The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken

Bracken made her living as a copywriter. She wrote this, her first book, in 1960 when she was 70 years old. I’m reading it for the maturity of her wit, not the recipes.

Examples:

* “Add flour, salt, paprika, and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.”

* “A mutual dislike can be quite as sound a basis for friendship as a mutual devotion.”

* “What most of us are after, when we have a picture taken, is a good natural-looking picture that doesn’t resemble us.”

* “It is important to remember that these are your Declining Years, in which you can jolly well decline to do what you don’t feel like doing.”

* “It isn’t true… that nothing is as bad as you think it’s going to be. Some things are exactly as bad as you thought they were going to be, and some things are worse.”