Susan Chapek > Recent Status Updates

I suggested that my Dear Boy, who has never read past page 2 of any Austen, read this book instead. Instead, did I say? He is now midway thru P&P (the OG), and racing to the finish.

Not sure what page or percentage--listening to it, and I'm on Chapter 20 or so.
This is a darker, sadder season in Three Pines. Not sure I want to linger much longer.

One thing I adore in Trollope is the long duet argument scenes, and in this book he tops himself with a trio: Reverend Josiah Crawley, Bishop Proudie, and the domineering Mrs. Proudie. Crawley, with his freedom on the line, is called to the Bishop's domain for a scolding, and becomes the first person in the Chronicles to drive Mrs. P to distraction.
Trollope must have known how much we all wanted this!

Reading this, I feel I'm another Lydia--ready to die with laughter any minute.

When she was still writing them, I adored the books written as Barbara Michaels, but never felt the same passion for the Amanda Peabody series, and so I fell out of touch....

Behold--searching for something else, I came upon this, #4 in the Jacqueline Kirby series. I'd never read any of them, and this one is just the silly and highly flitterary book I need this week.

Once again Kell Woods nests an inventive and elaborate fantasy world within a greater world (historical) that's quite real and equally rich with detail.

So--historical, fantasy, coming-of-age, romantic elements, and bright threads of remembered fairy tales.

Also, the cover, right?

I Love DWJ and I so enjoyed Charmed Life, the first book in this volume, but I must postpone The Lives of Christopher Chant--the OTBR (Obligatory TBR) stack is ready to topple over on me. Putting this book at the bottom of the queue.

These authors and this series delight me, but I had to stop reading (for the time being) when I saw the story heading toward a certain particular trope that's central to what I'm writing myself these days. Back onto the TBR shelf with Mary Stuart et al.

Had to set aside when I realized we were heading for a trope that I've got in my own fiction-in-progress. <spoiler>(Frog prince.)</spoiler> I have been getting a kick out of this series. These authors seem to have a bottomless supply of wonderful twists, and spins to the overworked chronicles of the Tudor era.

I'm not quite sure why something more than 40 full pages of this bio are devoted to a film in which Anna May Wong didn't appear--The Good Earth, and its original producer Irving Thalberg.
I'd have been content to merely read the artist's own words: "I do not see why I, at this stage in my career...should accept a minor role in a Chinese play...that will surround me entirely by a Caucasian cast."

This superfan of classic movies was glad to find an Anna May Wong commemorative quarter in my change at a coffee counter a few months ago. It's a simple portrait design that I think she'd have approved of.

Glad to discover this bio on the new books display in my local library.

Looking forward to reading (in many cases, re-reading) the series in the proper order now.
Just finished the charming Charmed Life.
Onward to The Lives of Christopher Chant.

This is a book after my own black little heart.

"But there are positions which cannot be reached, though there be no physical or material objection in the way. It is the view which a mind takes of a thing which creates the sorrow that arises from it. If the heart were always malleable and the feelings could be controlled, who would permit himself to be tormented by any of the reverses which affections meets? Death would create no sorrow. . . ."

Bell and Lily talk about story:
"'It always is right in the novels. That's why I don't like them. They are too sweet.'
'That's why I do like them, because they are so sweet. A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be; and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you'd like to get.'"

This book is surprising me because I rarely choose to read contemporaries or thrillers, yet I'm having so much fun. The characters are all engaging (especially an assortment of bad guys that make me think of Donald Westlake, Elmore Leonard, and Carl Hiaasen), and how many heists are set in a hazardous waste disposal plant?

"There are deeds which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin....
'Deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villainy.'"

Startlingly timely quote from Trollope this weekend.

"Soon after making that declaration of love at Allington, he had begun to feel that in making it he had cut his throat. He had endeavoured to persuade himself that he could live comfortably with his throat cut in that way, and as long as Lily was with him he would believe that he could do so; but as soon as he was again alone, he would again accuse himself of suicide."

"'Miss Dale means to be a dragon of perfection in the performance of [her duties]....'
'A dragon!' said Lady Julia. 'No, I hope Miss Lily Dale will never become a dragon.'"

This gives me a chance to recommend Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw (a dragon satirical fantasy that according to Walton owes much to the Chronicles of Barsett) to followers of Trollope.

"In them was always apparent that sense of security which women should receive from an unconscious dependence on their own mingled purity and weakness....It might be the lot of either of them to be ill-used by a man, but it was hardly possible that either of them should ever be insulted by one."

What exactly is dear Tony saying here?

"Here was a ruler, now in mid-life and with a binary view of the world, who saw only obedient subordinates or enemies to be defeated."

I rarely read Regency romance, but have consented to a buddy read with a sibling. It's fair play--she has to hold her nose at some of my choices, too.

The narrator's voice in the opening episode was so twee that I needed my vinegar salts, but she settled down soon. And the hook still holds me, which is the main thing.

Finally! The struggle to keep sorted and remember all those names of ambassadors, ladies in waiting, titled folk, clergy, and politicos is paying off in fresh angles on the sudden and hasty discarding of Anne and her kin and her kind.