While perusing the bookshelves for some unchallenging summer holiday reading, I cast aside my usual literary haunts – James Joyce’s Ulysses perhaps or maybe War and Peace – and picked up a paperback which looked like it might be a good yarn.

Rightly or wrongly, I’m often swayed by the reviews you see all over a book cover provided by whoever the publisher could persuade to say something nice about the book. In this case, I was swayed but, sadly for the author and the publishers, not into buying the book.

There was only one review on the cover, which read: “This is just the novel for whiling away a few pleasant evenings with a nice cup of tea”.

It seems to me that this is the equivalent of a potential house buyer looking around a house and proclaiming “nice size room” if they can’t think of anything more positive to say.

It reminds me of that old communications adage that ‘less is usually more’. In this case, it would have been better to have left the book cover to speak for itself.  

Happy holiday reading everyone – maybe even enjoy with a nice cup of tea!