Bess, I saw that biography in the Bas Bleu catalog (I think it was) and thought it looked interesting. Maybe I should get a copy.
(I also think I will try one of the Regencies...I think I saw The Grand Sophy reviewed somewhere and it looks fun.)
It's nice, once in a while, to have books that are just plain FUN to read. As I've said before, I don't read a lot of the highly-acclaimed modern novels (the MLA sorts of novels) because so many of them seem to be Cavalcades of Dysfunction where people just mistreat each other and do foolish things and then marvel that those things have consequences....I've read a few (mainly back when I was part of a book club) and just found them hard to fight through. And as much as I like many of the "classics" - well, sometimes it's a hard slog to read Victorian prose when you're tired late in the evening, and some authors of that era (Dickens stands out) report so many of the inequities and unfairnesses that, if you're a sensitive sort who is already perhaps feeling a bit emotionally raw, it becomes hard to read them.
2 comments:
Oh you are SO singing my song. I just won't read another novel about a bitchy snarky woman and her weakling men. Ugh. bleh. Enough already. Like reading the Jerry Springer show.
but here's an author you might like - Marissa de los Santos. Her first book Love Walked It's the first book I've read in 20 years that wished I had written. (Clyde Edgerton's Raney was the last one, I betcha) Beautiful sentences elegantly constructed - but not so slow the plot didn't move. And though this book might have spiraled into repulsive dysfunction - it didn't. Good people solved a problem in a healthy way. Yet there was enough of a problem to create the tension needed to move a story forward. A yummy little story.
My "favorite" Heyers are too many to list, but I would actually recommend starting with Lady of Quality -- I don't think The Grand Sophy is her best work. Beyond that I'd especially recommend The Nonesuch, Frederica (which I found hysterically funny, especially Felix and the Baluchistan Hound), Sylvester and The Toll-Gate. You might also like Beauvallet, which is not Regency (it's 16th century) but involves a rather feisty Spanish bride!
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