seperis | Entries tagged with books

Thanks to work things this weekend, no Star Trek for me, which I am not sobbing hysterically over but as we have delayed double deployment at the end of hte month, it's more exhaustion than anything that's keeping me from doing so.

However:

FF_A thread on the Star Trek Prime Directive reminded me of my favorite almost-great-but-not-quite Star Trek novel, Star Trek: Prime Directive by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (NOTHING LIKE THE TNG MOVIE EVEN LIKE A LITTLE). It has the distinction of being a very SJW take on the Prime Directive before SJW as concept or acronym was a thing on the internet (Social Justice Warrior) and takes great, great care to hit you over the head like a lot on why the Prime Directive is Awesome Like a Lot Seriously Why Don't You Get This Let Me Tell You Again, Really, but luckily, there's a lot of plot, so you can pretty easily skip the lecture portion of the show (it could be a 101 course, not kidding), and it does, in all fairness, make a vague half-hearted attempt at why the PM is bad using idealistic college students and single mother activists. Yeah.

Okay, leaving that off, it brings up two very interesting things that I'm pretty sure canon never bothered to throw out and turned out useful and obvious. One is a cultural scale model for pre-warp cultures, which assumed a crystal-growing type of development curve--all culture develop like this in this order, more or less, with the curve adjusted for population lifespan and I think worked differently on humanoid/non-humanoid/sentient slime-like species/incorporeal-who-the-hell-knows populations (keeping in mind Diane Duane to this day is the only one that had a sentient ensign rock and meetings involving Debians and non-humanoids, so detail is sketchy). It also emphasized, unfortunately, the powerful level of paternalism involved, which on one hand it is, no like--WE MUST PROTECT THOSE LESS ADVANCED--without leavening it with the much less skeevy Unintended Consequences model, which the story actually does for itself on reading, so maybe it's better that wasn't part of the lecture.

Reading for story, however, not lecture, you do get a very vivid and very precise explanation of what could happen if you're not truly hand to God--literally speaking--God and know where each single sparrow is and when it's falling. The use of the culture model that decides when a civilization is truly ready for pre-warp is shown as badly flawed but the best they have to work with, hence the requirement for warp technology. Humanity is still arrogant--and by humanity, read "all lifeforms in existence, probably mostly sentient but who the hell knows"--but the first rule to abide is Thou Shall Not Assume You Know Shit About Anything, Dumbass, even though you really think you do, and pretend at all times that you're likely going to be wrong until proven beyond all reasonable doubt otherwise and then take it to committee if possible because you gotta be sure. Which is, in a lot of ways, the basis of the prime directive; the mistakes you make when a civilization is at stake, not just their development, but their actual literal existence (see: nuclear winter, genocide) aren't the kind you can fix and even if you could, will they still be themselves after in their uniqueness, and what would you be saving, so to speak, if you destroyed all they were beforehand?

(Interesting point in the story is based on that; the Prime Directive uses the cultural model to bolster it's pre-warp-no theory, even though the cultural model is flawed because of the Prime Directive, because chicken, see egg. They know the model is flawed and because of that the Prime Directive is very much a best-guess at the safest possible save point--warp technology--because the model itself has to use that as the standard as well. It could be safe to establish relations earlier--it's likely, actually!--but they don't know because the cultural modeling is only perfectly accurate after they get to contact the culture. It's not a live model, it's observational up until that point. This could be fixed very probably if the Federation was willing to just give up a few pre-warp civilizations for cultural experimental purposes and try this at earlier and earlier points and learn from their failures (civilization one: contacted at pre-industrial era: blows self up: Fail! civilization two: contacted at medievalish era: thinks we're gods, genocide, ten people left on planet; REALLY FAIL! civilization three: not yet into the bronze thing, maybe we should....: BEARS ALERT RAPTORS RUN FUBAR BEARS FAIL BEARS LIONs BEARS!). They're not willing to risk that, however, any earlier than the first safe point, so you see how this is just academic hell.)

In the book itself, because it was Captain Kirk I was totally fine with the ending, but I would also argue that it was luck that it turned out well, and not just luck, but really one-time only cannot replicate this particular cultural development (story backs this up; this was very unique to this culture and what was happening to it) luckyity luck-luck by ten. I'd also argue that this is far less an exercise in anti-colonialism--though it is--and even less a bootstrap modeling of culture--though yeah, there is some of that--but a pretty sophisticated understanding of risk, when the risk is how on earth can anyone say no when you're the one carrying a nuke to a rock fight--you can't lose, there's just no way, the fact you brought it at all is the deciding factor, not that you wouldn't use it, so don't come at all.

...yes, I am re-reading everything Star Trek related so the sobbing doesn't go into effect. I hate work right now like you have no idea.

Note: I like the Bears alert model. The Raptors and Lions and Bears alert model however, is my variation, as raptors and lions are by nature funny and will also eat you in non-stuffed-animal form.)

In case you're curious, my earlier re-reads of the Anne books are here.

The Blythes Are Quoted by L.M. Montgomery - Kindle version

One of the nice things about the Anne of Green Gables series is that it grew up with me, especially the later books after Anne's marriage--and I would give a lot for more authors to cover the married lives of their heroines. My favorite by far is Anne of Ingleside this week (my favorite changes by the hour) because while first time true falling in love is great, keeping in love and living lives of adventure (no matter the scope of the adventure) is what I love most. Negotiations with in-laws--hilarious!--mischevious kids--awesome!--life lived like a novel where the romance may go but it comes back because you want it to is what I want to read about.

( more or less rambling )

The stories are in general a lot of fun and tackle some themes she hasn't before, not head-on anyway:

Some Fools and a Saint - a mystery that is, while you kind of guess where it's going, still satisfies very much in the how it was done.

Penelope Struts Her Theories - an old maid who writes papers about childcare is faced with an actual child. Make that two. It has to be admitted, she did not get a great specimen of a kid to work with here.

A Commonplace Woman - not happy, but an interesting departure in the indifferent family, the utter dick of a doctor (who is totally not getting Gilbert Blythe's patients, the dick), and the dying woman upstairs with an entire life no one knew about. It's not happy, but it's satisfactory in a way I didn't expect when I started it.

An Afternoon with Mr. Jenkins - not entirely happy or sad, but thoughtful in the sacrifices parents will make for their children.

I liked most the glimpses into Ingleside, of Susan and Anne and Gilbert, and hell yes Anne and Gilbert are still in love (thank you LM) and reading between the lines, Anne's recovery from the death of Walter in her poetry and the brief conversations.

Also read:

The Blue Castle - I love Valancy second only to Anne. When she found her gumption, she really found it.

Magic for Marigold - I would have loved this as a young teenager much more. I liked it, but eh. I liked it much more before Old Grandmother died. She was awesome.

Anne of Green Gables, et al - I went through the entire series out of order, and cried yet again for Dog Monday--goddamn that dog's awesome--and Rilla bringing up Jims, and liked Rilla much, much more now than I did as a teenager. I always love Anne, because Anne is awesome. And I love Miss Cornelia so much I want one to move next door to me and bring me gossip every day.

Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea - I still love these like a lot. I have a soft spot for bizarre courtships--Ludovic Speed killed me dead, because okay, I know people like this, who literally require something along the lines of a concussion to jump their track, and Old Man Shaw's Girl that broke my heart and put it all together again, and The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's that never stopped being hilarious, and The Miracle at Carmody which love surpasses all things, even the most powerful thing of all, your own mind.

I continue to skip Tannis of the Flats, which I still hate like burning, but a lot of it now is that I don't know how to read it or what I'm reading or even what I'm looking for.

( i still hate this story, racism, classism, wtf )

Current and Upcoming

Jane of Lantern Hill - I'm at the part where she goes to her father!

Emily of New Moon, Emily's Climb, and Emily's Quest - I say this with love; I have to be in the right mood for Emily. Emily's classism and snobbery popping out drives me nuts, and while I get that is a thing that people do and everything, those are my default do-not-wants, but luckily, I can usually read around them. And I love Teddy and watching them all grow up.

Gutenberg

For quick reference for anyone who wants them for download. Some may not be out of copyright in your country/principality/political dominion, legalcakes:

Anne of Green Gables - all formats
Anne of Avonlea - all formats
Anne of the Island - all formats
Anne of Windy Poplars - HTML
Anne's House of Dreams - all formats
Anne of Ingleside - HTML
Rainbow Valley - all formats
Rilla of Ingleside - all formats
Chronicles of Avonlea - all formats
Further Chronicles of Avonlea - all formats
The Story Girl - all formats
The Golden Road - all formats
Emily of New Moon - HTML
Emily Climbs - HTML
Emily's Quest - HTML
The Blue Castle - HTML
Jane of Lantern Hill - HTML
Magic for Marigold - HTML

So for two weeks I've been on twelve hour days and Saturdays for the build that they decided on Friday will be delayed until June. On one hand, I love my work and I love my Duckling and I love all the other ducklings and I love seeing their progress. On another--two weeks averaging around sixty-five hours each week, and I'm tired. On the third--assuming I had tentacles--the new testers are amazing and I don't regret that they came to me for help and I was able to give it to them and get to know them, so I'd have done it even if I'd known there was a delay.

Why Animation Has Betrayed Me

The Story of Simon Petrikov by mydeathstartsnow, Adventure Time - see, I watched this show casually and without commitment of any kind--honestly, I didn't even realize I watched it enough to be affected--and yet. Fuck Adventure Time. I knew it watching it was pretty much the equivalent of living in someone's brain during a particularly surreal four-hit acid trip, but dude, I Remember You was not fair.

This is still, not live action, and at least three quarters fanart, which probably is what makes it amazing, since as a rule I don't like still vids, and yet--the multiple styles and types work as well as action does, switching between scenes and emotions the way live action simply can't, not usually, and goddamn heartbreaking. I'm pretty sure the storyline is pretty clear even without a lot of knowledge of the show, but mostly, I love the use of fanart in this one. I've seen it done before, but using it not only to carry a storyline, but switching stye and type from chibi to manga to convey the emotion like this is not usually this powerfully done.

