Before I get to today's entry, I want to do the end of the week count.
For the week:
CHAPTERS - 147
PAGES - 1,862
For the year so far:
CHAPTERS - 2,680
PAGES - 35,129
Today's book, "Marie Sharp may be a little creaky in the bones as she heads toward the big 6-0, but she is fine with it. She'd rather do without all the moving-to-Florida-bicycling-across-Mongolia-for-the-hell-of-it hoopla that her friends insist upon. She has already led an exciting life. She came of age in the 1960s after all. Now with a new grandchild and a new man on the horizon, all she wants to do is accept the happy, sassy, curmudgeon she has become and "start doing old things."
I liked the basic storyline of today's book, but I didn't like the main character at all. I found her to be rude (and not even in a fun Sophia-from-Golden-Girls kind of way), boring, whiny, and excessively negative. It's really hard for me to like a book - even one with a decent plot - when I don't the main character so I never really got into the book. I spent the whole day counting down the pages until I reached the sweet relief of that last page, and then I fought off the urge to yell out "I'M FREE. I'M FREE. I'M FREE." I think I'm going to have to go watch a few episode of Golden Girls to see cranky-old-woman done right. I have no idea why I'm saying "have to" as if someone is holding a gun to my head and making me watch it - but sometimes I just feel like I need to watch something from the 80's and be wrapped in the comfort that only a cheesy 80's theme song can provide.
Favorite sentence of the book: "Dinner parties can be mini-prison sentences, only you don't get out early for good behavior."
Most ironic sentence of the whole book: "As for discussing books, forget it. As far as I'm concerned there are only two phrases to describe books. One is: "Absolutely brilliant! You must read it!" or "Total crap. Don't touch it with a bargepole." (I guess the author should just be happy that not all of us adhere to that system of rating books. If I did, I think you can guess which category I would put this book into.)
I guess I shouldn't complain about the book being bad - I really have no one to blame but myself. I really should have known that any book with the words "book club" in the title was going to be just like every other book like that I've ever read. The market seems to be flooded with books about book clubs and they all seem to follow the standard formula and have boring, one-dimensional characters (most of which I can't even keep straight from one another because they're so unremarkable), they have predictable endings, and they pretty much all blur together. You've read one, you've read them all. Which really begs the question: Why on earth did I read today's book? And the answer is: I don't know. I don't know why I checked it out in the first place (I was most likely caught up in the book buying/borrowing frenzy that seems to cause my common sense to completely shut off - I've begun trying to reserve books through the library website in the hope that it would slow down the frenzy and give me time to reflect, but it seems to have made the problem worse. It's just so easy to click on the reserve button) - and then once I've checked out a book I feel like I have an obligation to read it since the librarians took the time to transfer it from one library to the next for me (they're totally my patsies down at the library.)
P.S. - I have a question for my fellow bloggers, Are you as obsessed with the number of followers you have as I am? I spend all day long feeling like an auctioneer, saying to myself things like I've got 108 followers, 108 . . . 108 . . . 108 . . . Do I hear 109. Come on ladies and gentlemen, who wants to be follower number 109? And then when the next follower shows up I go around saying to. . . well, anyone who comes in contact with me, I'm not going to name names, but someone in this room has 109 followers. (That last exchange becomes especially awkward during the times when I'm the only one in the room.) I think it's possible that I might be just a teensy bit obsessed.
