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Category: Regency

Great Books I read in 2005

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I’m in trouble now.

Looking over those long, gorgeous lists by Amanda and Cara, I am terrified now to admit that my list is going to be far shorter. Maybe I’ll be forgiven if I say that between writing and raising two kids, I’m always feeling shortchanged on time. Not just on time to read, but to watch TV and go to movies and such. And I know that I can’t really blame it all on the kids, either. It’s me–my muse, my creative side, which occasionally produces things that make me proud but often skitters stubbornly away when I need her to work. Then I plod on alone, because sometimes that gets her to come back just to tell me that “I’m doing it all wrong.” But the process is painfully slooooowwwwww and time-consuming…

Anyway, I always have any number of great reads calling from my TBR pile. Right now, MR. IMPOSSIBLE by Loretta Chase, A KISS OF FATE by Mary Jo Putney are a just a few tempting me to blow off other responsibilities. At least I bought them in a timely manner. I’ve come to accept that I can’t keep up with my favorite authors, even Laura Kinsale, whose stories are so wonderful that it is worth waiting several years between books. But I do get to them eventually!

So I don’t dare do anything called “best reads of 2005”. That would imply I’d read enough books to compare. I’ll content myself with “great books I read in 2005”. Some of them came out much earlier (proof that I do get to my favorite authors’ backlists) and I haven’t included the Riskies, which were certainly among the best Regencies of 2005. But I’m not partial. Not at all! 🙂

So here ’tis:

VISCOUNT VAGABOND and THE DEVIL’S DELILAH, by Loretta Chase (repackaging of two Regencies circa 1990. Both witty, funny but always with an undercurrent of real emotion.)

ALMOST A GENTLEMAN by Pam Rosenthal (A 2003 Kensington Brava, sexy but with far deeper characterization than the admittedly few other Bravas I’ve read–loved the hero and especially the heroine!)

UNCERTAIN MAGIC by Laura Kinsale (First published in 1987–a bit lighter than the more recent Kinsales, but still bewitching and with the trademark tortured hero)

GAMES OF PLEASURE by Julia Ross (Yes, a 2005 release! And a pleasure it was. I find Julia Ross’s books consistently lush, complex and passionate, but this just may be her best yet.)

So there you have it. A short list but a good one. I thank all these authors for blessing me with these stories. May they (and all those whose books I didn’t get to) write many more to wobble on my TBR stack!

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, a Romantic Times Top Pick!
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Reading, Regency | Tagged , | 3 Replies

My Regency Favorites of 2005

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Here are some of my favorites of 2005:

My favorite Regencies that I read for the first time included Nonnie St George’s Courting Trouble (yes, it came out halfway through 2004, but I’m way behind in my reading!) and Judith Laik’s The Lady is Mine. (By the way, I’m following Amanda’s lead and not listing books by fellow Risky-ers — or we’d all just list each other’s books and, how boring would that be?) 🙂 By the way, yes, I think the woman pictured on this cover is definitely falling out of her dress.

My favorite Regencies that I re-read include Joan Smith’s Sweet and Twenty.


My favorite Regency reference book of 2005 is LETTERS FROM LAMBETH: The Correspondence of the Reynolds family with John Freeman Milward Dovaston 1808-1815, introduced and edited by Joanna Richardson. For such a long, dry title, it’s surprisingly sprightly, and delightfully droll. Two of my favorite quotes from the letters of John Hamilton Reynolds that it includes are:

The arrival of the Shrewsbury Chronicle has spurred up my head & collected the few grains of wisdom that wandered about my spacious Scull into one large grain & from that LARGE GRAIN you are to expect whatever comes upon this Paper.

I am ordered by my Mother and Father to return you their unfeigned thanks for noticeing the Slovenly & noncencical Letters of Jack Reynolds. I always had a confounded bad opinion of his writings and your remark has confirmed it . . .

And, yes, the creative spelling is all Reynolds’s.


My favorite Regency-related movie was the new PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. My favorite Christmas gifts were the dvds of the Ciaran Hinds/Amanda Root PERSUASION, the Gwyneth Paltrow/Jeremy Northam EMMA, and the Jennifer Ehle/Colin Firth PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. (All of them were gifts from my husband. Yep, I picked a good one. Oh, and in exchange I gave him the complete HORATIO HORNBLOWER series starring Ioan Gruffudd, so I guess we’ll be watching a lot of Regency television come 2006!)

