Sunday Book Review: No! I Don’t Want to Join a Book Club

...Diary of a 60th Year
By Virginia Ironside


I think I might be the only one in book club who picks books I have not read yet. I always worry a little that I’m going to end up with a really crappy book and everyone will have to suffer through reading it (though the really cool thing about this book club is that they are the kind of women who—if they don’t like the book—won’t read it and will come to discussion night anyway just to hang out and chat). I’ll admit that I picked this one mainly because I liked the title… and after I put it on the list I went back and looked at reviews and decided I was probably safe.

Diary of a 60th Year turned out to be a quick read, and entertaining, as well. I’ve probably related about a half-dozen stories from the book to hubby in recent days because it feels like every time I turn around I see/hear/do something that reminds me of Marie Sharp, the diarist of the book. Though I’m twenty-three years away from sixty, and Marie is far wiser about elements of lifestyles of which I will likely never know anything, she had a lot of attitude and thought that I could relate to.

At one point, she is describing a visit to a church that she remembered visiting with her mother as a child.

Who is the real person, I wonder—the ten-year-old being dragged or the sixty-year-old going round full of admiration and appreciation? How many other characters can I expect to be before I die?

This is the kind of thing that is always running through my head.

What I especially like about the book is the celebration of age. Marie isn’t sad about being sixty. She doesn’t mourn her youth or try to pretend she is anything other than sixty. She has some amusing worries and questions and some interesting perspective. I like her outlook.

Here is a poem she wishes a friend had written for her birthday (the actual poem was about her still being “youthful” and it annoyed her).

At last you’re free of youth’s cruel chains
With time to sit and count your gains—
Experience, peace and lack of fear
Are gifts of this, your sixtieth year.
So celebrate the past unroll’d
And cheer the fact that now you’re OLD!