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Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement
Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement
Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement
Ebook284 pages3 hours

Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Everyone says they would like to retire early, but Rodney Rothman actually did it—forty years early. Burnt out, he decides at the age of twenty-eight to get an early start on his golden years. He travels to Boca Raton, Florida, where he moves in with an elderly piano teacher at Century Village, a retirement community that is home to thousands of senior citizens.

Early Bird is an irreverent, hilarious, and ultimately warmhearted account of Rodney's journey deep into the heart of retirement. Rodney struggles for acceptance from the senior citizens he shares a swimming pool with and battles with cranky octogenarians who want him off their turf. Before long he observes, “I don't think Tuesdays with Morrie would have been quite so uplifting if that guy had to spend more than one day a week with Morrie.”

In the spirit of retirement, Rodney fashions a busy schedule of suntanning, shuffleboard, and gambling cruises. As the months pass, his neighbors seem to forget that he is fifty years younger than they are. He finds himself the potential romantic interest of an aging femme fatale. He joins a senior softball club and is disturbed to learn that he is the worst player on the team.

Early Bird is a funny, insightful, and moving look at what happens to us when we retire, viewed from a remarkably premature perspective. Any reader who plans on becoming an old person will enjoy joining Rodney on his strange journey, as he reconsiders his notions of romance, family, friendship, and ultimately, whether he's ever going back to work.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 29, 2006
ISBN9781416537038
Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement
Author

Rodney Rothman

Rodney Rothman is now living in Los Angeles. He is a former head writer for the Late Show with David Letterman, and was a writer and supervising producer for the television show Undeclared. His writing has appeared in the The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Best American Nonrequired Reading, The New Yorker, McSweeney's Quarterly, and Men's Journal.

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Reviews for Early Bird

Rating: 3.3817203440860215 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

93 ratings4 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Cute. I actually laughed out loud a couple times. Not much thinking needed to read this one. (Read it for Book Discussion... wonder how that will go)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book starts off with a 28 year old Rothman losing his job as a television comedy writer and deciding to "retire early" to a senior community in Florida. The premise reads like the plot of a dumb sitcom and the cornball style of writing in the early going of this book almost made me put it down. Somewhere along the way the book changes its tone. First, Ro thman finds himself unable to leave after the joke has played out and second he begins to see the humanity of the elderly people living in retirement in South Florida and even makes some friends. He also makes some wry observations of the cliques and petty gossip in the community that should disabuse anyone of escaping these things with the wisdom of old age. Overall, its enjoyable book with some funny bits and some insightful bits that makes it just good enough to barely overcomes its weak start.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Kind of a fun book. Lots of meaning for those of us who live in a retirement community. It reminds one of retired people shown in TV shows like: The Odd Couple and Seinfeld. Caricatured people, but pleasantly done. I read this book over and over.. at least the first part.. but I don't know if I'll ever finish it. Even though I like it, it loses me.. surely some fellow senior citizens can't be so rude.. or so dumb!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was an interesting insight into the world of retirement and elderly people. Rothman spends more than six months in a retirement community to get a feel for what retirement is like. The book made me feel empathetic towards the elderly, allowing me to glimpse life from a new perspective. I liked getting to know the cliques within the community as well as the individuals who formed the cliques. Rothman's writing style is casual, allowing for a personal account of the time spent in the retirement community. It was an unexpectedly good read.

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Early Bird - Rodney Rothman

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