Frances and Laura's Unread Book Club: The Golden Notebook - non-review

This is the second time I’ve written this non-review because the flippin’, flappin’ computer crashed and lost the original (extremely hilarious) review. I shall try to recreate the magic.]

On the first of September Laura and I announced we were starting a little unread bookclub on our blogs (go and read the link ‘cause I ain’t explaining it again). The first book we chose was Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook which we were supposed to read in September and post reviews on the first of October. Laura, being the functioning human being that she is, did finish the book and write a proper review of it. I started the challenge with such a good intentions, it’s such a long book and I knew it would be a tough going so I worked out that if I read just over 100 pages a week I would easily get it finished. How could it go wrong? I could manage to read 100 pages of some technical journal if I had to! So, I sat down on the first of September and read 80 pages in one go... 80 pages of a really, really, dull and repetitive conversation. I powered through, hoping that the next bit would be better. It wasn’t. I put the book down and just didn’t pick it up again. It stayed buried for three weeks, I kept putting magazines on top hoping that it would just go away. I managed to read another 120 pages, skipping some and barely remembering others. The book just seemed to be a list of men Anna Wulf knew and boring facts about them.

1. So rather than review a book I haven’t read, I offer you my reasons for not picking it up again: Having a book made up of different notebooks is a good concept. But that’s all. It’s too realistic to be enjoyable. It’s like the difference between Adrian Mole and a real teenage diary (apart from mine obvs) i.e. good in theory but dullsville in practice.
2.  IT WAS BORING. I skipped pages and didn’t notice. It’s so repetitive and boring and just goes on and on and on. The sections that I read pretty much consisted of her naming young men she’d known and saying that they pretended to be gay and going on and on until I lost the will to breathe. I hope that somewhere in there something actually happened... but I’m not very confident that it did.

In conclusion: I am not able to finish anything and The Golden Notebook but it was a massive, boring, disappointment because I really wanted to enjoy it.