We were in the checkout line at the grocery store yesterday, scanning the magazine headlines ("Jen's friends convince her to tell why Brad has not had sex with her in two years!"*) when I saw a copy of The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga in the rack. I noticed it because the cover was significantly less shiney and lurid than everything else around.**
I picked it up. "Spans eleven centuries!" proclaimed the back cover. It was just over an inch thick, 780 pages†. I figured the author may have skipped a decade or two.
I still didn't know if this was fiction or not (I could have checked the spine for the classification, but that's no fun) so I opened it to a random page and read:
"So, the king will mate with a mare?"
Non-lurid covers. They'll get you, every time.
* I am not making this up.
** That's a marketing tip, that is.
† Thin paper, though. Not quite newsprint. Remember: (comparatively speaking) classy cover.
drinking coffee and listening to Right Hand Man from the album "Relish" by Joan Osborne
2 Comments
The Princes of Ireland? I received that a couple of Christmases ago. Haven’t yet gotten around to reading it though, so I can’t actually impart any useful information. Let you know if I read it though.
And last time I was at the grocery store, 50% of the magazines at check out involved Brad or Jennifer or Angelia. Luckily, the weekly world news had something along the lines of Aliens attacking.
It’s probably pretty good. At least if it isn’t, that’s a lotta dead trees.
(and thank goodness for WWN and Bat-Boy and the like to relieve the tedium. Wonder what Jen’s “friends” will do for her next? Push her in front of a streetcar?)