How to Be a Husband

While this book is indeed titled <i>How to Be a Husband </i>please do not mistake it for a self-help book. Tim Dowling--columnist for <i>The Guardian </i>husband father of three a person who once got into a shark tank for money--does not purport to have any pearls of wisdom about wedded life. What he does have is more than twenty years of marriage experience and plenty of hilarious advice for what <i>not </i>to do in almost every conjugal situation. <p/> With the sharp wit that has made his <i>Guardian </i>columns a weekly must-read Dowling explores what it means to be a good husband in the twenty-first century. The bar has been raised dramatically in the last hundred years: back in the day every time you went out for cigarettes it was simply expected that you came back. Now every time you're sent out for espresso pods and tampons it is expected that you come back with the right sort. And being a father doesn't seem to command much innate respect these days either. When his first child was born Dowling imagined himself eliciting a natural awe as the distant authoritative figurehead; he did not anticipate his children hijacking his Twitter account to post heartfelt admissions of loserdom like Hi I suck at everything I try in life. <p/> Still two decades of wedded bliss is nothing to sneeze at particularly from a couple who agreed to get married with the resigned determination of two people plotting to bury a body in the woods. <i>How to Be a Husband </i>is a wickedly funny guide to surviving the era of The End of Men (hint: it involves DIY) and an unexpectedly poignant memoir about love marriage and staying together until death doth you part.