What were some of your favorite Regency things this year? Please share!

And for those of you taking the Read-a-Regency challenge: have you made any progress in the past (presumably extremely busy) week? If so, please update us on your reading experiences!

Happy New Year all! And may 2006 bring many Regency delights!

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — out now from Signet Regency!

Posted in Jane Austen, Reading, Regency, TV and Film | Tagged | 5 Replies

Time for a Christmas panto!

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I’m creeping into Cara territory here with a theater-related post–about the world of pantomime, a peculiarly English form of theatrical entertainment that is still popular today. It’s an incongruous mix of medieval mystery play, Commedia dell’arte, vaudeville, and musical comedy. The Principal Boy (male lead) is played by a woman wiht great legs. There’s a stock female character called The Dame who is played by a man (the Monty Python crew were not the only ones to cross-dress at the drop of a knicker). Audience participation is encouraged. In its current manifestation the pantomime features stars from TV soaps and is full of political jokes and double entendres.

Commedia dell’arte, a comedic form with stock characters, tumbling, acrobatics and buffoonery came from Italy to England in the seventeenth century. The most popular characters–Harlequin (a wily servant), Columbine (female lead) and Pantalone (comic old man–sorry, this was never very PC)–infiltrated the theater, and an entertainment was developed in three parts: A serious or classical work, followed by a lighter popular tale (Cinderella or Aladdin, for instance, still popular today as panto subjects), and concluded with the Harlequinade. The Harlequinade featured acrobatics and slapstick and was introduced by an elaborate transformation scene using all the latest hi-tech devices of the theater. Imagine that you’ve gone to the theater to see “King Lear.” After the tragedy, the same actors perform a musical version of “Cinderella.” After a lot of light effects, music, moving scenery, fountains, women in tights flying etc., the actor who played Lear does some funny stuff with a dog and a string of sausages, as a minor player in the spills, chills and thrills chase scenario of Harlequin and Columbine. Ah, a full night of the theater in eighteenth-century London–all human life is there. There’s no wait at the bar because you brought your own, and no wait for the bathrooms because there are none.

Joseph Grimaldi was England’s most famous clown and so popular that the character of the Clown became the lead in the Harlequinade. At one time he played the Clown at both Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells, dashing from one theater to another. He was a skilled dancer, mime, acrobat, actor and sleight of hand magician. The Harlequinade died out, possibly coinciding with the death of Grimaldi, its greatest clown, but the second part of the original three-part entertainment adopted some of its characteristics (the slapstick and tumbling) to evolve into the pantomime, played at Christmas and Easter. In Victorian times the Drury Lane Theater was the leading presenter of elaborate pantomime performances, and stars of the music hall made guest appearances.

For great pics and musical examples (including Grimaldi’s signature song, “Hot Codlins” with audience participation) go to
www.peopleplayuk.org

www.its-behind-you.com
Here’s the complete text of “A History of Pantomime” by R.J. Broadbent (1901) www.gutenberg.org
www.pantoscripts.com

Meanwhile, so you can savor this sophisticated form of comedy, here’s an excerpt from a modern version of Aladdin. Widow Twanky (the Dame) is doing laundry with her sons Wishee and Washee:

DAME: Here, did I tell you I nearly won the football pools last week.

WASHEE: Did you really mum?

DAME: Yes I did. My homes were all right. My aways were all right. ( Pulls tatty pair of bloomers from the tub). But my draws let me down.

WISHEE: ( Looking in the tub) I see you’ve got the laundry for ******* United again ( pulls out strip – holds it out for everyone to see, with big holes in it). Hey, what are these holes in it?

DAME: Well, everyone says they’ve got holes in their defence. That proves it.

WASHEE: ( Pulling out another huge pair of bloomers) And whose are these?

DAME: I could do with some of these. ( Singing to tune of My Fair Lady) “All I want is some knickers like these, to keep me warm from my neck to me knees, oh wouldn’t it be lovely.” Did you know I once had some knickers made out of a Union Jack.

WISHEE: Weren’t they uncomfortable?