Though I am perfectly willing to be proved wrong if anyone has recs of it. For me, I need a gateway vid to get into any particular style, and this one seems to have done it.

Also, fuck Adventure Time. I was fine with feeling like I was having acid flashbacks from certain points in my college career at random. Now this. Goddamnit.

Other News

Currently re-reading the complete Anne of Green Gables, including The Blythes are Quoted - Montgomery's last works before her death, and I'll say honestly, some of them are among her best. I was afraid something would spoil the Blythes for me--HAPPY ENDING OKAY--but no, never, and the new short stories were interesting and among her most polished work.

Written in Red: A Novel of the Others by Anne Bishop. Okay, I'm reconciled to waiting for more in the Black Jewels series, because while the worldbuilding in that one is basically my favorite ever, this is probably Bishop's best work to date.

Caveats

1.) If you don't like her style at all, you won't like this. But you may want to sample it, just to check.

If you do, she's leveled up in smoothing out a lot of her more annoying tics, and her structuring is better. It's also cleaner prose, and she's a lot, lot, lot better at giving the basics of her world early enough that you don't spend the first seventy pages in a fugue state of wtf. The story starts with a short but very informative history, which I'll get to next, and her baseline universe is both completely understandable and almost laughably simplified once you start reading.

2.) If you don't like her general characterization quirks at all, you won't like this.

If you do, her initial cast is slightly smaller and in the general types she likes, but with some newer additions. If you thought there was any chance there wasn't a major set of power dynamics play going on, dude, come on, this is Bishop. There are internal, external, world level, social level, and various pack level at varying degrees of detail. And she also does something new I'll get to in a minute.

3.) Anne Bishop is the closest thing to a fangirl writing fanfic for her own imagination out there. There are no cock rings. But eventually, there may be knotting. God, I'll honestly be surprised if there isn't.

Warnings

I thought about how to do this, because she's switched to Alternate History/Alternate Universe/Urban Fantasy with a vengeance, so what can be less personal in pure fantasy might hit differently in something not unlike reality. A lot of the stuff in Black Jewels I honestly would not have liked if it had been anywhere near real world conditions, and also, if the Blood hadn't obviously been the equivalent of alien. So below.

( trigger warnings, warnings, etc )

Review-ish

Right. Now review. This is going to be spoilery as hell, so there's your warning. And it's long, because I'm in that kind of mood. And I'm pretty sure there is no logical structure, because well, that would be like, work. I'll probably add some things and do some revision, but really, probably not going to be any more coherent than it is now.

( worldbuilding: terra indigene )

( worldbuilding: geography, short and confusing )

( character list )

( review: written in red: a novel of the others by anne bishop )

Anansi Boys was fantastic. I'm pondering an immediate re-read just on the strength of the awesome that is Charlie.

I finished American Gods Wednesday night in a single long rush because I indeed got much more interested.

( more here )

So how is everyone else's weekend going? Read anything good?

Finally, finally reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It's been on my reading list for years, but I'm running into the same problem I did when I finally read Good Omens.

( because this is me )

Also, forgot to put this in last entry:

Richard III found under parking lot.

I'll be completely honest; I had tears in my eyes reading that he's been found. Richard III is my number one historical crush, with Caesar and Elizabeth I taking second and third (I have like, forty of these, but they're mostly unnumbered, but these three are the loves of my life, okay?).

For all your woobie Richard III professional novel needs:
The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman - this is one of my buy-in-all-formats books. I have bought it twice in paperback and once in ebook for my Kindle. This is the epic story of Richard III, who is the bestest brother, husband, and father ever, and everyone who hates him is just like, stupid, okay? Stupid.

I have many varied feelings on Richard. All of them are about how everyone else sucks.

Dear Henry Tudor (and Stanley, you fucker),

Suck it.

love,
seperis

Thanks to ff_a, I have been--I have no idea what this is.

Check out the cover for Flowers in the Attic

The book that launched a million incest kinks and probably contributed heavily to fandom's having a genre for it. With a cover out of a wholesome YA romance. They--at least look alike? Truth in advertising in the purely visual spectrum? My childhood has been de-sullied. Goddammit.

Have finished Redoubt, the fourth book in the Foundation series and huh.

Series
1.) Foundation
2.) Intrigues
3.) Changes
4.) Redoubt

I'm covering major plot points below, cutting.

( spoilers, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers )

Banned Books Week: Banned Books That Shaped America which lists off some banned books and where and sometimes why they were banned. I'd like to thank Texas for the following, because God knows, this makes us seem sane:

Moby-Dick; or The Whale, Herman Melville,1851

In a real head-scratcher of a case, a Texas school district banned the book from its Advanced English class lists because it “conflicted with their community values” in 1996. Community values are frequently cited in discussions over challenged books by those who wish to censor them.

...yeah, I got nothing.

(Note: If by community values they meant "our community does not value this level of epic boredom at this length", okay, maybe I can see it. I have a feeling that is not the case.)

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein, 1961

The book was actually retained after a 2003 challenge in Mercedes, TX to the book’s adult themes. However, parents were subsequently given more control over what their child was assigned to read in class, a common school board response to a challenge.

I'm trying here, so hard. I'm failing. I--what?

Not Texas (I hope, please), but huh?

Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963

Sendak’s work is beloved by children in the generations since its publication and has captured the collective imagination. Many parents and librarians, however, did much hand-wringing over the dark and disturbing nature of the story. They also wrung their hands over the baby’s penis drawn in In the Night Kitchen.

...I have never seen this penis. Jesus, I need to find that book and where's waldo this like, soon.

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

According to many critics, Hawthorne should have been less friendly toward his main character, Hester Prynne (in fairness, so should have minister Arthur Dimmesdale). One isn’t surprised by the moralist outrage the book caused in 1852. But when, one hundred and forty years later, the book is still being banned because it is sinful and conflicts with community values, you have to raise your eyebrows. Parents in one school district called the book “pornographic and obscene” in 1977. Clearly this was before the days of the World Wide Web.

...where the hell is the porn in here? Did I miss this chapter? What porn?

(Note: Again, boring, and also, the Adultery Baby is freaky like hell; that kid alone might justify banning just to have less hideously precocious babies wandering around. Then again, that was the most interesting part of the book, even if it was born of fear.)

The Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez, 2002

The works of Chavez were among the many books banned in the dissolution of the Mexican-American Studies Program in Tucson, Arizona. The Tucson Unified School District disbanded the program so as to accord with a piece of legislation which outlawed Ethnic Studies classes in the state. To read more about this egregious case of censorship, click here.

More details on that here. I mean, it kind of mocks itself just reading the justification, to be honest.

For more adventures in limiting the vastness of the human experience as expressed in literature due to reasons, Banned Books Week website and ALA's Banned Books section.

Work hates me. I'd actually go into detail on this, but the detail is boring. However, I can detail that the build after the one I'm currently testing I was (ridiculously) worried that all five of my assignments seemed smaller than I'd been given recently and my lead had taken teh two biggest. Please shut up; I know what you're thinking. Anyway, I worried I hadn't done a good job with the last huge build etc adn faith had been tested in my work, because when I'm not overworked this is the shit I think up, and then realized one of them was testing the Oracle update.

I have never, I think, actually talked about the last Oracle update. I wasn't directly responsible for planning the testing, as I wasn't in this section of testing. I also possibly blocked it out in horror. People talk of it in whispers. Loud ones.

I can't tell if this is proof that there is faith in my work or a hope I'll finally snap.

( also, people ask me things )

( also, work is moving us )

I'm hoping to get Monday off for reasons and this week so far is not shaping up to go well at all. Also, I'm reading during breaks the most horrible Pride and Prejudice spin-off series I have ever had the misfortune to see, and yet I keep going. I can't explain it except okay, one scene: a Transylvanian princess and a Japanese samauri whose boyfriend committed seppaku with her husband's help during her and her husband's run from her murderous father and end up in Japan after fleeing through St. Petersburg and spending time with a famous Jewish philosopher in possibly Siberia have a swordfight in the middle of the road in Derbyshire on a theoretical point of honor. Also, the husband's brother is married to Caroline Bingley and they sekritly adopt the illegitimate son of the Regent (her husband's boss) and a dying prostitute. And a Scotsman swung from the ceiling of Pemberley in a kilt to rescue Darcy from the Scotsman's murderous younger brother and later ended up marrying Georgiana. I cannot make this up. And this is like, not even the least believable.

Honest to God, these are not well written (at all, even by accident) and kind of hideously anachronistic in various ways, but I read this just to wonder what is going to happen next.

It's been a week in which I have determinedly re-read my Chase romance novels, as in general I love her heroines for being really awesome. However, she also has one of my favorite type of characters, which Georgette Heyer also used, and very few people get right, which is the not-all-that-bright-but-weirdly-almost-preternaturally-competent-in-their-field-of-choice character. Heyer did it with Freddie in Cotillion; for Chase, it is Bertie Trent in two of her novels and one of her short stories, and Rupert Carsington in Mr. Impossible.

( there is just something about them )

Books Mentioned

Cotillion by Georgette Heyer - Amazon, $2.99

Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase - Amazon - $7.99

The Last Hellion by Loretta Chase - Amazon - $6.99

Captives of the Night by Loretta Chase - Amazon - $3.99

Mr. Impossible by Loretta Chase - Amazon - $7.99

Family

My sister is in an Illuminati fever which admittedly is both hilarious and frightening. If anyone has any recs--I can't believe I'm writing that--I'd love some to give her. She spent an unsettling amount of time on youtube recently charting the influence of the Illuminati in music videos and consumer products, and while yes, I know this could end with me having a relative as an actual conspiracy theorist, I don't see this as necessarily a disadvantage. The conversations, at least, are fascinating.

Edenbrooke: A Proper Romance by Julianne Donaldson - imagine, if you will, Jane Austen if she couldn't write, had very little taste, no sense of Regency propriety, a heroine that did nothing but blush and look embarrassed, and a hero who was just a dick. Not an evil dick, but a petty, irritating, 'teasing' dick and the wordplay, if you even can call it that, is simplistic, mind-numbing, and almost painfully like watching paint dry, except in that case, you get the benefit of a painted something, but in this case, not so much.

