The Midlife Manual [Kindle Edition]

The front cover has a checklist with negative comments such as "Feeling old?" "Worried that life hasn't panned out for you quite the way you thought it would?" so you would hardly expect it to have a positive approach to middle age. Be prepared for some verbal abuse and also to laugh.

Whatever your lifestyle or situation you can bet that the authors will be able to sum up some part of your life and make fun of it. The unnerving part is that you may not have considered this aspect at all before reading it.

If you had a group of friends round and you read a piece out at random some friends would laugh and at least one would scowl.

So what's in the manual? It is full of observations mixed with some advice and lots of scenarios. For example, if you're hankering after doing something different in your spare time the holiday selection will be interesting reading. It gives amusing reasons why a rented villa, camping holiday, Centre Parcs, a cheap European hotel and the trip of someone else's lifetime will probably not work.

That's the thing with this book, it's big on pithy observations and short on positive practical advice - but that's the whole point. After a while you get an urge to stick your fingers up at the authors and go off and do something positive. It's reverse psychology for grown ups.

I purchased this book based on the Amazon reviews, and I have to say I disagree with them 100%. I would have given this book minus stars but this facility isn't available as yet.

This book is utterly depressing from the front cover to the back and everything else in between and I found nothing worthy of laughing at or with. Crying most definitely - but not laughing. It reads like a book that is deliberately and depressingly reminding the reader of the things they used to do and can't do again due to them becoming a certain age, or things they didn't do at the time and shouldn't even contemplate doing now due to them becoming a certain age so that they aren't taunted by family, friends and peers and made to look ridiculous and embarrassed, for example learning a musical instrument. There are reasons why people haven't done certain things in their life at certain stages due to personal situations, such as mental health problems, moving around alot, personal problems &c.. Instead it reads like a 'cut-off-point'. It is very ageist.

It mentions divorce and being divorced alot, a situation I cannot relate to as I have never been married (and I don't have children either but I do have two cats). Maybe this is one if not 'the' reason why I didn't understand this book. It just feels like the reader should be on the top of a roller coaster and start reading this as soon as the car descends to its death, because that is how it reads - as though this is literally 'the' last book of and on regret a person will and should read before the tall skeletal gentleman with the long black cloak with scythe turns up and requests your eternal company.

The writers are a married couple who live in South London with their two children. And the book reads as though it is full of the writers regrets that these two people did get married and have children and they are bringing all readers into their own personal living hell and telling them "This is what we are like. This is what you are like. And this is what you will be like".

This book should have been retitled from THE MIDLIFE MANUAL to AT DEATH'S DOOR because that is how it reads, that once you become a certain age you have to give up on the first half of your life and just sit and wait for death. This isn't LOGAN'S RUN. This book is discouraging of life over a certain age when it should be encouraging - basically telling the reader that "hey if you want to do this, that and the other then do it and here's how". In fact it's the reverse.

For the record I have just had my 41st birthday, have never married and had children (in or out of wedlock), have two cats, an Xbox, a PSP, a mountain bike, and I've just bought myself a birthday present of a guitar which I haven't played for over 20 years for various reasons.

I wouldn't suggest a person with serious depression reads this, unless they want to end it all by the end of the book. I personally wouldn't wipe my backside with the pages of this book and would really like to burn it, but instead I'm going to list it and resell it. It isn't even going to touch my bookshelf as it isn't worthy of that.

Don't buy - don't read. I'm sure there are better books on this subject that aren't written by two depressing regretful writers who want to bring their peers down to their level.

Probably should bring this up more with the relevant paper but I saw extracts printed in their magazine which were funny and rang many bells.
The content held some funny and very relevant pieces but what hadn't come across in the article was the quality (or lack of) of the pictures.Blurred and indistinct and nothing like the pictures in the magazine.Poor quality finish and looked cheap.
Was embarassing as I had requested a copy to go straight to a friend to cheer her up.I won't do that again without seeing a copy 1st.

Apart from that, on actual content, a good book to dip in and out of and have a giggle of recognition!- "been there, nearly done that"