DAME: Not once I’d taken the flagpole out.

happy xmas!
Janet

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All She Wanted For Christmas Was A Nap

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I am toast. All the gifts have been bought, the cards mailed, the presents all almost wrapped. Never mind the cookies, I made one batch and taught my son a few new words when the dough wouldn’t quite roll out the way I wanted it to.

But with Christmas approaching, of course, all people’s thoughts turn to–good will? Sure, but there’s something else. Peace on earth? YES, PLEASE. And? Oh, yeah. The presents!

In 2001, the year I started working on A Singular Lady, my husband hunted down a bunch of Regency reference books for me. He got Donald Low’s Regency Underworld, C. Willett Cunnington’s English Women’s Clothing In The Nineteenth Century, and a few other cool Regency-era books. It was a fabulous Christmas because it told me my husband supported my efforts to be a writer, and was trying to give me the tools to help me. I cried a lot that year because I felt validated.

So, yeah, this year I am toast, but even though the idea of stressing less and sleeping more IS appealing, I would miss the zest and excitement of the Christmas holiday (not to mention my mother-in-law’s homemade donuts. Just saying). Of getting the perfect gift because someone thought about it, and watching their faces as they open what you thought of, and then bought, for them (me, I’m hoping for some out-of-print Mary Balogh traditional Regencies).

Happy Holidays, Riskies! Happy Holidays, Readers!

Megan Posted by Picasa

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A little beauty…

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I wonder how stressed Regency folk were during the holidays. I was thinking that perhaps they didn’t travel so much, and things might have been easier. But then I remembered all the accounts of people going for protracted visits to various country houses. Like the following snip from a letter Lord Aucklands sent his sister, Emily Eden, after a visit:

“Mary in such a fright you never saw—such a silence you never heard—room so hot you never felt—dinner so cold you never tasted—dogs so tiresome you never smelt.”

So maybe holiday visits weren’t so idyllic then, either. It isn’t much comfort as some of us head off to visit extended families for the holidays. It’s not only an issue of differing tastes and comfort levels; it’s the politics.

People who read and write romance love to see closure in relationships—problems worked out with love as the result. But in real life we can’t always have that. Not with relatives or friends who don’t want to work through the real issues. Sometimes the best I know to do is to paste a smile on my face, for the sake of outward peace. I put up with digs from a jealous sibling, because it’s stupid to brangle, and because I want my kids to enjoy a peaceful time with their grandparents.

But it takes a toll. It just feels so wrong to have to put up with nonsense at a time that’s supposed to be so wonderful. The way I cope is to take (or steal, if necessary) as many little moments of beauty, things that are, in their own way, perfect and wonderful.

In the Regency, I probably would have escaped out of doors whenever possible for a walk. Or if that wasn’t possible, I might have dived into a good book or some soothing embroidery.

Some of my favorite modern escapes:

  • Christmas videos. The original GRINCH—what a wonderful character arc! Some less well known pleasures: OLIVE THE OTHER REINDEER, with the voice of Drew Barrymore. So funny and cute! An unexpected pleasure: Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Christmas video, with a surprisingly intense villain (for Disney) and more of the same romantic chemistry between Belle and her tortured hero.
  • Music. ON YOOLIS NIGHT: Medieval Carols & Motets by Anonymous 4—wonderfully atmospheric and soothing. YULE, with Linn Barnes and Allison Hampton on Celtic harp, guitar and lute. And a new favorite: THE CHAPIN FAMILY CHRISTMAS COLLECTION, Volume II–new takes on old favorites.
  • Cookies! Each year I bake a few kinds, but not with the intent of impressing anyone with Martha-ness. I truly love squishing dough with my fingers, love frosting cookies in elaborate patterns. And of course, eating them. Regular standbys: medauninkai, a Lithuanian cookie sweetened with honey and laced with spices. Vanilla almond crescents, made with a ton of butter and covered in powdered sugar that gets all over dark clothing (I guess Megan might avoid them). Something chocolate, which varies—this year those grasshopper squares, like huge, rich after dinner mints. Moderation is for the New Year. Right now, comfort foods are OK as long as you’re not just inhaling them but really taking a moment to savor them.
  • And of course, diving into a good book. This year, I’m taking Julia Ross’s GAMES OF PLEASURE with me as I head home for the holidays.

What are your favorite holiday pick-me-ups?

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, an RT Top Pick!
www.elenagreene.com

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