Here's the blurb:

Adrian Mole is a worrier. The problems of existence hit him hard. Spots, bits of him that won't seem to keep still, the cracks in his parents' marriage, all prey heavily on his mind. There are some consolations. A fourteen-year-old femenist, an eighty-nine-year-old chain smoker and his spoilt best friend all help to lift the gloomy introspection of Mole's moods.
Mole believes he is an intellectual. He is certainly a poet. He buys strikingly coloured stationary on which to write his poems and send them to the BBC. He is dogged by ill health as well as by an infuriatingly ever-present pet dog, and by a catalogue of misfortunes familiar to anyone over the age of thirteen.
The acclaim which this book has already won from readers of all ages has assured it a lasting place in the literature of family life.'

I had my first brush with Sue Townsend on holiday in Corfu, aged seven.

My younger sister Ali and I were on our first 'hotel' holiday with our parents at the fairly isolated (and inexplicably bright pink) Yalaskari Palace Hotel, and were already proving ourselves to be camp-site girls through and through.

To get me out of my dad's hair, my mum took me to the sparsely stocked hotel shop to pick out another reading book...the copy of 'First Term At Malory Towers' that she'd bought to keep me occupied on the flight had long since been devoured, and I was champing at the bit for something else to read.
The choice was simple, 'Golden Bats And Pink Pigeons', by the wonderful Gerald Durrell, patron of the world's flora and fauna, and particularly beloved by the people of Greece, or 'The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4', by a woman I'd never heard of named Sue Townsend.

My mum's feeble attempt to discourage me from the latter consisted of shaky arguments about it being specifically aimed at people aged 13 3/4, and very boring and grown-up. But I *liked* the idea of reading someone else's diary, and had already sneaked a furtive glance through the pages while her back was turned and had seen it contained references to 'things', among other things...and what was a 'thing'? There had been practically no references at all to 'things' in Mallory Towers. What the hell was Darrell Rivers doing with her time??


A brilliantly funny book in an appealingly readable diary format (for the irredeemably nosy among us!), and a great snap-shot of 80's Britain under Maggie Thatcher to boot.

Update 16/6/03

This is now headed off to Canada to jenny-lou-who, who's been kind enough to pass the Jennifer Government Bookring my way. Happy reading!

Released on Monday, June 16, 2003 at http://jenny-lou-who.bookcrossing.com in Kingston, Ontario Canada.

Headed out in today's post!

Just got this in the post - how kind of lucycat to send it my way. Can't wait to read it!

l will leave this book in the Wee Free Library while on my lunchtime walk today.