One out of three ain't bad... Actually, it is.

I'm not very picky about books. I mean, I am, of course I am, but that's because my budget is really tight and I can't afford to buy every bit of printed fluff that catches my fancy. (Okay, I don't have the time to read them either, but that's a detail. And free.) So I don't often make mistakes in what I choose to buy and read.

This book was one of those mistakes. I love the Grumpy Old Men shows, and the books are a hoot (thank you, husband, for being so into them). But the Grumpy Old Women... aren't. And I don't just mean they're not funny.

They're not old. The GOW slot, apparently, is between 35 and mid-fifties. This is where I say doubleyou-tee-eff? 35 is not old, no matter how you slice it. It may be MILF territory, it might be too mature for comfort, it can be over the hill if you're cruel, but old? What is this, the Dark Ages?

They're not grumpy, either. They're twitchy, fluttery, unreasonable, phobic, flailing about in a world they painfully don't belong to, instead of delivering the bitch lines I expected with aplomb to match. The quotes peppering the book (by scintillating - and genuinely funny - feminine minds like Maureen Lipman and Kathy Lette) are the only salvageable bits. The original text, by Judith Holder, is simply pathetic.

Women they are, at least, but that's hardly enough, is it?

It's one of the very few books I have actually thrown away in exasperation after reading them. I wasn't on BookMooch at the time, but even then, I don't think I would inflict it on someone else. Steer clear.