It was that bad. The only reason I am even mentioning it is that it has unsettlingly high reviews and I know enough people on my flist like Austen to sometimes feel a little nostalgic desire for the genre. This is not it. Also, I'm grumpy, because I read the sample and feel tricked, because the heroine upon meeting the hero immediately becomes even more epically boring than I thought possible.

I had no idea what a sense of relief I'd get from reviewing something on amazon. That was very emotionally cathartic.

Between downloading insane amounts of music, I'm also buying insane numbers of books. Most recently:

The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon by Veronica Buckley, a biography of Françoise d'Aubigné. The main reason I bought this was because I read a novel about her years ago, and it was one of those where I was absolutely sure that seriously, artistic license was taken like whoa. Because let's face it, when you're born to the lowest French gentry in prison (speculatively) because your father is vaguely parricidal and psychotic, you spend a childhood shuffling between continents and begging in the streets, in general, that doesn't end with you marrying Louis XIV of France because he fell in love with your mind and starting a school for underprivileged girls (in between randomly raising other people's children, including his by your friend before you were his mistress).

And yet. These things happen.

( my thoughts, sort of, if you're considering buying this )

This is one of the reasons that Kindles' are dangerous; I'm finally getting around to reading all those books that I always meant to but forget about. Now I can do it instantly when I remember!

While still reading:

I'm actually much more freaked out by the unproven retaliatory murders committed after the Manson Family's arrest. Which is partially because I didn't realize that was happening, but the list of people who died and had a connection with Manson is goddamn chilling.

One of the things I like about the book is the author's skeptical but growing understanding of the hold Manson had on his followers. Even cult theories don't encompass what he was doing, and the author being the prosecutor and interviewing the different members of the Family, his impressions of them, both defense and prosecution witnesses, showing his uneasiness with them without being self-conscious about the fact he's narrating things in a way that sound crazypants neo-mysticism is refreshing. And he knows that's how some of it sounds. There's a really strong impression that he also wants to add If you had been here, you'd get what I'm saying.

Being sentient, I still find it bewildering (it could never happen to me!) and extremely unsettling (remember ages sixteen through twenty-one?) and oddly frustrating, the same way I feel about Jonestown and the millennium group suicides for the coming of aliens and Scientology. I know it's slippery slope--very few people dream of the day they will be drinking down poison in South America after killing a Congressman or embracing a movement based on the secret meaning of Beatles lyrics and committing mass murder--but there's slippery slope and then there's the chasm between the moment you aren't a murderer for a truly bizarre reason and the moment you are (assuming you are neither a sociopath nor a psychopath nor a variety of clinical sadistic narcissist).

Slippery slope is often more about giving away more than you thought you were--aka personal freedoms or rights--and realizing suddenly the dangers. In general, murder is an action taken where realization is kind of hard to miss when you're holding the weapon and there's a body in front of you: I don't get that. Even suicide--which is understandable to me, considering--kind of throws me, but part of that is I have clinical depression, and suicidal thoughts are weirdly enough my sharp inner line that is literally the one thing that forces me into some kind of frantic activity, even stupid activity, until my baseline misery isn't on that level; if something that can hold me hostage for two years in a morass of utter self-inflicted misery cannot make me do it, a person telling me to would probably make me laugh hysterically.

It does feel like something that you have to be there to understand, very literally.

This is interesting reading; I'm glad I saw the article on Manson's parole hearing tomorrow and remembered to go grab it.

I put this one off since I've been in a Gellis and Heyer mood for a while and there's no use switching in genre between styles because you just end up confused. Also, Gellis' A Woman's Estate just put me in a bad mood.

However, Loretta continues to be awesome. For context on why I love this author, earlier review here.

Silk Is For Seduction

( silk is for seduction )

Again, not her strongest book by any means, but a fun, fast read.

Kindle sales on books by Loretta Chase:

Isabella - $2.99 - the prequel to the Carsington novels, this being the Earl of Harcourt himself and his courtship of Isabella, they who spawned several novels about their sons. This is one of her earliest books and it shows big time, but it's not terrible, one, and if you are a completionist and were curious about the entire backstory of the Carsington men, it's a good read. And it's stuffed with Surprise Revelations! a anti-hero (Loretta just loves to make sure her villains could be redeemable in a future sequel) and to be fair, it's not her weakest work.

The English Witch - $2.99 - this is her weakest work. See what I said above about the redeemable villain? Yeah, this is his story. It's weak, and it drags occasionally, but it also is, I think, her first attempt to play with imperfect, rather unethical heroes and heroines that aren't evil, just, you know, unethical and manipulative but still good people. But I do not deny that this one I got through only because of what she was trying to do here and nails in her later books and I was curious to find out where it started. It could be considered the genre spiritual predecessor to Silk Is For Seduction, Last Night's Scandal, Captives of the Night, and the rather inexplicable Your Scandalous Ways. (For the record, in Regency trope, Last Night's Scandal is the best of them; Captives of the Night is, again, not Regency at all; I'm honestly not sure what the hell it is, which is why I love it beyond reason.)

Lord of Scoundrels - $3.99 - this is an update that apparently was supposed to fix typos. I didn't notice typos before, but this update did not help, but if you can stand a few times early on that paragraphs repeat--and near the end, a page repeats--this is one of my favorite books. It's probably the closest Chase comes to a classic regency in so far as boy marries girl and lifts her into wealth and ease. How they go about it is about as non-classic as you can get, up to and including; pornographic watches, Russian icons, blackmail, extortion, ruining reputations, bloodsucking lawyers for Greater Justice, a shooting, a psychosomatic injury, and possibly the first time I've seen any novelist tackle, with sympathy, a parent's desertion (I would almost recommend it just for that bit; I've never seen any Regency romance both subtextually and textually address sympathetically the motivations that might surround a mother who leaves her child; hell, half the damn plotline is built on it).

Coming in June: Scandal Wear Satin which I am going to say is either going to be about Clara and her newly discovered fashion sense and backbone, or Marcelline's sister Sophie the scandal-rag spin artist. It's a toss-up.

Currently watching iconic Darcy Swims! scene from Pride and Prejudice. There is still nothing funnier than imagining the period of time between bravely running away in his wet breeches and running after her in an excess of really fast dignity. Mostly it was probably his manservant desperately trying to make sure he wore clothes that matched and didn't sprint down with his pants undone.

The more I watch, the more convinced I am that had Lydia not intervened with her--adventures, Elizabeth would not have made it out of Derbyshire unengaged, possibly not even unmarried.

This entire review is brought about by Linda Berdoll's novels, which are fanfic of this version of Pride and Prejudice in so many ways. So. Many. Ways.

When I recommended them before, I hadnt' finished re-reading and forgot that the books, though uniformly of the light hearted melodramatic variety (that I love), there are some parts that are not that at all.

Warning for triggering content below: specifically, the death of a child and sexual assault. If you have these particular ones and plan to read the books, please consider the below, as the rest of the books are far lighter and more humorous, so it might come as a shock.

( spoilers for all three Berdoll novels )

Right, after finishing all three, more generally.

( three novels of intrigue! )

Also, these are a romp. A rompy-romp.

Mr Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll is up for Kindle at $1.99.

I did a review of the books here to give you an idea of what--you'll be getting. But now I can safely state that what this book and its sequels are that I did not have quite the right vocabulary for in 2006.

This is Pride and Prejudice erotic(ish) id-fic, by ten. This is the id-vortex itself of Pride and Prejudice spin-offs. This is also the definitive proof of the awesome of fanfic; I would not have liked this as a regency romance about random people, but Darcy and Elizabeth rock it like whoa. So I honestly get a kick out of reading something that literally could have been posted online and in fangirl context, would have probably hit the entirety of fandom like a tsunami. It's fanfic I am very, very happy to pay for.

It's pretty unapologetic about what it's doing. I mean, there is great literature and there is good literature both pro and fen and there is candy and then there is this, which is like, IDK, a eight course dinner for the id, with candy. You can't read this as a purist; if you go in like that, you will hate it. But if you read it like a fangirl id-ing it up, it'll work like you would not believe.

My grammar and sentence construction concerns continue; you will, I promise, get used to the style and it will be invisible within about fifty pages, but it is an acquired taste to want to because what the id wants, the id wants. And it's worth it. And at 1.99, I figure this is a good time to test it.

There are two sequels, Darcy and Elizabeth (AKA Darcy and Elizabeth: Days and Nights at Pemberley) and The Ruling Passion (AKA The Darcys: The Ruling Passion) and they're about as id-rompy as the first. And I will say without apology they are fun reading. Jane Austen would not have written this, no, but I think she would have laughed herself sick and enjoyed reading where this author went with her work.

I do like this a lot more than most Austen sequels--if not all of them with a few specific exceptions--because no one is Austen; her voice and her vision were extremely unique and only look easy to replicate until you read people trying and you realize how razor-sharp not only her prose is, but the mind that created this that understood that making fun of something doesn't mean not loving it, and she understood how to draw sympathetic characters and villains with a complexity and skill that the more I re-read her books, the more I'm surprised how deftly she practiced her craft. And how freaking subtle her sarcasm is.

Linda doesn't try to write Austen's style, which I mean, no, her natural style is not, um, even close. So instead, she does it in her own, and then hits the gas like she's forgotten the meaning of brakes and that shit works.

I haven't read The Ruling Passion before, so let's say I'm excited.

Currently finishing Mr Darcy's Secret by Jane Odiwe, which so far I'm enjoying a lot, though they pretty much broadcast the entire plotline and resolution fairly fast; however, how they'll get there makes me curious, and it's a very fun, light-hearted read.

My squee is very id-dy.

ETA: Id and Id-Vortex references, Slash shock, shamelessness, and a rec. by

ellen_fremedon. Remember when you used to find meta on every online streetcorner and everyone hyperexamining their writing and reading and arguing genre until it was All Bellybutton Lint, All the Time and you're like, no more? Yeah. I revise my stance and encourage everyone to examine their meaningful writing thoughts right now, even if they are talking about your feelings for the use of 'and' and the second person pov as narrator stand in. I miss it. Like, after reading this, a lot.

