A Guide to Midwestern Conversation, Taylor Kay Phillips
A Guide to Midwestern Conversation, Taylor Kay Phillips
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A Guide to Midwestern Conversation

Author: Taylor Kay Phillips

Narrator: Taylor Kay Phillips

Unabridged: 2 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/11/2023


Synopsis

Learn (and love) the language of the landlocked in this bitingly funny guide to the common phrases and sentiments of the American Heartland, from the author of the McSweeney’s series “A Guide to Midwestern Conversation.”

If you end an evening by slapping your thighs and saying, “Welp, I’ll go ahead and get outta your hair,” then you don’t need this guide, but you sure as heck might like it. Full of common Midwestern phrases (and what they really mean behind the friendly facade), A Guide to Midwestern Conversation is an affectionate, self-deprecating look at the language of a people long defined by their kindness and reduced to their voting patterns. Written by born-and-bred Midwesterner Taylor Kay Phillips, it’s a wink, a hug, and a firm handshake (with eye contact) to the millions of Americans who say soda and pop interchangeably and grew up doing tornado drills in school.

Discover Midwestern conversational staples like:

How to announce that you hate something beyond comprehension (“I didn’t really care for it”) What counts as “a short drive” (less than eight hours) Sports talk (starts early, doesn’t end till we’re six feet under)Describing the ultimate dream home (“It’s got a finished basement”)An ode to the Garage Fridge
Including an array of guides, tips, and profiles of all the states included, A Guide to Midwestern Conversation is guaranteed to make Midwesterners (and their friends) laugh out loud, nod their heads, and ask if “anyone needs anything real quick while I’m up.”

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lillian

this incredibly delightful book is for you if you’re from the midwest, if you love someone from the midwest, if you’re at all curious about the midwest, or if you just love good jokes! it was written with such love and care, and the result is this incomparable sense that you’re already best friends......more

Goodreads review by Rod

This is probably best read a page or two at a time in the bathroom over a month or so instead of in large chunks over three days as it is a bit repetitive. It's mildly amusing, but a lot of the humor depends on the speaker being insincere or passive aggressive and that doesn't appeal to me much. At t......more

Goodreads review by Terzah

My cousin Becky has a joke about how long Midwestern goodbyes take. This book expands on that joke. Anyone who grew up in the giant chunk of the country spanning Kansas to Ohio will see themselves and their families and friends here, and it would make a great gift for any Midwesterner (or someone wh......more


Quotes

“Taylor is as funny as she is Midwestern. And she is thunderously Midwestern. You will enjoy this book!”—John Oliver, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

“ . . . a wildly entertaining, precisely critical, and lovingly mocking taxonomy of the people of ‘flyover country.’”—Vulture

“It’s perfect. It’s wonderful. If you are from the Midwest, or know someone who is, go check this out, peruse it a little bit, buy it as a gift. . . . Phillips does such an excellent job of parsing, with familiar and understandable exactitude, the very fine distinctions in what seem to be interchangeable expressions. . . . It was both revelatory and delightful and somewhat reaffirming. Really fun pop anthropology that’s smarter than it seems, and more fun than it has any right to be.”—BookRiot