What I'm Reading Wednesday

[thisbluespirit]

What I've Finished Reading
Mostly Regencies! I was taken to a different library by a friend and it was full of them, what could I do? They're reading candyfloss and I can't help it, even though I know I'm the wrong person to read them because whatever it is I'm after, they're not quite it. Still mostly fun, though. I just wish the latest one would stop having people say, "Brilliant!" It would feel like we had time-slipped into the 1980s if it had ever felt as if we were anywhere near the 1820s in the first place. (Sorry, deadline-ridden, hard-working Romance authors! I know, I know, I should leave you alone! But... I don't.)

I also re-read Heyer's Charity Girl. It's the last one she wrote (or completed, anyway), but it's also one I find weird in that there's nothing obviously wrong with it that I can ever quite put my finger on, and there are a bunch of engaging side characters but I always wind up doing the same thing in re-reading it, which is: I wait years and years, then start it again, thinking, "Hey, why didn't I like this one last time? It's pretty good!" and then by the end I feel like slapping Hetta and the Viscount for being too smug and heartless and feel that Cherry and Cary Nethercott are well out of that. And yet what is really so different from all the rest? I DON'T KNOW.

I finished the Mrs Jeffries thing. That was... a book. And mostly pretty inoffensive and all.

I also finished two local history books on Barnstaple. I still feel that I don't know quite enough about Barnstaple, though, which is a bit of an unsatisfactory outcome. I wonder if there's any way of me getting hold of the 19th C local histories at some time? (Now I have slightly more of a brain again, our sad expensive charges for ILLs are really getting to be a nuisance. By the time you're spending £8, you might as well just try and buy the book.) I bet they're more in depth and more fun to read. Or, better still, if you know someone handy in North Devon, tell them it's a serious gap in the market.

I also read Belle by Paulina Byrne, which is too slight a biography to comment on really. That isn't a complaint; it's just that hardly anything is known about Dido Elizabeth Belle. It was actually interesting to read from the point of view of how to write NF about someone you know very little about, because if I do write up some family history, that's how most of it will be, regardless of all my best efforts.


What I'm Reading Now

Another regency (the one where they keep saying 'brilliant'). It was being pretty mindlessly enjoyable, but now the plot has twisted and I'm not at all sure why everyone has decided they must all rush off to an inn to see somebody's father. And I don't know why I'm even cavilling at that, given that people keep saying 'brilliant.' Otherwise nothing really.

In NF note-taking, I have moved onto In These Times by Jenny Uglow, a social history of Britain 1793-1815. It looks promisingly interesting and useful, but since I am only on page 7 of 650 or so, it's too early to say much else.


What I'm Reading Next

I don't know, but I probably do need to find something a bit better in the fiction line. I'll get to go to the library when I go to the doctor's on the 17th, so maybe I'm find some more John Dickson Carr or something else that will suit my need for not very taxing but also interesting fiction. Who knows? Possibly The Valley of Fear in the meantime and skim-reading a Skulduggery Pleasant book for wrangling purposes.

Comments

some meta abt Regencies

[acciochocolate.livejournal.com]

I have little use for Regency historicals as published nowadays, but that's JMHO and YMMV. Since you didn't list titles/authors, I have no idea if that's what you're reading. :) Members of the Regency list at Yahoogroups (many Regency writers post there, so you should join) state that many such take place in a Regencyland theme park, w/ 21st-century people w/ their morals, cosplaying in Regency garb. I tend to agree w/ them. Also too much graphic sex where the whole event is glorious and perfect every time! LOL, a fantasy indeed. I much prefer a slow development of a real relationship, which you often find in the traditional Regency novels.

Signet, Fawcett, Zebra and others had good trad Regency lines until abt 2000-2005, when 1st the copy editors for those lines were fired, and then the good editors were let go, or told to buy only the historicals, because the publishers thought that was what their readers wanted: lots of sex outside of marriage and very little history. Sad. Today's Regency writers aren't doing research, because it's not asked of them.

I'll direct you to this article:

http://thebeaumonde.com/the-good-ton-is-back/

and The Good Ton:

http://thenonesuch.org/index.html

Trads can still be found in USBs or bought on-line. Many trad writers are bringing their older trads back into "print" via e-books.

Harlequin still has a small line in Regencies that harkens back to the trads.

Not all Regencies are candyfloss, although I'll admit that some are cute and cuddly; that latter is usually to be found amongst the short stories. A lot of the better Regency writers used their stories to point at the social ills that Dickens and other writers brought to the public eye in the Victorian era. In this doom'n'gloom era, a little light reading may be needed to keep us from being so depressed by current events in the UK and the USA.

Re: some meta abt Regencies

[thisbluespirit]

I'd also decided that most of them take place in a Regency theme park. It seems to be the best explanation! :-)

I think some of the authors have clearly done quite a lot of research, but nobody at editing level is worrying about it. In some ways, they're all not quite what I'm after and I almost prefer the ones that are pure fluff - at least they are what they are! The more modern ones tend to be longer and more lively and fluffier, the older ones tend to be shorter and sometimes a little more correct, but often sadly less lively. I have noticed that some of the Mills & Boon authors (Harlequin over here) are better in many ways than the big romance names, but it varies a lot. I don't list the names here, because it would unfair to pick on anyone for random things, really. Romance gets enough criticism from everybody without me joining in. But the Regencies do work as mercifully easy reading, so I will keep picking one up every now and then.

Thanks for the links! I'm really just dependent on what I pick up in the library or charity shops, though.

Re: some meta abt Regencies

[acciochocolate.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of help! Barbara Metzger wrote the wittiest farces ever. :) A lot of the short story collections have amusing tales; I loved the kitten series from Zebra. I now understand yr reluctance to mention names; romance is put down by those who also dislike things like any genre stories or cosplay or fanfiction or filking. Boring people, in other words. LOL!