book reviews / Moon / Night / Sunset

A Quick Review

Timothy Price61 Comments

I finished Three Years Of her Life by C.E Robinson. Below is a quick review:

When Christine started posting snippets from her book Three Years OF her Life on her blog, Before Sundown, I was intrigued yet apprehensive. The last “slice of life” book I read covered 200 years of family life in over 600 pages. It was long and boring and it just didn’t do it for me. Christine had three years of “her” life in 451 pages. What was I in for? Surprisingly, Christine made three years of Elizabeth becoming a nurse, romancing a doctor (or a doctor romancing her), and pursuing her musical interests while discovering family secrets in the early 1960s into an accessible, easy-to-read, entertaining book.

She offers the reader a fascinating journey that includes the mundane, the most beautiful, and the ugliest aspects of the human condition. Elizabeth is a very smart and attractive young woman. Still, she is plagued by manifold emotions from growing up in a broken home and under the care of her abusive grandmother. No matter how hard she works, or how well she does, there’s always doubt about herself and her success. She’s constantly worried that the men who made their way into her life would leave her. She had good reason to worry; her sample was one hundred percent.

Elizabeth persists, and while romance and her musical interests get a little dicey, it’s the end of the book that really grabbed my attention. The reality of the cold war hit home, and the consequences were grave. By the end of the book, I wanted the story to continue to see what happened with her family life, nursing career, and musical interests. Christine said there is a second underway.

The night sky looking north and south. A half-moon is in the clouds in the southern sky.

The night sky looking east and west.

61 thoughts on “A Quick Review”

  2. Tim, WOW, that’s so much more than a quick review. You have a complete understanding of the book’s message, and wrote about it eloquently. Thank you so much. It’s wonderful that you took on the long historical book and had a good experience reading it. The next book won’t be so much old family history, but heavy on the 1960s music scene, hippies, Woodstock & the Vietnam War. Awesome book photo! And so glad I’m in the company of half moon photos. Significant in my moon phase. 📚🎶Christine

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    • Thanks, Christine. I’m happy Brian got the emotional sunset for Elizabeth. You really did a fantastic job of making the ordinary worthy of the extraordinary, and keeping your readers engaged and always ready to get back into the story after having to put the book down to engage in our ordinary lives. I had a feeling the half moon needed to be included in the post. Marble got in the way of your name on the book in that photo, but I really like the flame in that photo, so I used it instead on one that showed your name on the book. I figured the post made it obvious you are the author.

      I was young in the 60s, but since I have an older bother and my mom liked rock and roll, I grew up emersed in the music of the 60s. In the early 70s I got plenty of interactions with hippies and hippie colonies.

      My boss lived in New York and went to Woodstock. After the Volkswagen bus he and his wife were driving to California broke down in Albuquerque around 1973, and they stayed. He enrolled in architecture school and then started the firm in 1976. I joined the firm in 1985.

      I’m looking forward to book 2.

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      • Tim, everything about the blog post was perfect. The fame in the photo could symbolize old history. Not that we had to read with a flickering flame though. And Marble can block my name any day. So glad the story kept your interest. I have a big job ahead to make book 2 even better. Might just have the right decade to do it. I was in my 20s in the 1960s, lived the hippie times, wore miniskirts, and I will go to Woodstock in the book (with the band members & a surprise guest character). Now, I’m even more excited to continue writing. Your review was energizing and encouraging. And that emotional sunset set the stage too. Thank you again. 📚🎶 Christine

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    • Have a smashing time in Edinburgh. I hope you can stay out of trouble in the process? Thanks, Shey.

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      • We were there tae see a band called Deacon Blue. 40 years ago, we shared stage space and with their lead singer, leading a revolt of the group of travelling players of which we were all part, including his then wife, by cutting 9 verses and 9 choruses off this makey up by the person organising this fiasco’s,version of Greensleeves and 18 fancy ancy Elizabeth dance step shit to these verses and choruses, at 1 45 am in the morning, in order to bring the fancy ancy Shakespearean supper evening to an end before any more guests and ourselves lay on the floor with exhaustion. Fast forward 40 years and there he was on Sat nite playing in front of 8 thou people at Edinburgh Castle …..

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        • I had heard of the Deacon Blue. You were such a rebel. Good for you. That’s a pretty good-sized crowd. How was the show?

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      • Still a rebel alas. The show was good. We prefer smaller open air music events. We generally head to the Mardi Gras open air at the Grassmarket in Edinburgh–four stages one area , four bands with 40 minute slots on each stage, take your pick, wander at will, but giving it a miss this year cos it is this weekend coming and there’s other things coming up locally, just small open air beer fest type things on our patch, five mins on foot and right now we are pretty busy. We’ve just found that some of the places here, like football stadiums don’t really lend themselves very well to the big music scene and it’s more what big biz can screw out of folks than anything. But this was good. We saw them at Xmas here. He is one of the few who will come to the Caird Hall. It is a lousy venu and not that big so until Slessor Gardens opened here which is open air, the biggies just gave us a miss. Anyway they were really good and we do try to support them cos like that way back we were pals and did a lot of stuff together and we had in common interests. He moved with his then wife, Zara, to Glasgow for work, and unlike now, it was harder to keep in touch. Got to say re the crowd that’s up on the Castle esplanade and the management of getting 8 thou in there and oot again on these narrow streets was impressive. The support band were good too. Sounded very like Runrig did

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      • Oh folks often think cos we live quietly … we are quiet folks!! Having a giggle about how this madam in charge of a theatre group, tried calling the Mr’s bluff on what was to be their production of his play, that way . . . . Not cos I am a horrible person, just cos it probably was quite funny actually. Even that night re the Greensleeves song rebellion, I was not being horrible. The woman running the show had never timed it, plus dinner, plus a few speeches. That’s a basic. Especially the way she kept chucking more and more and more in.

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        • Quiet rebels are the best. Loud rebels are often a lot of squawk and no action. We quite types take action and make things happen.

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  9. Dang it! You are ruining my good intentions of no more book buying! Your review is stellar and has convinced me that I needs must read this one. And if that gorgeous sky is representative of the main character, all the more so!
    Thank you, Tim.

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    • Very rebresentative of Elizabeth. The book is well worth you breaking your no book policy over. It will be like breaking a diet with a scrumptious piece of gourmet chocolate. Thanks, Dale.

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      • Oh dear. Not it appears I must remove it from my wish list and send it directly to my Kindle (much as I love physical books, I refuse to add more to my bulging shelves!)

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        • I’ve started buying books in the round again because I don’t like reading on the Kindle, especially if I need to reference things, I find the Kindle is tedious going back and forth. Laurie is reading books on her iPad. Apple books are like physical books, the pages turn like books, and she can dictate notes and mark passages easily. We don’t keep many books these days. We keep books we reread every now and then, but we donate most of our books to the library, book shops or the little lending libraries that pop up here and there.

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          • I have promised myself to start reading those collecting dust in my bookshelf – and then donating them once I’m done. I do prefer to hold a book but when it’s time to read in bed, the Kindle is best because I don’t need any other light but the kindle itself. I highlight passages and they get forwarded to my computer, which is kinda cool – especially since I would NEVER hightlight a real book!

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            • My Kindle is not paper white, so I need a light to see it. My Kindle is an oldie moldy model.

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  17. Sounds like a good book Tim. Nice review.
    I plan on reading it. It’s 4 or 5 down the pile.
    Just finished “Mayday”. Then I’m onto to “River Ghosts”.

    Reply

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