1976 Club: The Plantagenet Prelude by Jean Plaidy–DNF

It Wasn’t Just Me

First, thank you for giving me my reading life back to Lizzy of Lizzy’s Literary Life blog. I was, per habit, going to wait and read her thoughts on this book AFTER I finished it. But, I’ve been reading this turkey for about a month and still hadn’t passed page 100! Plus, my eye  had been drawn to “…affair…age 11…” [something like that] in her post. So I went back and read it. A true “a-ha!!” moment. It wasn’t just me! It wasn’t the struggle I’ve been having with print reading since the COVID lockdown. It was a terrible book! Or, to be charitable a popular book of its day that did not age well.

What I DID like in the book

So, I was expecting The Lion in Winter with Katherine Hepburn. Instead I got just about every historical fiction pet peeve in one book. In the book, I did agree with her preference for overtly-manly men. And, I did like that she had what we today call “leadership skills” (back then–“bossy”). That’s about all

Too Late Now

It’s too late now to try to find another 1976 book. It turns out, after it came from the library, that I had already read Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream by an idol of mine–Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is not recorded in any of my reading logs, but I have not logged throughout my life. Still, after one chapter it was obvious. I couldn’t come up with anything else.

Looking forward to the next Year Club read

I’ll just hope for a better experience with the next year’s book. Thanks again, to Simon at Stuck in a Book for hosting the Club reads.