Dissapointing

Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell; Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette by Carroly Erickson.

Dear me. I really picked a pair of bad ones here.

I loved the Sex and the City series on HBO, and when I saw the book on Barnes & Noble's bargain section, I thought I would be in for a fun read. OMG. Not the case at all. Some characters in this collection of columns were vaguely familiar, but this is one of those rare cases where the TV/film versions were markedly better than the source material. Waste of time and money.

So, too, the other listed book on Marie Antoinette. I like historical fiction as a rule - it is a painless way to pick up some bits of history while, hopefully, exploring well-drawn characters, even if some of it is imagined. But since the author chose to write this slim book as if it were a journal or diary, what we are given is piecemeal musings by its fictional writer - items that often have no context and are horribly subjective and self-serving. It is a shame that such a lazy author is actually published and, apparently, makes a living at it. At least the book is probably compostable.