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books read
Sep. 12th, 2005 11:23 amShirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959).
I got about halfway through and then skipped to the end to see how it turned out. It just wasn't my thing at all. I'm not very interested in suspense and found the characters dated. Sorry, fans.
Jane Aiken Hodge, The Private World of Georgette Heyer (1984).
A good read, very well-written. A biography and a literary biography, but not a particularly juicy one - Mrs. Rougier was a very private and correct woman. The one juicy snippet - accusations of plagiarism against a famous fellow-novelist - remains quite vague, sadly. (But did you know that the phrase "to make a cake of oneself" was a Heyer original, pulled from a contemporary letter, and every author who uses it now - and they all do - is copying Heyer?) Most interesting for the brief but excellent evaluations of the books, and for Mrs. Rougier's opinion of the genre which she spawned (very low indeed). I am sure she is too dignified to be currently rolling in her grave about Regency Disneyland - affronted hauteur, yes. She would also gladly die rather than maintain a blog for her fandom. If you are a Heyer fan, or are interested in historical romance as a genre, this is a must-read.
I got about halfway through and then skipped to the end to see how it turned out. It just wasn't my thing at all. I'm not very interested in suspense and found the characters dated. Sorry, fans.
Jane Aiken Hodge, The Private World of Georgette Heyer (1984).
A good read, very well-written. A biography and a literary biography, but not a particularly juicy one - Mrs. Rougier was a very private and correct woman. The one juicy snippet - accusations of plagiarism against a famous fellow-novelist - remains quite vague, sadly. (But did you know that the phrase "to make a cake of oneself" was a Heyer original, pulled from a contemporary letter, and every author who uses it now - and they all do - is copying Heyer?) Most interesting for the brief but excellent evaluations of the books, and for Mrs. Rougier's opinion of the genre which she spawned (very low indeed). I am sure she is too dignified to be currently rolling in her grave about Regency Disneyland - affronted hauteur, yes. She would also gladly die rather than maintain a blog for her fandom. If you are a Heyer fan, or are interested in historical romance as a genre, this is a must-read.