Addition - Toni Jordan

"A comedy that counts." Thus is Addition dubbed - an allusion to its protagonist Grace's tendency to count. She would deny that she's an Obsessive Compulsive; she derides 'handwashers' and 'germphobes', but has an uncontrollable urge to add wherever she sees numbers - she knows how many characters make up her full name (19), how many brushes she gives her teeth each evening (160) and how many steps separate the café and her front door (920). The numbers shape and define her life, providing a routine that is as reassuring as it is restrictive. All is well with Grace and counting until that troublesome entity that is love makes an appearance in the ...  Read the complete review

Being an avid reader (as you can tell!), I do like it when the Richard and Judy book lists are released twice a year, once for the summer and then again for autumn/winter. They have recently released the Summer Reads 2008 list, so I couldn't resist having a look. Out of the selection, only 4 books appealed to me, and one of those I have already read. So I decided to go to the library and get the other 2 which I rather liked the sound of, and the only one available then was this one, entitled Addition, and was labelled as a "Comedy that Counts". I was intrigued and set to reading it when I got home. Grace Vandenburg counts. She counts everything from ...  Read the complete review

Addition by Toni Jordan has one great marketing point - that good old Richard and Judy sticker on the front cover, which I am guessing makes a book fly out of the shops and the internet stores. I bought this book as part of the Jan 2009 www.thebookpeople.co.uk offer of 5 Richard and Judy books for £10. I find that actually some of the selected books are very good, and at £2 it wasn't a huge risk. The book is about Grace Lisa Vandebury and is a boy meets girl light read with a twist. Grace counts everything, the steps to the cafe, the seeds on her orange cake (the author is Australian so I assume orange cake with poppy seeds is a typical dish down ...  Read the complete review

The only reason I started reading this book was because I received a set of all the 'Richard and Judy Summer Read' books for last year, and it had an interesting cover, so I decided to start with it. Well, they say you can never judge a book by its cover, but this one met my high expectations. It's the story of a quirky young woman named Grace Vandenburg, and the quirkiest thing about her is that she is completely obsessed with numbers. She is compelled to count everything, from the number of steps it takes her to reach the shops, to the number of bananas she puts into her shopping basket, and the number of minutes she allows herself to do anything, including ...  Read the complete review

This is actually quite an odd book and I fluctuated between how I felt about it. Overall, it's not quite 4 stars for me as I feel it went on too long. As there isn't much product description the plot revolves around Grace Lisa Vandenberg who has an obsessive compulsive disorder - for counting. Naturally this consumes her life, from the simplest things like the number of bananas in her shopping trolley through to things like keeping the speedometer level when driving. She doesn't work, she can't drive and isn't in a relationship with anyone, nor does she have any friends. As the book progresses we know when and where the counting started and we are actually ...  Read the complete review