All I Need to Know I Learned from the Golden Girls: or How the Golden Girls Raised Us On Love, Friendship, and Cheesecake

by T. Ann Pryor

5th Anniversary Edition of the soon to be bestseller, you never knew you always wanted!If you’re looking for the ultimate Golden Girls trivia book then this is not the book for you and you should probably look somewhere else. Same if you’re looking for a summary of each episode, interviews with the cast, gossip from backstage, or anything factual or related to any sort of biographical or informative type of work. But, if you’re looking for a fun and silly memoir that lovingly chronicles how the wit, wisdom, and storylines of the Golden Girls television show can touch our lives THEN this IS the book you've been looking for. AND - for those who complained about editing issues, we heard you and went through the text with a fine comb, not once, but twice!We've been told that everything we need to know about life can be found in the lessons of kindergarten, Little Golden Books, or from the Twilight Zone. In truth, the real lessons of life can be found by hanging out with Blanche, Dorothy, Rose, & Sophia - The Golden Girls. For over thirty years the wit and wisdom of those four sassy broads has withstood the test of time and brought to us not only a blueprint for living well, but also the knowledge we need to do good (in bed if Blanche has anything to do it) and be good (also in bed) as well as vivacious, strong, and fierce (those are both in bed and out of bed). This collection of anecdotes is replete with musings on life, death, and love.Through the lens of one of the best shows ever to be on television we go on a journey with the author that is both personal and amusing. The author engages us by relating the virtues and moral ideas gleaned from the show to incidents and characters from her own life. Personal narratives that the required endurance needed to be married to an Englishman, how to date ex-convicts when you don't know you are, and even life in a family that includes murderers and drug dealers. All of this along with a back drop that includes tales from Miami in the 80s. So, grab your shoulder pads, a box of condoms, a St. Olaf yearbook, and a bucket of marinara and relax with the one book guaranteed to change your life - even if the only change is having lost a few hours of it to the nonsense in these pages. Or, as the girls would teach us - grab life by the ziti, love each other to the fullest, and never give up on ourselves or our sex lives.

Genres: Tv

214 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2019

Reviews

[Whitney Seitzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was cute. I enjoyed how the author related her own stories to episodes of the show. BUT…she had some of her facts about the show wrong. For example, the episode where Dorothy takes Sophia away for the weekend and Sophia just wants to go to Disneyworld to ride Space Mountain. The author says in the book that she wants to go on Splash Mountain. She also gets the actors who played Dorothy’s lover Glen mixed up, saying that Jerry Orbach played him first. Jerry Orbach played the second iteration of Glen, after he’s already left his wife but still lying about his affair with Dorothy. Maybe it’s just me being a bit anal about the facts of the show, but if you’re going to write about a show, try to make sure you are correct about what you are saying

[Jacqui · Rating 3 out of 5]

All I Need to Know I Learned from the Golden Girls is the author’s love letter to the show, if you will, of her life experiences and what she took from them based on how the Golden Girls had dealt with it. She incorporates the scenes with her events and examines life from their view. Each Golden Girl is studied and their positive and negative escapades compared to how we can all deal with life.

I went into this book with a very open mind as I was a big fan of the Golden Girls way back when and I wondered about the “all I need to know” part, considering some of Blanche’s exploits. What makes me laugh now when I look back at the show is just how times have changed in the way people look. Everyone besides Sofia was meant to be in their fifties and yet if you look at a lot of fifty-year-olds now, there is a huge difference!

The book is very short, which makes it a quick read. I liked the quotes that started the chapters off and many of the stories brought the characters’ voices back to me so I could hear it like a movie.

The story is written from a very chatty perspective and is not a tale from outside looking in at the author, but more like a sharing from the inside out. She holds nothing back when she wants to admit something and even if it’s a little more out there, it’s not sugar-coated. It could have used a good edit though as there are punctuation errors like missing quotation marks, lines are repeated, and the flow of the info sometimes doesn’t work. By this I mean she will be in the middle of a story and the next thing she goes back to something she was speaking about ages ago. It becomes rather confusing.

As a quick read I enjoyed its humour but I didn’t feel it was quite what its title said. The author did not really say they were prepared for a situation because of a lesson learnt from the show. It was more of a “Oh and something similar happened when...” A fun book, but not one I would read again.

Thanks to Reedsy Discovery and the author for the opportunity to review the book.

The author has since assured me that the incorrect version was uploaded and that all editing and formatting issues were sorted out.

[🌶 peppersocks 🧦 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reflections and lessons learned:
Life lessons offered via author anecdotes and wonderfully familiar Golden Girls storylines. And they said that 4 women battling life together in Sex and the City was groundbreaking... I wonder if it was watching the Golden Girls all those years ago (along with Roseanne and WLIIA) that gave me an insight into my older years surrounded by sarcastic females

[Brenda Shirley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure what I was expecting going into this short read, but it was missing something for me to really enjoy it.

I have very similar thoughts as the author, so I’m thinking maybe I didn’t find it entertaining because it wasn’t anything riveting or interesting to read. I did smile and do a lot of “yep” in agreement but again, nothing thought provoking or challenging.

[Michelle Haller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun and quick read,but....

I really enjoyed reliving the episodes and how ahead of their time these characters were. However, the number of typos...how in the world did they slip through editing? So many it was distracting.

[ambergen87]

DNF at 12%