Reading Roberta Gellis' A Woman's Estate, book five in the Heiress series, set during Napolean Mark I.

Okay, overall the series is uneven and not nearly as fantastic and fun as her medieval, but that fifth book is just--and I say this as a Romance novel reader--there is some terrible pre-feminism in here. I don't object at all to anachronistic feminism and anti-racism. Even when it's done awkwardly or badly, I give points for good intentions or making a decent effort because even handled badly, they're trying desperately to handle it in a genre that is not really easy to pull it off in and most people don't even try to integrate it at all, much less make a sincere but awkward effort at it.

IDEK what was going on with this one, but it was really hideously awkward attempts at pre-feminism backed against invisible-to-the-author misogyny that's not used deliberately. Gellis had an earlier book where in her notes, she made reference to blaming women for the fall of women's rights in medieval europe, so haven't read that one again, but her Roselynde books are so strong in women's lives and etc that I can just ignore that one. It was weird and the few good points (noting law that made a woman stop existing when she married; that was genuinely unsettling to read, even though I was aware of it, detailing it out like that was very well done) but then it's offset with the story's supporting the idea that her wanting to not marry again or wanting freedom or etc was all about lacking trust in her husband and a mania, which fuck no.

There was a lot of mixed messaging here, is what I'm saying, and I can't give points for what she did do because the entire thing was based on HEROINE DOES NOT TRUST MEN AND WHY. And later, how she acknowledges her own foolishness, because hello, her goddamn points were valid even in--especially in--a happy marriage. I mean, that's what made it work. EVEN IF YOUR HUSBAND WAS LOVING AND RESPECTFUL, HE COULD AND DID DO THIS SHIT IN THE SPIRIT OF LOVE AND RESPECT AND THAT SHIT WAS STILL WRONG.

(Though it did have a genuinely touching, subtle moment with the hero questioning his mother and her responses were wonderfully drawn of a woman who had a perfectly happy marriage but also the small embarrassments/discomforts of the fact that as a married woman, she was owned by her husband and could own nothing herself; all belonged to her husband on his sufferance.)

I can't figure out why she bothered with the proto-feminism at all when the text itself was arguing against it or fighting it so hard. I think she made a stab at racism, but I won't swear to it because that was just weird and awkward and uncomfortable in a bad way. Your text should not argue for the purpose of proving that feminism is awesome, but with a good husband, not so much necessary.

Stick with the Roselynde series or the Royal Dynasty series, is what I'm saying.

Anne McCaffrey has died. The first woman to win the Hugo and the Nebula, and her Dragonriders books, her Lessa and Brekke and Menolly, her Rowan and The Ship that Sang, Crystal Singer and the breadth of her works between I owe a debt of gratitude for that I'll carry until the day I die.

I honestly had no idea how much this would hurt, one of the women whose work built the foundation of my love of sci-fi and fantasy, dragons and starships, but mostly, the people she created in the worlds she built who embodied all the potential of what we could become.

Much, much recommended:

The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer - I love her work in general, but this one is fantastic. Hugo may be my favorite hero since Freddy in Cotillion, being sensible, practical, brilliant, and with an impossible sense of humor. And in a lovely turn of events, the heroine is just as sensible, extremely smart, and adorable.

Also, there are smugglers. And shootings. I am all about smugglers and shootings.

If anyone is curious, my reading is in direct proportion to internet access at work; they put in a nanny block, but that's not, I think, the problem, since I can get through just fine some days. It's annoying. But boy has it done wonders for my not-fanfic literacy. I'm currently running at an average one book a day since Julyish, though to be fair many of them are short and some I read in my teens and rediscovering.

For the record:

"Oh, well, it may be a superstition or it may not, doctor, dear. All that I know is, it has happened. My sister's husband's nephew's wife's cat sucked their baby's breath, and the poor innocent was all but gone when they found it. And superstition or not, if I find that yellow beast lurkin gnear our baby I will whack him with a poker, Mrs. Doctor, dear." -- Susan Baker to Anne and Gilbert Blythe, Anne's House of Dreams by LM Montgomery

...where did that cat breath thing come from?

Anne of Green Gables and sequels

Like Great Maria by Cecilia Holland--though no two books could ever be so different--I love the Anne series for the complete submersion in the lives of women, their work and daily routines, their relationships and their families, but above all about them. Anne as student, teacher, wife, mother, and friend doesn't live her life through any man or in relation to any man, but has an internal and external social life wholly her own and independent of her husband's work and life with her. It's also an extremely feminist book not necessarily in the attitudes but in the focus on not just the lives of women, but their ambitions, their friendships, their personal joys and tragedies.

( anne of green gables, continued )

Specific Spoilers for Anne's House of Dreams, Leslie Moore:

( Read more... )

The exception to the eight book series and children below. Ouch.

Specific Spoilers for Rainbow Valley, the Meredith children:

( rainbow valley )

I wish the movies had been more faithful; I still get cold horrors just knowing the fourth movie exists, and the third one was not exactly, what's the word, "faithful". OTOH, the first three had Megan Follows and she's so Anne to me I can't get over it. I'd love to see a new interpretation of the books--this time a faithful one, dear God, or even a passing acquaintance with someone who, say, read them--but I'm not sure I can ever see anyone but Megan as Anne.

Still favorites. I always liked them for combining both the most romantic and best parts of nineteeth/early twentieth century small towns and communities with realistic assessments of what they were like; loving something without glazing it in impossible idealism. It always makes me more than a little amused when people talk about the nuclear family and it's singularity and above-all-ness; I can't imagine it working at any point in history when community was so necessary to survival, much less social interaction.

It also reminds me it's a fairly modern luxury to be able to socialize only with people you like; I'm not entirely sure, when reading, whether it's altogether a good thing. Being able to restrict your social interactions that much, and quickly eliminate on the basis of not quite simpatico instead of required social interaction means never really developing both the ability to get along with people and also miss the opportunity to know people who make take time and effort and skill to deal with, and I'm pretty sure it's worth the effort.

It was also a hell of a lot harder to end a friendship when you are pretty much going to see them forever until you die at every social event; that's pretty good motivation to get over yourself and move on and fix what you can--which surprisingly isn't as hard as it sounds. I like happy endings, though.

Anne of Windy Poplars is both my least and most favorite depending on mood; I'm not a huge fan of epistolary writing at the best of times, and I always manage to forget that it's the eternal exception to the rules. Her letters to Gilbert are always hilarious, and I always faintly wish there'd been a volume of his to her; he always struck me as one to have just as many odd adventures and fall into as many odd scrapes.

Currently at Anne's House of Dreams. I skipped about a bit to get to my favorite bits, and Miss Cornelia is not be missed.

I resent this. It teased yesterday for twentyish minutes and got everything briefly damp, then nothing. This is not a drought. This is like, IDK, the terrain of Venus. I do not even say our temperatures aren't comparable; have you been outside? Yeah.

In other news, amazon continues to please.

Great Maria by Cecilia Holland, $3.43, Kindle

Isabella by Loretta Chase, $0.99, Kindle, prequelesque to Mr. Impossible, Ms Wonderful, Mr. Perfect et al stories.

You know, at one time, I thought how ridiculously large the memory is on a Kindle. While I am not even close to hitting even a quarter, I have a very uncomfortable feeling that if amazon keeps having random sales on books, I am going to test the memory capacity. And adding fanfic by the dozens and dozens probably isn't helping, no.

During my increasingly driven episodes of life not work, I've been re-reading The Masters of Rome series, aka Gaius Marius right through seconds before Octavius becomes Augustus. And I continue to marvel about Gaius Julius Mary Sue Caesar and how very much I don't care because he is just that damn awesome.

ETA: In my defense, this kinda got away from me with the lists. Just for the record.

( republican rome invented the mary sue )

( final book, irritated still )

Okay, it may not seem like it, but I do recommend Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. Each book is very long, and it has a massive cast, and people call each other cocksuckers in Latin in the middle of senatorial debates, which makes it sound very classy and awesome. And lots of random bouts of mass murder. Which makes you seriously wonder how anyone survived to the seventh book.

Via

fyrdrakken in a comment, Georgette Heyer Kindle books are on sale (I mean, a lot of them) for 1.99.

The Talisman Ring -I'm linking directly because two different prices are showing up in search--this one is the 1.99.

Link to Georgette Heyer's Page

Also:
Arabella
Bath Tangle
Black Moth
Black Sheep
Beauvallet (set after Simon the Coldheart)
Charity Girl
Conqueror
Convenient Marriage
The Corinthian
Cotillion
Cousin Kate
The Devil's Cub (Alastair Chronicles 2)
False Colours
Faro's Daughter
Frederica
Foundling
Friday's Child
The Grand Sophy
Infamous Army (Alastair Chronicles 3)
Lady of Quality
Lord John
Masqueraders
The Nonesuch
The Quiet Gentleman
Powder and Patch
Regency Buck
The Reluctant Widow
Royal Escape
Simon the Coldheart ($1.79)
Spanish Bride: A Novel of Love and War
Sylvester: or The Wicked Uncle
These Old Shades (Alastair Chronicles 1)
Venetia

...and all her contemporary mysteries that I skimmed through. Looks liki The Toll Gate is not on sale, and The Unknown Ajax and A Civil Contract are not yet available. Or Sprig Muslin.

Y'know, in case your Heyer collection needs updating or anything. I am not looking at my receipts right now, for the record.

ETA:

dine also notes they are available for Nook at Barnes and Noble and ePub at OmniLit.

ETA 2:

bendtothesun in comments linked to Smart Bitches, Trashy Novels that has a really amazing directory to the Heyer sale in all available formats here. Thank you!

So I forgot the reason I am always vaguely uncomfortable with Wuthering Heights; I always imagine I really don't like Heathcliff, and that's a lie. Heathcliff is the goddamn gothic Count of Monte Cristo and hey, I approve of revenge. I appprove of epic revenge. I also approve of enjoying it, but Heathcliff did not get that part right so oh well.

