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Thank goodness there are books.
Recently Finished
A Gilded Vanity by Richard Dehan, who turns out to be a pseudonym for Clotilde Graves, a successful early 20th c playwright and novelist, and also a cousin of Robert Graves. I really enjoyed this; I loved the overwrought prose, ticking clockwork plot, and scores of secret/hidden/false marriages interspersed with long descriptions of furniture, jewelry, dresses, etc etc, and the Edwardian Moral Messaging about the evils of non-companionate marriage and the expectations of easy divorce made me giggle more often than not. I wonder if all her books are like this, or if this was particularly itself, and if that latter, was it magazine fiction? The pacing of the plot and the reiteration of plot points suggests so.
On the Go
I am halfway through The March North and continuing to find interesting things on every single page.
I am also halfway through What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan and still enjoying his detailed look at little aspects of Austen's novels.
Lisa & Co. (Jilly Cooper) is mostly horrifying worldbuilding; her dystopic view of gender relations is really something, as well as the weird ways that the characters focus on some particular physical feature (legs, collarbones) and obsess over whether or not theirs is up to the current fashionable design, only to discover at the end that their partner of choice actually prefers the physical feature as they embody it. I am enjoying this a great deal but I am sure it is not in the manner that the author intended.
Other books are on the go but it has been too busy for reading, really, so no progress has been made.
Upcoming
Leonard Cohen's poetry, more Jilly Cooper, some early Joan Aiken novels, about forty other things... I want to be less tired so that I can read more.
Recently Finished
A Gilded Vanity by Richard Dehan, who turns out to be a pseudonym for Clotilde Graves, a successful early 20th c playwright and novelist, and also a cousin of Robert Graves. I really enjoyed this; I loved the overwrought prose, ticking clockwork plot, and scores of secret/hidden/false marriages interspersed with long descriptions of furniture, jewelry, dresses, etc etc, and the Edwardian Moral Messaging about the evils of non-companionate marriage and the expectations of easy divorce made me giggle more often than not. I wonder if all her books are like this, or if this was particularly itself, and if that latter, was it magazine fiction? The pacing of the plot and the reiteration of plot points suggests so.
On the Go
I am halfway through The March North and continuing to find interesting things on every single page.
I am also halfway through What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan and still enjoying his detailed look at little aspects of Austen's novels.
Lisa & Co. (Jilly Cooper) is mostly horrifying worldbuilding; her dystopic view of gender relations is really something, as well as the weird ways that the characters focus on some particular physical feature (legs, collarbones) and obsess over whether or not theirs is up to the current fashionable design, only to discover at the end that their partner of choice actually prefers the physical feature as they embody it. I am enjoying this a great deal but I am sure it is not in the manner that the author intended.
Other books are on the go but it has been too busy for reading, really, so no progress has been made.
Upcoming
Leonard Cohen's poetry, more Jilly Cooper, some early Joan Aiken novels, about forty other things... I want to be less tired so that I can read more.
