and an award-winning creative director for a print and communications company in Texas. He is a musician, artist and writer whose work has appeared in a variety of publications. When not working, he can most likely be found hanging out with his wife and two young children, playing the hammered dulcimer, or fly-fishing in New Mexico.

Product Details

• Paperback: 219 pages
• Publisher: Relevant Books (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971457689
• ISBN-13: 978-0971457683
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,860,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jason Boyett is the author of several books, the most recent of which is the Kindle e-book Pocket Guide to 2012. It joins several other books in his Pocket Guide series of titles (Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse, Pocket Guide to the Afterlife, etc.). Jason is also the author of O Me of Little Faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling (Zondervan). His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Salon, Paste, the Daily Beast, and Relevant. He blogs at jasonboyett.com and tweets at twitter.com/jasonboyett.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Stupid, pointless, and disorganized, August 31, 2005

By 

Cheryl Ferry (Chicago) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Things You Should Know by Now: A Mini Life Manual for the Quarterly Aged (Paperback)

I need to know how to perform a card trick by the time I'm quarter aged? Maybe if I was a magician that might be useful. I thought this book might be a little deeper than that, but all it is is a bunch of little tidbits of useless, and sometimes incorrect, information.

For example, in the section on credit card debt, he advises you to get out of debt by slicing up your credit card and then canceling the account. Cutting the card up is fine, but he neglects to mention that canceling a card can actually HURT your credit score, because your credit rating is based on your debt as a percentage of the total credit available to you. So if you cancel a card, you have less total credit available. Even the most basic books on debt will tell you this, which leads me to beleive this guy did absolutely no research, at least in this area.

And.. a chapter on how to buy groceries? Uh.. if you made it to "quarter-aged", I'm pretty sure you have a basic idea of how to purchase groceries. His tips include making a list, and eating before you go.. wow thanks for the ground-breaking advice.

I also found his "humourous" puns to be quite annoying and so numerous as to be most of the filler in this book. And they're not even funny. There are also way too many personal stories about this guys life. I suppose one of the "Things I Should Know by Now" is that he was afraid of the pie man on Sesame Street. Who cares!

A total waste of time and energy. Most things I already knew, the others I didn't care about. I guess I'm ahead of the game then.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ooh! I can make a smoothie!, August 9, 2004

By 

bostonredneck (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Things You Should Know by Now: A Mini Life Manual for the Quarterly Aged (Paperback)

I'm actually 21, transitioning to another new school, and only beginning to realize that, statistically speaking, I only have 9 more years of life before entering adulthood. This book managed to be informative while catering wit to my short attention span. What's great about the author is his very casual, almost big-brother tone. I found some of the chapters perfectly answered the EXACT questions I usually think about (like an FAQ for 21-year-olds: dating, finances, and smoothie-making) and others to be things I hadn't thought about, but were equally compelling ("the value of stories" and "what marriage isn't"). A lot of my friends are starting off in their own apartments for this upcoming year, and they've thumbed through it and found helpful advice as well. I highly recommend it for people looking for a twenty-anything birthday gift, or a college graduation gift.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where was this when I needed it?, December 3, 2003

By 

Lin sexton (Modesto, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Things You Should Know by Now: A Mini Life Manual for the Quarterly Aged (Paperback)

Ok, my 26 year-old son is reading this book, so I pick it up and flip through it. Two hours later, I'm yelling, "Why didn't I have this book when I was 25?" Guests who came for the holidays fought over it, read chapters aloud and repeated my question. It's an easy, witty read, packed with common sense and good information. More important, the author has his life together, yet he lacks the arrogance of many older humans who think they have life figured out. The book is refreshing, honest, funny, and as a bonus, it's helpful to those of us trying to understand this generation. The author is courageous to include the last chapter, which explains the source of the humilty, freedom, creativity and security he exudes. I appreciated that greatly. It takes guts to openly explain one's spiritual values in a world that says everything's relative. Maybe that's why Boyett sounds like a guy you'd like to sit down and have coffee with at Starbucks... he's honest and open and pretty darn secure!