I really can't be fair about this one because the thing is, it's like, IDK, the perfect heist. Complicated, strategically planned long-term revenge wielded with exquisite timing for a perfect trap shutting slowly, painfully, inevitably over the victims as they watch in horror is hot.

Heathcliff's biggest advantage as he is, in all actuality, a goddamn woobie--and I do not use that term lightly, or ever. His life sucks. Everyone who should care about him? Sucks. He gets flogged and hurt and loses his bff soulmate and God knows what he had to do in those three years of his disappearance. His second biggest advantage as a character is that unless he was murdering puppies (I do not put this past him, or drowning kittens), everyone else is so unsympathetic that you don't actually care if they didn't really didn't quite earn Heathcliff's hatred. Because again, they suck.

(Except Hareton, who is awesome, and Young Catherine, eventually, when she stops being shouty.)

( spoilers for hardy adaptation )

This was--and still is, actually--one of my favorite books, but it's also one of the ones that irritate me weirdly, and a lot of this is because the author was very, very historically accurate on both events and attitudes of the time period of King John, and very, very good at drawing sympathetic characters and personal relationships.

This basically was the reason for me, the base conflict of Joanna's life made no sense, at least in how I view it, and I'm not altogether convinced at the time it was all that problematic (God I hate using that word for this); I suspect it later became A Huge Goddamn deal due to John's conflict with the Church and the invasion of Louis into England where people needed excuses to go to what they saw was the winning side.

Here Be Dragons is a novelization of the life of Joanna, daughter of King John and wife of Llewelyn the Great of Wales, along with a well-drawn tapestry of various other figures.

( my issues with medieval backpedaling, let me show you )

I was having a moment there. I still love the book, but knowing so much more about the time period now, it just irritates me how she got so much right and exact but smoothed over the difference between what was preached and what was practiced.

Thoughts? I need to pull my nonfiction and bios from storage and start looking for kindle versions; the paperbacks are tattered and possibly moldy, but I'm pretty sure some of them are in the public domain if I can track down the titles. *sighs*

Kindle E-Books From .99

And books!

Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase - 99 cents

Captives of the Night by Loretta Chase - $2.99

Okay, for context on this, these are part of a loose shared Regency universe.

1.) The Lion's Daughter
2.) Lord of Scoundrels
3.) Captives of the Night
4.) The Mad Earl's Bride (short story in Three Weddings and a Kiss, totally worth buying the book just for it
5.) The Last Hellion

The The Lion's Daughter is not even in print anymore and that makes me want to cry because the bad guy from that one is fated to be completed in Captives of the Night with him being atoney and heroic and I kid you not, solving mysteries for repentance and er, the hero who falls in love with an artist. Angsty, tragic backstory, sketchy background, overthrows pashas in his spare time, kidnapping....but now he works for teh British government and it's kind of hilarious.

I love all these books (except the first one, dammit, not having read it), but Captives is by tone and subject matter and character and plot completely different from most of Loretta's work and if you read Scoundrels and Captives back to back, it will be a hard 180. It's extremely complex both emotionally and plotwise and don't get me wrong, it's romantic as hell, but it's not Romance really; what it is about is two very scarred people who worked very hard to make themselves decent lives in horrific circumstances; Loretta's heroines are always fairly independent, but Leila is my favorite for how hard she worked to create herself and make the best of her life despite a ruined childhood and a hideous marriage to a monster before his death made everything fall apart; Ismal's a hero who literally was a monster once upon a time and then decided to change. Neither of them need saving in any practical way; what they want is to be free.

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

And okay, my squee of the day...

Siren Song, Winter Song, Fire Song, and The Silver Mirror all by Roberta Gellis, all on Kindle, 1.49 each.

Also available is the entire Roselynde series, but it's not on sale yet and I'm still squeeing over these.

Okay, to explain; all of these are set during Henry III, and especially the second could be said to be, borrowing from

hradzka with artistic license, it's woman inheriting keeps and organizing the shit out of them from the ground up. All three are very much focused on women being extremely competent, self-sufficient, and possessing a staggering number of skills in a time where in the lower nobility and knights your home is literally a castle also had to be the equivalent of an isolated town that had to provide pretty much everything you needed or you did without

One of my favorite things about Roberta's medieval books is how much time she spends showing women working; all her noble medieval heroines run one to several large castles, sit in justice, do budgeting and accounting, see to their textiles and sewing, riding out to visit serfs, oversee meals, food storage, are decent physicians, and basically outline (not all at once obviously) the daily life of a woman of the middle and lower noble classes where you had servants and serfs but not on the level of great wealth, vassals, and less direct responsibility for the household and more time to sit around reading poetry and being boring. Without really hard anachronistic behavior, she has some of the most interesting and hardworking women I've ever read who were raised and trained very thoroughly to be self-sufficient so as to get along fine while the men go off to war for years.

Honestly, these I'd recommend just for how well Roberta describes medieval women's lives and duties, especially when the story sets them in contrast with the lives of women in the upper nobility and royalty.

Not on sale, but also recommended is Great Maria by Cecilia Holland, which covers Maria's life from being the only daughter of a Norman knight in Italy who makes a living robbing people who are on pilgrimage to right before she and her husband's coronation. Also pretty much entirely a world of women with a fantastic view of Maria both running a variety of households as they slowly conqueror a large amount of Italy.

For me, I read them at a time I was very young and most of the books that focused on women also made them warriors or sorcerers or working against traditional gender roles as I saw them, or they were royalty/higher nobility; it was very cool to also have women who weren't secretly trained to be expert swordsmen or sent off to be mages or chosen to save a kingdom or being bartered in marriage in tight political situations on the cusp of battle being focused on and their work just as highly valued in the story and their roles to be shown as necessary. Not to mention realizing how much they actually did to assure everyone ate regularly, had decent clothes, were paid properly, oversee disputes, and have fascinating, full, interesting lives even if they didn't ride to war. Female competence in any role is awesome.

Having now read Georgette Heyer's These Old Shades and The Devil's Cub, I can say the woman is officially one of the few authors who does not often write the same story; I can honestly say the woman who wrote that was like, five million miles from Cotillion or Frederica like whoa.

These Old Shades has the distinction of reading for the entire Leon section like the creepist creepy-creeper slash in history. I kept stopping even knowing why it was happening because hello, as reader, I knew (I mean, I hoped at that point, because I was trapped within that narrative and wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror the next day with something like respect), but everyone else in the story didn't so what the hell, debauched French aristocrats? I get this was a different time period, and yes, I know the stories of what Louis XV's court was like, and the entire donkey and girl show of legend, but--

--seriously, the entire sitting at Monseigneur's feet while he stroked his page's face and talked gleefully--and often, let me point out--about how he owed him body and soul--I AM QUOTING--my God.

Even like, the Token Upright and Moral Friend is like "OMG SHOCKING" but I did not see him grabbing Leon and running, running, running for the hills either. Or for Champagne, anyway.

I recommend it on pure WTF AM I READING and because it's idfic at it's most blatantly glorious, Justin is so fucked up it's a surprise he stands upright, and all the characters are just not exactly lovable but it kind of doesn't answer because Georgette Goddamn Heyer must have had a blast writing it and you can damn well tell she was laughing into her very proper sheets every night.

The Devil's Cub, the sequel-ish about Justin and Mysterious I Will Not Name Heroine Because Spoilers's sociopathic offspring (if you read the first, you cannot be surprised by this), leaped upon my kinks like an Olympic gymnast Gold-medaling the trampoline--holy God, nothing she wrote ever hit like that.

( good god )

( unnerving quotes )

Ms Heyer, I salute you. You are brilliant.

Today I finally got around to getting the ebook version of Stephen King's Danse Macabre, which is one of my deserted island books in the top five at least (along with The Stand, which always makes me feel a little guilty to include, as it feels like cheating; it's a hundred novels rolled into one, and I'm not referring to its length when I say that).

I read horror novels (sometimes), but I cannot sit through most horror movies; it took me most of my childhood and half my adolescence to understand and internalize this, but even with the entire Watership Down horror that still haunts me, I still didn't get a fundamental fact about my processing abilities. My friends would have a few nightmares; I'd go into obsessive thought circles that ended in insomnia for weeks and flashback on it for years afterward (again, Watership fucking Down, source of many bad nights sleep). There have been exceptions; I don't regret them, per se, but I rarely have the internal funds to deal with the price after. Being a grown-up is a conscious choice I make and takes a lot of work; I do not see the point of exhausting myself more than I have to when I'm not terribly good at it as it is.

Danse Macabre was magic. It gave me all the horror, intricacies of plot and circumstance, without the, you know, ongoing breaks with reality where I'm utterly convinced--not imagined here, I mean, convinced like I know I'm sitting on the bed--that there is Something There and its' not even I'm worried that it'll kill me; I'm worried more the problems with proof. I'll get to that.

(It's eleven at night; boy, do I know how to time these things.)

( here be lions )

So my browser at home is throwing me out of all google docs functions--all my browsers--and work is being worky. Argh.

But books! Books are the soul's salvation, the fire's warmth, the cat's pajamas, you get the idea. And yet. It's been a week and I still don't know how to talk about this one.

( sort of should have seen it coming )

And maybe more later, IDK, I need another reading to absorb. I didn't hate it, but she did some serious earth-salting there to get everyone moved on and everything. I think this world had tons of room for more growth, so it's disappointing to think there won't be any. Especially more Cassidy. God, I want more Cassidy and Gray.

Reading Foundation by Mercedes Lackey, about early Valdemar.

( interesting )

Surfacing from work, work, God, work....

Notes on the Mage Storm trilogy.

1.) If you read The Mage Storm trilogy, Karal will desensitize you to Mary Sues forever. I mean, to put it this way; I like Lavan now. I like Lavan Fucks-a-Horse and Firesong Loves-Reflection-Too-Much so much my heart beats for them. Myste seems a well-rounded, realistic character. They aren't Karal. Who seriously should have died in a fire, and I swear I forgave Firesong everything ever for perpetuity for hating him. Just. DIAF.

2.) Now I remember why I stopped reading the Mage Storms trilogy. That was a nightmare. But Tremane made it worth it.

3.) If Elspeth and Gwena could be more smug and self-satisfied, I'm pretty sure they would explode.

