Sunday Salon: The Other Boleyn Girl

Hello, fellow Saloners! There's less than a week until the 24-Hour Read-a-Thon, and I am so excited!

This week, I read quite a bit. I'm still working through The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Once and Future King, and The Last Temptation of Christ. I started rereading The Blind Assassin and I finished The Other Boleyn Girl. I have no idea why I read so many books at once, but so far I haven't gotten them mixed up and I'm still interested in finishing all of them, so I guess that's something.

Review: The Other Boleyn Girl

The Other Boleyn Girl is the first historical romance novel I've ever read. I've read reviews about how great it was and had several friends tell me how much they enjoyed it, but I never really had a desire to read it (or see the movie, but that's more of a Scarlett Johansson anathema on my part). Last week, one of my fellow teachers checked it out from the library and read it in a few days. She loved it, and convinced me to give it a try. Checking it out from the library was the best incentive to finish it, because I knew I only had it for a limited time.

First of all, this book is long. It's interesting, especially for someone (like me) who is not overly-familiar with the history of Henry VIII. I liked the characters; Anne was by far my favorite, just because she was so complex and almost evil.

HOWEVER...

I found this book incredibly difficult to read. I'm not a stickler for grammar (artistic license and all that), but lord, did this book need some semicolons. I counted four or five that were actually used, and one of those was used incorrectly! There were so many run-on sentences, I had to fight the urge to get out my Big Red Pen every page and go English Teacher on the book. Did the Tudors not use semicolons or coordinating conjunctions? It really shouldn't have been that big a deal, but it was distracting and jarred me out of the story every time. Does this kind of thing bother anyone else?

On the whole, The Other Boleyn Girl wasn't bad. I probably won't read any of the other books, though. The lack of punctuation notwithstanding, it just wasn't for me. If you've reviewed this book and would like me to link to your post, leave a comment.