the best of times

A few posts back, I wrote about the subjectivity of good versus not-so-good and how someone can easily dislike a book that many others would find extremely engaging – and, of course, vice versa.  To date, I have been concentrating on those books in my ‘good’ pile, so perhaps it is time to have a look at my ‘not-so-good’ pile… One of the books that landed in this pile was the best of times by Penny Vincenzi. In all fairness, it is not the type of book I normally read, veering very close to what I would imagine is the Mills and Boon genre: handsome men, beautiful women, dramatic (though somewhat superficial) events and happy endings. Perhaps if this was a genre I normally read then I might have really enjoyed the book; however, this is merely surmise. The only reason I waded through all 900 odd pages was because it was the Book Group’s book of the month; otherwise I might have given up after the first 300 pages (the first third of the book was quite readable in comparison to the latter two thirds). Perhaps someone has read the book and really enjoyed it; if so, I would love to hear from you.

The following image has been taken from ‘Tales of the city: news from Edinburgh libraries’.