4.) For a woman whose people sent demons after other people for fun, Solaris et al have an awful lot of self-righteous rage for Tremane assassinating Ulrich, who was also a demon caller and you know, I bet he might have like, sent them after people. You know, since that was his job and how he got his special robe and all.

5.) An'desha - die in a fire. You were so annoying when you got all 'healed' which seemed to mean 'being a dick and whining a lot' and 'being a dick and smug about it' and 'being a dick because you are finding a Higher Spiritual Plane'.

6.) Seriously. They brought back Tarma from the dead to talk about how awesome Karal was. I--what? Are you kidding me?

7.) Irony--Elspeth bringing assassins to assassinate Tremane for--assassinating people. Weird--no one seemed to think that was strange.

Notes on The Last Herald Mage:

Vanyel is awesome. I mean, this could be because Karal brain damaged me, but that's okay, you know why? Vanyel isn't Karal. Also, because only Vanyel could have a twink half his age with tons of sexual experience panting after him and not like, notice. And then when he does? Angsts about it. Oh Vanyel.

Final Notes:

Why is there no hate Karal groups? We need one. I want to join it. TEN WAYS KARAL DIES AND THE WORLD IS A BETTER PLACE.

This has been a message from me and my Kindle bonding.

This is random, but I was re-reading Shalador's Lady by Anne Bishop--and tried to decide if there was a colonial aspect to Cassidy going to Dena Nehele, and I have thought on this but most of them are mixed on the race issue, since from my first reading I assumed that the long lived races, or at least most of them, weren't white*, whereas the short lived races very much are, and nothing I've read since has contradicted that--okay, I went off topic, but people who read this, or hey, want to go read the series real fast? You can do that. I can wait for an answer.

( so this is odd )

Okay, now just regular squee.

( shalador's lady squee again )

Seriously, are the Blood bees? *blank* That can't be right.

In case you, too, want to know the answer, hey, Anne Bishop's page on Amazon! Yes, I really want everyone in the universe to read these so there are more people to talk to about them. THEY MIGHT BE HUMAN BEES!

Note

* I'm using 'non-white' instead of POC because I'm not sure it's appropriate in the way this fantasy series was introduced and developed, since it is really different in pretty much everything in how their societies are structured and arranged.

If using POC would be more appropriate or if 'non-white' is in any way offensive, please tell me and I'll make the change immediately. I had POC first, but since this fantasy doesn't follow anything even close to the white European medieval fantasy model (or the social structure of pretty much anything I've ever read or heard of in my life), and POC is, at least on LJ, a identification term that also has political/social history and connotations, I didn't want to take the term lightly or misuse its real life meaning in context of a fantasy series.

Finishing beta on fic that was due like, Monday. I hate work so much this week.

So, four things that are good in life; I need this list.

1.) I have a new phone! Due to the pretty much universality of phones at his school--and because he's thirteen and has shown responsibility--and because I cannot imagine anything more fun than me and my kid having matching Android phones so we can competitively text each other--I added a line for him, gave him Arthur the G1, and got myTouch G3 Slide in black. It's basically a streamlined G1, but neater, with five screens for icons, a slightly larger screen, a swype onscreen keyboard as well as the physical keyboard, and blah blah blah.

It does not yet have a name. I'm thinking!

2.) Child came in to point out there are no gay couples with children in cartoons or kid's shows. I want to say this came with like, some sort of catalyst, but no; apparently a week out of school with my niece and forced to watch a lot of shows about preteen girls and cartoons suitable for an eight year old have had an effect. One, he wants more books, like, now; two, there is not equal representation in television for the non-white.

To point out, this makes more sense if you know his class (and school) is minority white with a higher than average skew of kids of Turkish and Arabic descent who are also practicing Muslims. He's not exactly the most observant person on earth (thirteen year old boy; he barely remembers to wear pants sometimes), but it's hard not to notice when television life is so radically different from real life. Equally likely is that one of his friends mentioned it and he's been thinking about it for a while. Or both.

He's currently trying to create a facebook group to protest the Arizona immigration act; apparently--I am only going from what he told me--this is a very hot topic in his class among his friends.

I am not saying this is not possible; I am saying, I am trying desperately to visualize a bunch of twelve and thirteen year old kids debating this in the halls between class and failing. Did it come up in class discussion? I've been leery on those since The Day I Had to Explain Zionism and the Palestine Situation (ask me if I'm kidding; I'm not. I emailed

amireal incoherently) after his school had a speaker and my extempore speeches work a lot better if they aren't about like, a hideously complex situation with a few thousand years of history and segue that into the creation of the state of Israel after World War II and that's just the goddamn background. And if I know what the hell I'm talking about.

That was fun, by the way.

3.) I made delicious hamburger steak tonight with mashed potatoes and butter. Delicious.

4.) Loretta Chase is the first romance author I have ever read who has not only non-virgin heroines, but ones that if they were married, may have even had a good first husband, and if they weren't married, it's not a source of angst to the hero not to be the one to get her special hymen magic. One even had an illegitimate child she gave away as a child herself.

( i like her novels )

Because so many people gave good recs in my post about Georgette Heyer romances, I'm going to toss out a few more of my favorites.

Romances

Anything by Amanda Quick. They're kind of repetitive, but they're lower in misogyny, most of the female characters either have careers or are bluestocking and scholars, the heroes tend to be decent guys in general outside of the Regency mold and some are illegitimate sons of the higher aristocracy, which is new and interesting for a hero. Some are also very gay positive--one heroine was raised by her lesbian aunt and her partner (this later plays into a second plot where she assists two female lovers) and another, though again, it's been a while, involved a male partners (I think; I went through a hard Regency period (and um, Star Trek profic) period when I was pregnant with Child and then again about eight years ago, so it's been a while). They're also a lot of fun, light, frothy, caper-filled, and weirdly hilarious and sensible. They also, from my memory, keeping in mind Georgette Heyer, lack explicit racism, but it's been a while (about eight years) since I read them, so the implicit I can't be sure of.

Most by Catherine Coulter. She tends to have a memorable plot, my favorite being The Wild Baron with its supernatural/religious/Holy Grail aspects and a heroine who is not a virgin. Yes, I know! There are also cat races, which is just cute.

For sheer wtf entertainment and horror, anything by Virginia Henley. She made me read about Eleanor, sister of Henry III, and the huge variety of sexual capers everyone gets up to, not always vanilla, always in purple prose, and Simon de Montfort wears a special black leather penis sheathe--yes, a sheathe--to protect his huge massive horse-like cock (seriously) during battle (seriously). Think about that one. It's the equivalent of a very purple Nifty story. This is porn. This is long ass porn. Sometimes, you will be surprised by a priest giving someone drugs and having sex in the confessional, then there might later be a threesome and you don't know how you got there and suddenly you're on Crusade in Italy and the cock sheathe is back. Dropping acid first might help.

Judith McNaught - the only reason I like her is that her plotlines, while predictible, tend to be fun, but it's very typical contemporary romance, albeit not purple and is very well written. There will be in this order a.) dislike b.) falling in love c.) a tragic and horrific misunderstanding and d.) someone groveling. For variety, women usually keep their careers or some kind of outside interest than keeping house.

Marsha Canham - it's been years since I read her, but I remember vividly she came after my nightmare with Virginia Henley and was a refreshing change from Jude Devereaux. Pride of Lions is set during--God, the Jacobean uprising? It's pre-Regency, there are kilts, and the plotline is fascinatingly complicated sometimes and has some small but interesting politics and historical facts.

Feel free to drop your recs in here if you have any.

Looking For This Book, Help?

There is this novel and I only remember a few things about it, so here they are; one, the practical, common-sense female character is not interested in the male character, who has issues, they get caught in the garden making out, her reputation is ruined when he in a fit of temper thinking she was trying to compromise him then says he compromised her, and she sent him a bill stating what income she expected since she was his mistress and he better pay the fuck up. Then they get married. I think she has a brother (don't they all?). The male character has a best friend who is blond and hot and is infatuated with a married blond woman who is super hot and they get a book of their own later after her husband died or something.

I know this is not unique, but I remember this one because it was actually really funny, especially her detailing out what income she expected and what kind of apartment to get her in her new position as mistress. She was one of the first Romance heroines I read without an overly large chest and who was surprisingly uninterested in marriage.

God, Why Was This Book Written?

And randomly, but okay: has anyone ever finished Maia by Richard Adams? I have tried for years and years and I only get halfway through before I am so bored it hurts me. I originally got it in my teens and was thrilled by the surprisingly unvarnished sexual content but then gave up when it became a sleep aid. I made it through goddamn Anna Karenina finally, so it's not like I don't know how to read just to prove I can damn well do it. Is it just me? Does it get like, really good in the second (endless five million page) half?

I've been meaning to do a review of this one, because holy shit, this was awesome. Review for the prequel, The Shadow Queen, is here.

( books: shalador's lady )

This is a little jumbled, but honestly, I've read it several times and enjoyed it more each time. Cassidy is probably my favorite queen so far by sheer personality and an incredible work ethic and showing how the most important thing about a Queen isn't her power, but her ability to lead by example, to put the interests of her people before herself, and have the ability not only to know what to do and how to do it, but to know how to inspire her people to want to do those things.

Totally a must read.

Okay, so Georgette Heyer has officially become a hit or miss for me in reading--so far, I've hit three of her books that bored me to tears. Which is so depressing.

Still favorites: The Grand Sophy, Cotillion

Lots of fun: Faro's Daughter, Frederica, The Reluctant Widow

Okay but forgettable: The Nonesuch, The Corinthian

WTF: The Convenient Marriage, A Lady of Quality

Current in WTF: A Lady of Quality - holy God was that boring. I mean, it actually caused me physical pain to continue reading, mostly because I wanted to see if the two secondary characters would get married. Which they did not, but I hope they will; they were the only interesting people. Compared to how well she did Frederica, and Sophy was utterly, utterly brilliant a character, not to mention Cotillion's utter amazingness in breaking a lot of tropes regarding the hero in Regency Romance (Freddy: most awesomely practical, down to earth hero in history, and so well dressed while he did it!).

