Kerin's blog

Life As We Knew It

Sixteen year old Miranda wants a date for the prom. She wants to ace her tests, and to figure out why her former best friends Megan and Samantha are acting so strange. What she gets is an asteroid collision with the moon and a disaster on earth. Miranda keeps a journal describing her family's adjustments as food, water, fuel and even sunlight become scarce in her small Pennsylvania town. Miranda's concern with grades and friends evolves day by day into a desire to survive, with her family, for another month, another week, another day. The sense of her world becoming small and claustrophic is clearly imagined, as the whole family moves into the one room  that still has heat, thanks to her brother Matt chopping wood every day. Miranda is a realistic teen, who fights with her mother and brothers, while knowing how much she loves them. She longs to experience normal life before everyone dies. The situation is dire, but Pfeffer keeps hope alive. The companion title is The Dead and the Gone, the story of Alex, who experiences the disaster in New York City.

No I Don't Want To Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year, by Virginia Ironside

book jacket cover No I Don't Want To Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year , by Virginia Ironside

Marie is turning 60 and enjoying it. She has no desire to go bungee jumping or learn Italian. She has a large circle of great friends and is almost never home. She has sworn off men. In the course of this journal, her friend Penny takes up with a man 30 years younger than herself, her old gay friend, Hughie, suffers lung cancer, Gene, her first grandchild, is born, and, in spite of her determination to give up sex, an old crush is on the horizon.

This witty title had me laughing out loud. A fun read, even if you’re younger, or older, than 60.

 

 

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