37 weeks; books

[flea]

Wait 50 minutes, weight 171, BP 100/58, heartbeat good, head down, argument about "waspy" vs. "Polish" names for Dillo ongoing. Maybe we should just name the kid Dillo and have done with it.

Books read:
Loretta Chase, Isabella.
Loretta Chase, Knaves' Wager.
Loretta Chase, The Sandalwood Princess.
All vintage late 1980s. Reading them in swift succession made me less appreciative than I otherwise might have been; I found the heroes tended to be a bit overbearing and the heroines a bit dim/driven by emotion/in need of rescue. Knaves' Wager especially made me a bit pissy - nobody should fall in love with someone who is so much of an asshole. Despite these failings, the characters resembled actual humans, the setting was mostly historically accurate, and the writing capable - all, I suspect, more common in those days than now.

Comments

[susanw.livejournal.com]

Knaves' Wager is my least favorite of those three. The Sandalwood Princess and Devil's Delilah are my favorite early Chases.

But as for the late 80's romances being better, I think that's at least partly because the 20-year-old romances that are still being reprinted and read are the cream of the crop. I recently picked up a batch of 80's Regencies by unknown writers at my local thrift store hoping to find buried treasure and for the most part struck out. However, they were bad in a different way than current bad Regencies. The 80's books ran to overbearing heroes, petulant foot-stomping heroines that I was apparently supposed to find adorable, and lots of melodrama. 2006 bad Regencies are ahistorical fluff with sexually liberated heroines and heroes in stupidly named spy clubs.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

These were all from the library, reprints I think but c. 1990, so not recent reprints! Actually, I've been meaning to ask you if you can recommend some other authors of this era - I've enjoyed both Chase and Carla Kelley, and my public library seems to have a fair number of older regencies, but instead of picking at random I'd rather start with recommendations. (Signed, expecting to read a large number of short frothy books over the next few months, as have no Tivo.)

[susanw.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Mary Jo Putney, Jo Beverley, and Mary Balogh all got their start in the shorter-length traditional Regencies. Also Edith Layton and Candice Hern.

(Loretta Chase's early books have mostly been re-released in the past few years, which is why I was assuming reprints.)

[susanw.livejournal.com]

Oh, and if you want pure, unadulterated froth, try Marion Chesney. And another I just thought of who I think is more 1970's, but a lot of libraries tend to have her--Clare Darcy.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Oh for criyi. Edward Copernicus it is.

(What? Copernicus was a Polish person's name. In Latin.)