Review: No! I Don't want to Join a Book Club...diary of a 60th year

Author: Virginia Ironside
Format:  audio - 8 1/2 hours; 256 pgs paperback ( I started reading, ended up listening)
Characters: Mary Sharp
Subject: turning 60
Setting: Somewhere in England
Genre: fiction written as diary entries
Source: public library
Challenge: Support Your Local Library

Get over it Mary! As I mentioned earlier this week,if this one hadn't been on audio with an exceptional narrator, I'd have thrown it across the room yelling "you're not old!" I started reading the paperback at the library where I work, after my sister (who is considerably younger than I) had mentioned she had read it, and gave it a mezzo-mezzo review. So I thought, well maybe I'll be more enthused if I listen to it.  NOT.

This is supposedly the diary of a curmudgeonly retired teacher who is turning 60 and who has decided that at 60, life is over.  Now that she's retired, she's determined to put her brain into idle, and do nothing.  Except that makes her miserable.  She has no desire to read, learn a language, take trips, have sex, go to the doctors, etc etc etc.  When her son announces she is to become a grannie, she professes to be delighted.  But....other people have grandchildren too, and they have lives and they don't go around moaning about how no one takes them seriously now that they've gotten "OLD" --for pete's sake, she just turned 60!  She seems quite happy to embrace the trappings of being old (free prescriptions, free public transportation REMEMBER IT"S SET IN GREAT BRITAIN), she's delighted to be a grandmother, and does a pretty admirable job at that,  but she sounds so whiney trying to convince us she's happy.

The book is at it's best when she describes her relationship with Hughie, a dear friend who is dying of lung cancer.  As she goes through the grieving and letting go process with Hughie's partner Jamie, she comes to a gentle acceptance that helps Jamie do the same. It is at its funniest when she describes some of her adventures in dealing with new-fangled baby items that did not exist when she was a young mother. The celebrated Brit humor can leave the reader gasping for breath from laughing.  It's worth a read, but not worth spending hard earned dollars.  Look for it at the library if you're having aging issues.  Otherwise, you're probably better off watching someone like Dame Judy Dench in some of her great Brit Com on netflix.

Monthly Wrap-Up for Challenges

As you can see on the sidebar, I've entered a number of reading challenges this year, and I'm really having fun meeting the requirements.  I'm especially pleased that I've been able to clear out so many ARCs and I'm keeping pace with the ones arriving this year. I'm still not completely caught up, but by April, I hope to be on track, and then I've promised myself I'll never get so far behind again...

Several of my challenges feature criteria that are overlapping, so books can count for more than one challenge. However, I'm finding that when I go to enter all of these in the individual Mr. Linky's set up by the contest people, Mr. Linky doesn't like that overlap. So.........I'm going to do a monthly post and list (and link) them here, and then just use this one post in Mr. Linky to see if that works. If you're a challenge maestro, I'll be emailing you (if I can find your email) to let you know what's happening.

The composite report indicates that for the month of January, I've read  and reviewed 20 books (not counting the four I abandoned).  Of those my top five are

1. Fireworks over Toccoa
2. Then Came the Evening
3. Supreme Courtship
4. True Blue
5. The Postmistress.

Unfortunately, Fireworks and Evening won't be in the stores until next month...But they are worth waiting for.
So here's the progress for the month--the Challenge Title links to that blog's contest, and the Book title links to my review:

Books Won Reading Challenge:
Supreme Courtship
True Blue (Audio)
Simon's Cat

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Reading from My Shelves Challenge:
A Year in the Merde
Kitchen
Founding Brothers
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Thriller and Suspense Reading Challenge
Death Goes on Retreat
A Fountain Filled with Blood
Key Lime Pie Murder
True Blue
The Black Echo
China Lake 
Death of a Valentine
A Fatal Grace
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Typically British Reading Challenge
Starburst
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Audio Book Challenge
Death Goes on Retreat
A Fountain Filled with Blood
Key Lime Pie Murder
True Blue
The Black Echo
China Lake
Starburst
A Fatal Grace
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ARC Reading Challenge
The Book of William
My Name is Will
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
The Lovely Bones
Then Came the Evening
The Postmistress
Death of a Valentine
Fireworks over Toccoa
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TBR Challenge
Supreme Courtship
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Support Your Local Library
China Lake
The Black Echo
Death Goes on Retreat
A Fountain Filled with Blood
Starburst
Key Lime Pie Murder
The Body in the Cast

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So there you have it for January.  I even took time off last nite to watch that gorgeous full moon rise over the river!  Even though meeting those reading challenges is fun, I don't want ever to lose sight of the best the world has to offer...it's right outside the door, and sitting right next to us and it's all the friends we've make over the years.  On to February.

Review : Starburst

 

Author: Robin Pilcher
Format: audio 11 discs - 13 hrs (474 pg equivalent)
Characters: Angelique Pascal, Jamie Stratton, Leonard Hartson, Rene Brownlow, Thomas "TK" Keene, Gavin Macintosh, Albert Dessuin
Subject: various characters working through life problems
Setting: Edinburgh "festival"
Genre: Fiction
Source: Public library

It's been quite a while since I read anything by either Rosamunde or Robin Pilcher. I had forgotten how incredibily character dependent their work is. It wasn't until I was half-way through that things started to "happen". I had almost given up by then.

In this story, set against the backdrop of an annual arts festival held in Edinburgh every August, Pilcher presents us with a beatiful and talented young female violin prodigy and her rather unlikeable teacher/manager; an absolutely down on his luck, but if you're a mother you have to hug him, recovering drug addict car thief who only wants to be a movie maker; an elderly retired filmaker called out of retirement to film a Japanese dance troupe performing at the festival; a young recent university grad trying to get his flat cleaned up, repaired and on the market so he can leave Edinburgh in September for his new job in London; a pyrotechnic genius designing and producing his final show (the "starburst") before he retires; a thoroughly delightful standup comic from a pub in the burbs, whose local patrons take up a collection to book her act into the festival; and a young newly-wed assistant to the festival director who is fending off an obnoxious ex-lover and trying to keep everyone happy.

How these people all come together and resolve all their individual issues begins to build in the 2nd half of the book, and doesn't completely finish until the very end.  It is a somewhat soupy, sachrine story, in that in the end we don't have a lot of surprises, but it is a well written and gentle read.



Challenge: SYLL, Typically British, Audio