Books shelved under “Romance”

As with most romances and much Victorian fiction, I felt a considerable burden lifted from me after I finished Two on a Tower. Yet I can't help but feel regret that it's over so quickly. Although not my favourite genre, Thomas Hardy is skilled enough to draw me into the lives of these two people and make me sympathize with their plight.

Even as I struggled with my distaste for the idiosyncrasies of Victorian…

As a neophyte of Salman Rushdie's work, I was not fully prepared for The Enchantress of Florence, although I should have been. Rushdie possesses an uncanny ability to manipulate perspective. In his stories, the flow of time is always questionable, and subject to change--if it flows at all. And his characters are larger-than-life, capricious archetypes that embody the virtues and flaws of humanity.

In this novel, Rushdie runs two stories parallel to each other:…

This is one of those books I would only read because I randomly picked it up off the "New Books" shelf of my library. When I lack specific books I want to get on a trip to the library, I try to keep an open mind and stretch my comfort level when it comes to the type of book I might enjoy. This one looked like a "maybe." I'm not into the whole romance thing,…