The explosion of email has made many Luddites (hi, Dad!) complain that the art of letter-writing is gone forever. Not so, I say; emails, when written with care, can be just as creative, informative, and loving as the best of snail mail (hi, Dad, again!).

Writing letters was a crucial part of any lady’s day; she couldn’t just pick up the phone and call her girlfriend in London. She had to sit down at her escritoire, locate a sheet of paper and a freshly-sharpened pen, and write. We have letters from the period available to read, and they are as mundane as what the family ate for dinner the night before and as provocative as detailing the pros and cons of various suitors.

Letters are an easy way to tell a story, albeit an overdone one; the bane of Cara‘s existence, Samuel Richardson‘s Clarissa, is written entirely in letters. Current Regency authors frequently use letters to reveal characters’ history without doing the dreaded backstory dump.

And, coincidentally enough (honestly! I started writing this post first!), I’ve just started reading Karen Ranney‘s Till We Meet Again, with a crucial plot point revolving around the identity of the person who wrote some letters. Our own Janet‘s Dedication has that as well.

Do you still write letters? How about creative, interesting and correctly-written emails? Do you like reading letters in books? Which are your favorites?

Be sure and sign up for the all-new Riskies newsletter at riskies@yahoo.com, with “newsletter” in the subject line. You’ll get mail!

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

I was supposed to attend a sneak preview of Becoming Jane last night, and I would be reviewing it here today.

But my friend, an editor at Marie Claire, had to cancel, so I ended up watching Yankees baseball. That Derek Jeter . . . but I digress.

[I was interviewed for an upcoming feature in MC about on-the-job romance. I was the only woman who was in a superior position to her love interest, since my now husband was my intern. I’ll let you know when it’s out].

Which means I’ve got nothing to talk about today. Except for change; can you imagine being a young, country-reared girl of 17, being taken to the Big City to make her debut? How chaotic! No wonder so many of them panicked and ran off to meet swashbuckling sea captains and the like. And, of course, it would be a big change in terms of perception–as the scion of the county’s leading family (or at least among the top 5), it must’ve been hard to arrive in London and find yourself jostling for attention with duke’s daughters, earl’s first cousins, and ridiculously wealthy businessmen’s children trying to buy their way into the aristocracy. And you, a lowly baron’s daughter or something.

In some ways, it is similar to going off to college at the same age; unless you stuck close to home, chances are you went away for a long period of time for the very first time in your life. What happened to you? I was miserably homesick, read all the time and spoke very little (my roommate, who remains a close friend to this day, used to introduce me to people telling them I was mute. She is very talkative.)

Of course, eventually I embraced college life, not least because I was in New York City. What about you? What was the biggest change in your maturation? How was adjusting to college life for you? Did you ever attend anything similar to a coming-out ball?

Megan

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A friend just sent me the link to the Literature Map, and if you enter an author’s name (Jane Austen, say), it comes up with this nifty visual of authors who are similar to the primary name. The closer the names are to the original name, the more likely it is that a reader will like both of them. Certainly that is true for me with Jane and the Brontes. I think it’s odd that Raymond Chandler is on the list; I love both, but I don’t think they’re similar.

Unless the universal themes of people and their petty wants and desires is their common bond?

You can click here to see the visual.

Jane Austen

What else do readers of Jane Austen read?
The closer two writers are, the more likely someone will like both of them.

Jane Austen Charlotte Bronte William Shakespeare Charles Dickens Harper Lee Goethe Emily Bronte Descartes Agatha Christie Barbara Kingsolver George Eliot Helen Fielding F Scott Fitzgerald Georgette Heyer Maeve Binchy Phillipa Gregory Margaret Atwood Thomas Hardy Isabel Allende Bill Bryson Joanne K. Rowling Robertson Davies Dorothy Sayers Virginia Woolf P G Wodehouse John Irving Rosamunde Pilcher F. Scott Fitzgerald Anne Rice Edith Wharton Jasper Fforde Sue Monk Kidd Oscar Wilde Elizabeth Peters L.M. Montgomery Patricia Cornwell Diana Wynne Jones Henry James Amy Tan Tamora Pierce Raymond Chandler Nora Roberts Philip Pullman Marian Keyes Anthony Trollope Alexandre Dumas Graham Greene Salman Rushdie

Anyway, I was talking about peer-to-peer recommendations on my own blog, and it seems as if this a more mechanized version of that. Cara has been raving about Diana Wynne Jones for eons now, and seeing her name here reminds me I’ve been meaning to check her out, based on Cara’s recommendation.

Anthony Trollope I tried, and hated. In general, though, I’ve read a lot of these other authors and do like them, so maybe there’s something to this? What do you think? Do these kinds of recommendations work for you? Do you rely on a good friend for book recommendations? How do you find new authors?

Megan
PS: The puppets are from this amazing site.

Although there are many things I don’t envy about the Regency, I do wish there was more formality these days. The thing is, I can be painfully shy in social situations, but if there was a proscribed method of behavior I would be a lot more comfortable.

Last night, we celebrated my husband’s 40th birthday. A group of his friends gathered at a restaurant and helped devour an entire roasted pig (and pictures are forthcoming, but I haven’t gotten them yet–I forgot my own camera, duh.). Of course, there were friends of his–from work, mostly–who I didn’t know, and it felt awkward, the whole going up and introducing myself thing, then the idle chit-chat, then the standing around and stuff. I was wishing some dowager would sail in out of nowhere and command Mr. So-and-So to dance with me or something, so I would have something to do. And if it were a lord? Woo-hoo, let the muslin dampen!

My shyness is one of the reasons, ironically enough, I thrived so well in event planning; I had a purpose, I knew why I was there, which made me totally comfortable. Maybe that’s why some of our shy heroines don’t do so badly after all in the ball room: They know they are there to find a husband, and either they are okay with that (usually not), or they are equally determined NOT to find a husband. Either way, they have a goal, a method of behavior that is proscribed and understood, and everyone else there knows their role, too.

How about you? Are you shy in social situations? Or do you wish you were making your come-out at a ball given in your honor, with all eyes upon you?

Megan
PS: This pic is of a real wallflower, although it doesn’t appear anywhere near a wall. Go figure.