This is frustrating. Argh. I'm trying to nail down the difference besides characters, but I have a feeling it has a lot to do with the plot she shapes around each character. I can't tell which one she starts with in storytelling, but I have to admit, Lady of Quality doesn't irritate me as much as The Convenient Marriage (shudders) but at least that one was interesting.

I'm going to need to find a supplemental author for light reading--aka, anything I can read in under five hours. *sighs* Dammit.

Note: Georgette Heyer's romance novels contain sexism, classism, some racism, and occasional bouts of anti-Semitism in stereotyped fringe characters (I can remember only once, but it was freaking memorable), so readers be aware. It's historically accurate, but for me it was still really jarring and really unpleasant, even if it wasn't more than a couple of pages devoted to the plotline, it stuck with me.

So I finally finished Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough, which somehow manages to be even more depressing than The October Horse and that's where Caesar died and was not a good time for me. I have no idea how she managed to make this one gutting, but dear God, she really did, and this is with characters I really didn't like. I'd thought I was putting it off for that, but as it turns out, that's not why I didn't want to read it. I kind of wish I hadn't, now. I hate deathfic.

(My reactions when reading The October horse in 2005ish.)

( seriously, wtf colleen? )

Why I probably should never consider a career in finance.

While reading House of Cards by William D. Cohan:

By page 83:

seperis: Oh, this is sad.
seperis: [paraphrasing from book] Paul Friedman was exhausted, emotionally and physically. He took the train to his house in Scarsdale, at the end of a cul-de-sac. He collapsed in bed with the help of an Ambien and hoped to get some sleep. It was seven thirty. "At 9:15, I'm asleep and I hear knocking. Susie come upstairs and says "Timmy Greene is on the phone for you". I say, "He's on the phone for me now? What day is it?""
seperis: He's a Bear Stearns exec and has been awake since Wednesday.
seperis: And this is Friday night.
seperis: He says "get the lawyers involved" in a deal with JP Morgan.

amireal: That sounds about right
seperis: And Timmy said that the lawyer had taken a sleeping pill beforehand.
seperis: And fell asleep during the conversation.[end paraphrasing from book]
seperis: Who had also been awake since Wednesday.
seperis: No the fuck wonder Bear fell.
seperis: THEY TRIED TO SLEEP DEPRIVE THEIR EXECS TO DEATH
seperis: Jesus.
seperis: I can't even conceive of these numbers. 400 billion in assets.
Just all non-liquid.
seperis: *blank*
amireal: This is partially why I freaked out with Disney buying Marvel.

By page 99:

seperis: Okay, if I'd been Bear Stearns?
seperis: I would have damn well bankrupted and collapsed the system.
seperis: But I like to blow things up.
seperis: *grins*
amireal: heh
seperis: Okay, definitely.
seperis: I would hold my finger over the nuclear option.
seperis: Possibly just to see who blinked first.
amireal: I think it would matter how much I wanted to hurt people
seperis: *Thoughtful* I would not be good at stock broking, but I would be awesome during Mexican standoffs.
amireal: Or if I was in a mood.
seperis: ...we're both in moods a lot.
seperis: Maybe we should join Wall Street.
amireal: Hmm
seperis: *mulls* We could collapse the finanical district during our next periods.
amireal: it's possible there would much damage
amireal: or we'd end up supreme overloards
seperis: Show them what's too big to fall. Let's test that shit.
amireal: Chase? WHO NEEDS CHASE? Come on fuckers, play ball.
seperis: Two dollars a share? Bring that shit, baby. Game on.
amireal: We could collect stock in companies relating to basic elements. Like Diamonds. Or silicone.

And this is why

amireal and I aren't allowed to work with money. Ever. Because we would collapse the financial world the next time Arthur pisses me off during Merlin. Wow, could you imagine what would have happened when SGA got canceled?

amireal: MAYBE CNBC CAN BECOME OUR SLAVES

But I'm tempted.

ETA:

Okay, wow.

p.136

This is from Moldaver, a Bear Stearns exec, to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, during a meeting between the execs and Dimon. Live, if you will.

Quote:

"I've heard some people refer to this as a shotgun wedding," Moldaver said. "I wouldn't use that term. I'd cll this a shotgun wedding to a rapist. Yeah, yeah, the girl was lying there naked on the ground when you found her, that's true, but you did it anyway."

This was before the deal was altered to $10 a share. I am trying to figure out how you shout that kind of analogy and not, you know, herniate something.

Recently, due to aforementioned sulking, I've been reading.

The Shadow Queen by Anne Bishop, latest of the Black Jewels novels. Possibly, this is the least sexually violent of the books so far--I know! Weird!--and it's possibly my favorite (for totally non-related reasons, though I will admit a refreshing lack of flinching). The novel follows two separate plotlines; one about Cassidy, a Rose-jeweled queen who goes to Terreille to become a territory queen at the request of the descendants of the Gray Lady, as their Territory is a mess, and the second following Daemon and Saetan's continuing traumatic flashbacks. Okay, I love Saetan and Daemon and everything, but seriously, the Cassidy stuff is fantastic and I could have lived without the other, but of all the Jewel novels, I'm going to say this one is my favorite. Cassidy is awesome.

( a bit more explanation )

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William Cohan, which is self-explanatory on what it is about. I'm not done yet, and I do not even pretend to know how accurate it is so far, but I picked this one up because Fortune had an excerpt a while back and I really loved reading it.

( bit more here )

I have not yet read every Georgette Heyer Regency out there, but I am trying. So far:

Cotillion, Grand Sophy, The Nonesuch, The Corinthian, The Convenient Marriage, Frederica, False Colours, The Reluctant Widow. *grimly* I am trying. I will say, Cotillion and The Grand Sophy are my favorite, and I seriously loathed The Convenient Marriage like whoa. Really a lot. Like, DIAF to everyone. They were that annoying. Except oddly, the heroine's reprobate brother. He's kind of dim and sweet. I LIKE THE DIM, SWEET IDIOT WHO GAMBLES TOO MUCH. I mean, that's not a good sign.

Still in progress:

Antony and Cleopatra: A Novel by Colleen McCullough. I sort of need to be in a melodramatic mood to read the Masters of Rome series. Mostly because it just gets. More. Crazy. With. Every. Book. And people? I've been reading this series since I was fifteen years old. I have been reading this series over half my life. I also need to replace my paperback version of The First Man in Rome because it is now in several parts. In the inside cover is my name and the date I bought it. I treasure that.

...actually, I need to replace most of them, come to think. My mother borrowed these nad well, yeah.

Earth's Magic by Pamela Service, the YA King Arthur in the Post-Apocalyptic Future novels. Actually, in progress is it's prequel, Yesterday's Magic. There was this--thing. Wiht my bed and timespace.

A Short History of the Jewish People by Raymond P. Scheindlin. This one got lost for a while. it's a long and terrible story involving my bed and a strange series of events. (And timespace.)

Not Read Yet, Still Bracing Self:

Unmasked: An Erotic Tale of the Phantom of the Opera (I hate myself)
Master: An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo (Don't judge me.)
House of Leaves (Like, I keep scaring myself with this one. IDEK.)
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (This is part of the terrible story involving my bed and a strange series of events. Possibly there is a timespace disturbance underneath? IDK.)

There is also a small pile of read Jane Austen sequels that make me hate myself, but I feel I should review them to warn people away. Some people have drugs. I have Jane Austen sequels as my kryptonite. Even when they are bad. Very, very bad.

I think a great deal can be said about my current mood in that I'm finding like, reams of meaning in Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins. Reams. Like paper, but less corporeal and filled with fifteen year old girl angst. Well, fifteen year old me angst--that was when I was writing a sequel to Phantom of the Opera where Raoul was drugging Christine and had her locked up in his chateau in France and she barely escaped with her life and crossed the entirety of France because she was like, intuitively certain Eric was alive, and oh my God I tried to write sex.

That's not specifically what I was angsting about then--I was angsting because I couldn't speak French so as to make it more authentic and if it would be wrong if they had sex before they got married.

I come by my fanfic tendencies honestly, at least. This is also why I find ff.net ridiculously charming sometimes. I want to pinch their cheeks and say, yes, they can have sex first. Don't worry so much! You don't have to learn French! Or Catholicism. Or the French road system. Or have a horrified midnight revelation there were no toilets.

Keep in mind there was one small used bookstore and I was buying things like Book of the Courier and reading bad romance novels and not just for the porn. I needed to research.

Sharing now:

If you write a story about--oh, random, Princess Eleanor marrying Simon de Montfort, you know, this doesn't exist, you will give fifteen year old girls really inflated expectations of what to expect in the way of the shaft of love. Holy God, Virginia, what were you thinking?

If you write about random English noblewomen pretending to be servants to stop their (possibly?) younger sister from making a dreadful mistake and a Russian prince's servants assume she is a prostitute wiht a bad attitude, kidnap her and drug her with Spanish fly, leading to life-changing orgasms, don't be surprised this is something their librarian will catch them researching in the freaking twenty year old Encyclopedia Brittanica.

If you are Catherine Coulter--don't change anything. I love you.

If you are the one who had a thing for women who marry their rapists or men who rape other people and cause them to suicide in horror, that's not romance, that's soft-core Gor Light. Deal.

Your name may be Jude Deveraux. I'm not over that yet.

If you are Frank Herbert and were responsible for a twelve year old girl suddenly making the theoretical-to-practical leap of "penis goes into vagina, oh, so that's how it works!"--hey, thanks. It's fairly likely you saved me from years of therapy. Jude was right after you.

For making a twelve year old wonder how you go about that imprinting thing, leading to another round of Encyclopedia Brittanica research--really, Frank. Really. Detail, man. Detail.

If you are not Frank Herbert and wrote Dune novels....you're not actually improving. And it wasn't like the first one set that high a bar. However, thank you for the image of the Baron floating desperately after Feyd-Rautha toddling in pure evil on a balcony. I will say, if you meant to have so much humor in there, I'd be impressed. But then I read about Jessica's smooth oval face and soft white throat eighty times and realize it was an accident. A cruel accident, that kept me reading.

