Customer Reviews

Don't Count the Candles: Just Keep the Fire Lit!

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reading "Don't Count the Candles. . ." is like having Joan Rivers talking directly to the reader--as an old (but fighting it every step of the way) friend. Her honest, shoot from the hip (liposuctioned, of course) game plan and advice is well-written and is done so with Joan's typical humor and wit. I'm buying a copy for all my friends and even my ex-mother-in-law! Go Joan! Keep up the great fight!

Joan Rivers has her fans. And she has her detractors as well. Yet not even her detractors can deny that she is an honest, gutsy lady who doesn't miss a trick, who took every lemon that life tossed at her and squeezed it until it became a delicious lemonade.

As with her earlier books, DON'T COUNT THE CANDLES is written in her typical breezy style, with plenty of laughs thrown in for no extra charge. That's what this book is, too: a charge. Rare will be the reader who fails to be both enlightened and refreshed by Joan's entertaining outlook on life. For her fans, this one's a must.

enjoyed reading this book. felt like joan rivers was talking directly to me. my only regret: wish there had been more examples for guys. (it is written, it seems, mostly for women--though it is applicable to either sex.)

I really wanted to like this book but I found it to be uninspiring. I like Joan Rivers but feel this was just a book to write about what most older people already know such as 'older women shouldn't wear short skirts', etc. and her put down of retirement communities was inappropriate. There's more fun going on in some of those 'young retiree' communities than you could imagine!

Joan makes many of the same points she did in her last book, "Bouncing Back", but this one is not nearly as well done. In "Bouncing Back", Joan urged her readers to keep an optimistic attitude when disaster strikes. For instance, she said that it's okay for a woman to "wear a red dress to her husband's funeral as a sign of love". I could not agree more with that sentiment because grief is a highly personal process. What helps one person get thru a crisis may hurt another.

The book does make lots of valid points, such as the put-down of retirement communities. (How I wish my Dad had read this before he retired - he left the police force in 1993 because he was stressed - or so he thought. His health and life in general have declined since then.)

Unfortunately, Joan seems to have changed her mind to a certain extent in this book. Instead of advising older women to live life on their own terms, as she did with grieving people in Bouncing Back, she tells them that they can't wear a lot of styles of clothing any longer, because at their age, it will make them look silly. I say the hell with that attitude, an older person is entitled to be silly if he or she wants to. (BTW, I'll be 40 in Sept. I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm not going to give up things that I like either just because I've reached a certain age.)

We really enjoyed the Audio book, It was like listening to a old stand-up routine on the Carson show. Should have mentioned Full Time RV as a great way to spend retirement. Thank you Joan for a great book to listen to while driving down the road.

Joan Rivers is a funny lady! If you are concerned about "aging", she makes you feel better about it! It's not the kind of book that you "cannot put down", but she comes right out and says the things that you know are happening when you reach a certain age and the way that she tells it, you have to smile and say "it's happening to her too!" I really think that you have to LIKE Joan Rivers--the book is her style. I wish I had her money to do some of the things that I cannot, but I enjoyed it. Made me laugh about age! I'm glad that I read it.