book re-read

Georgette Heyer, Cotillion. Spoilers follow.
Not that the title appears to have anything to do with the content of the book. I love this one. Everyone is absolutely silly, including Kitty, our heroine, and Freddy, our hero. The sole rational human in the entire book is Freddy's father (who is ironical but not sneery in nature). And yet the author loves silly yet clueful Freddy and loves bighearted Kitty and even loves the vastly silly plot devices, Olivia and the Chevalier and Dolph and his lady-love. Even Jack, the villain, is a human being (one of my favorite things about Heyer is that for the most part her "villians" are simply people whose desires conflict with the hero/ine's, and aren't uttery depraved/insane like so many baddies in modern romance.) And Freddy knocks Jack down at the end! And Uncle Matthew marries Fish, and Kitty is happy about it!

reposted from b.org

Because I'm behind in Casper notes:

Help. Kind neighbor lady with 7 year old too big for baby toys has just brought over approximately every Fisher Price Little People item EVER MADE. My living room is awash (well, MORE awash) in bright plastic. Farm and Circus and Fire Station and Train and... And they TALK. And mr. flea is playing with them too. I'm never getting Casper to bed tonight. I ought to just flee now and let him deal with bedtime.

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Oh, just wait until after bedtime. At least half of them will magically disappear (into the basement) overnight.

Unfortunately, she seems to like the really noisy one best. Though that could be mr. flea. The Little People talk on the phone to each other. Whatever happened to the goddamned imagination?

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Oh, god. The child (who went to bed with a couple of the smaller toys) has learned manipulation. First we hear the call, "Poopy diiiiiaper!" mr. flea goes in to check. "Your diaper isn't poopy; it's clean." Casper thinks for a second. "Wet diiiiiiiaper." Nice try kid, ya think we were born yesterday? Last night, I swear to god, she smacked her head on the side of the crib on purpose so she could cry and call out "I bump my head!" so we'd go in to her.