If you are Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, a Russian novelist, or named Joseph Heller--you taught me I will never love anything with the word classic appended.

If you are Jane Austen or Robert Louis Stevenson or Jules Verne, you proved me wrong.

If you are Orson Welles--well, you're Orson Wells. Well done.

Thank you Narnia--before you were an expression of my faith, you were the fairy tales of my childhood and Eustace was amazing. Thank you Sydney von Scyoc--I didn't know what I was reading until years later, but you told me sci-fi was about people in the end and I've never forgotten the lesson. The ships were just there for window dressing. Thank you Anne McCaffrey--this is how I found out about gay sex and Romeo and Juliet as a universal language. Thank you Marion Zimmerman Bradley--you are why I seek out the stories of women, and led me to Sharon Kay Penman and Cecilia Holland and Mercedes Lackey and Julie Dean Smith.

Melanie Rawn gave me my name and Stephen King the desire to build the worlds I'd write and VC Andrews the power of taboo. Lucy Maud Montgomery reminded me to tell my son about elves beneath the house and gnomes in the garden and fairies that you can only catch with a special net and after cleaning your room, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

And then I turned sixteen, but that's another list altogether.

You know, this wouldn't have happened if in fifth grade, Ms Bartz hadn't orchestrated a reading competition and told us the highest number of books anyone had ever read in six weeks. Who doesn't want to double that? No one, that's who.

Trekfic clocked 33k and is in final beta. I'm in a very good mood. Let's have cookies!

Gakked from Fyrdrakken:

Top 10 Films That Traumatise Small Children and 10 Great Children's Books For People Who Hate Their Children

I'm going to make a point about the movies one, since the books one is just laughable.

Watership fucking Down - if you are like me and saw that shit during the impressionable pre-eight-years-old age, you might have come out of it with a strong terror of a.) mist and b.) life. Who the hell gives that to a kid to watch? Network TV, that's who. I mean, if I was going to ever say "What makes me unable to watch a horror movie or anything involving fog", this movie is the reason. I cannot talk about this rationally because I do not remember any of it but I remember terror, and despair, and a general feeling that the world not only sucked, but it would only get worse from here on out.

People. I cannot read the book. I have looked at it and felt my entire body twitch in sheer horror. And I remember the opening sequence and the ears and the legs and how the entire world was out to kill them. Kill them all. Adn by them, I mean, me, because I was below-eight and lookie there, I identified with the small, soft creature being everyone's dinner.

Adding:

The Secret of NIMH (not listed in top 11) - to this day, I still can't comprehend anyone sane put that in a movie theatre for anyone below the age of fifteen. I have the children's edition book somewhere. Again, let me point out, I cannot remember any of it. But I remember watching, and I remember fear. Overwhelming fear.

Agree with their list? Disagree? I have a couple of others that doubtless I'll be flashbacking to over the next few days. I mean, Bambi hurt, and Ole Yeller hurt, but just looking at The Dark Crystal is stirring things deep in my psyche that may mean yes, I did see that, and there are very good reasons I do not remember it.

Yes, yes, yes, my mood is indeed distressed.

ETA: WHY THE HELL DID I GO BACK AND WATCH THAT DAMN HAZEL CLIP? RABBIT TURNED TO LEAVES AND RED EYED STYLIZED DEAD RABBITS! WELCOME TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCE. THERE GOES MY SLEEP FOR A FEW DAYS.

ETA 2: Right, so I've just--helped everyone relive their traumatic childhood media experiences. Um. You're welcome? IT'S NOT LIKE I WILL BE SLEEPING EITHER OKAY?

Via metafandom:

What I Think About Twilight by

helen_keeble, which explores the agency Bella has in her own life in transportation, social expectations, and, oddly yet not, dinner menu.

That reminds me of the fact that even now, fourteen years past legal, I still get a certain thrill from eating out. The more I have to dress up to eat there, the more I enjoy it. Huh.

( but, this is not about twilight )

This one is by the same person who wrote Jane Fairfax that drove me so absolutely nuts. Just a warning. I think the review is under this tag.

I've finally worked out the problems I've always had with Joan Aiken's Jane Austen sequels. She gets language right, she gets atmosphere, she has setting nailed, and she does some interesting things with the characters that occasionally does not make me cry vexedly. But she utterly, utterly lacks a sense of humor. Like it was surgically removed.

Austen's wit, both subtle and not so much, is entirely lost on Aiken, and I mean entirely. Mansfield Revisited is honestly the best of the lot she's written due to the fact it's very short, so she has minimal time for her lack of any rudimentary sense of humor to really start irritating me.

(Note: I still contend Emma's friendship with Harriet was a comedy and was intended to be one; there was just too much wrong with it, and I'm not even speaking of differences in class. From start to finish, it was combination girl crush, comedy of errors, and something very much nineteenth century Three Stooges meets Murphy's Law. When Harriet falls for Knightly, you only wonder how on earth Emma didn't see that coming.)

But nevermind. Mansfield Revisited or, how to make something so short seem to last so very, very, very, very long.

( spoilers, if you haven't read the book )

Got Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets today, because being a fangirl means getting all your source as quickly as you can. Plus, there's only thirteen eps in the first two seasons box set and I have to space them out carefully. And avoid losing a month (a la Due South) and being vaguely shocked when August arrived and I still haven't bought a plane ticket to VVC (yes, this actually happened. August was a total shock).

Also got Jane Aiken's Mansfield Park Revisited, which is at least not the horror that Jane Fairfax or Eliza's Daughter was (both of which make me twitch, esp Eliza's Daughter). It's not great by any means, but I can squint and conceivably see this as a possible future, sort of.

Also, for anyone who likes Pride and Prejudice sequels, the mysterious Shades of Pemberley, which was published in the--thirties? Forties?-- and never re-released and thus became kind of a P and P legend, has finally been re-released and looks interesting. I think I'll schedule that one for next month. From internet P and P related buzz, it's supposed to be really good and until now, copies were hiked up pretty freaking high for a copy. So let us all hope. I'm curious.

(Still have not read House of Leaves. I'm tempted to wait until the next convention and make someone sit with me the whole time while reading it. Possibly holding my hand.)

Hamlet, of All Things

So last year, Child's fifth grade reading class did a turn at Shakespeare (I have no idea how I missed this), so imagine my surprise when Child came up yesterday to tell me that he wanted to make Hamlet 3. I blinked.

(I knew their English curriculum was interesting and varied, but I didn't know they hit Hamlet and Twelfth Night. I feel I have failed as a parent, because I could have been using Shakespeare for ammunition all this time and I haven't. I've lost at least seven months of random literary references when he misbehaves. This is not fun.)

Anyway, they apparently acted out parts of it, which is, bar none, the best way ever to get anyone to read the plays and enjoy them, and Child summarized the play pretty thoroughly up until mentioning the kingdom of Detroit.

Me: Denmark.

Child: I knew that sounded wrong.

I feel better.

Random Reading

Anyway, today I read Child and Niece an article on women's suffrage--the Tennessee vote that gave the US the thirty-sixth vote to add the Nineteenth Amendment. Child has theoretically been aware of the concept of people having no right to vote at certain periods Before Now, but he was still utterly shocked, and the idea that at least two female relatives he knows who have since passed away were born before that right was recognized. Personally, I find it weird as well.

So spent part of my afternoon buying my niece's birthday gift and reading Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens. It's a fairly fast and interesting overview read, at least to me, but I will say the structure drove me nuts with the tendency to stop at the critical moment--a judge ordering the women held in Virginia at the Occoquan Workhouse to be brought to DC--then wanders off to something far less interesting. So lots of stopping and jumping around and going back, as I am not patient and also dreading the next account of force-feeding or any description of any people eating worm infested soup or raw pork.

( random bits )

My internet access has been icky and I have been in a bad mood adn pretty much the one awesome thing in the universe is Fraser. Yes, it has been that kind of a weekend.

Moonshine by

moirarogers - a friend sent me a copy to read, as the friend wrote it and just started e-publishing and I have a weakness like you would not believe for supernatural fantasy. And erotica. Yes, I'm sure you'd believe that part.

I'm torn; I don't want to spoil, but I do want to say what I liked about it. So below cut, very lightly.

( very mild spoilers )

Here is also a link to the author's website: http://moirarogers.com/

If the universe is fair, I will not keep having my connection fizzle when trying to read. Let us all send a special feeling of hope toward Road Runner.

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star trek: my pain is legion
books: l.m. montgomery
(no subject)
books: written in red by anne bishop
this is exactly what I was looking for
books: american gods redux
reading: american gods
richard iii is found!
when wholesome memories of your first incest kink go very wrong
books: redoubt by mercedes lackey
banned books: really?
my life in short, including samauri
books: loretta chase, georgette heyer, the bourne effect, and the sphere of competence
books: edenbrooke by julianne donaldson
books: The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon by Veronica Buckle
books: helter skelter by vincent bugliosi
books: silk is for seduction by loretta chase
books: mr darcy takes a wife and sequels
books: mr darcy takes a wife
books: a woman's estate by roberta gellis
author: anne mccaffrey
bookrec: The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer
books: anne of green gables and sequels, reviewish
books: anne of green gables et al
my saturday is not raining
yes, this is exactly as rambling as it looks
books: a heyer at amazon extavaganza
movie: wuthering heights (tom hardy version)
books: here be dragons by sharon kay penman
amazon kindle books on sale
book: these old shades and the devil's cub by georgette heyer
the point is that i don't have to look to know for sure
books: twilight's dawn by anne bishop
books: foundation by mercedes lackey
so much diaf
books: shalador's lady redux
thing that are life affirming
books: romance authors
books: shalador's lady by anne bishop
books: lady of quality by georgette heyer
book: antony and cleopatra by colleen mccullough
so why not liveblog my reading? i never promised to be interesting, you know
books, books, books
my love letters tend to ramble
it's like the special edition guide to nightmares
the age of reading comprehension, ages eleven through fifteenish
books: Mansfield Revisited by Joan Aiken
books, books everywhere
saturday afternoon at leisure
pro novella rec - Moonshine by Moira Rogers

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