A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester. Published by Sourcebooks. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4136-9, 387 pages including index. Trade Paperback. $14.99 (Amazon: $10.19; Kindle: $9.68)

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester is just what the title implies, it’s a book about the Regency World that made up the background for Heyer’s Regency books. It helps to explain to today’s readers the nitty gritty details of what it was like to live in that time, in that society, and explains a lot of the customs, rules, and etiquette of that period. Now I know that makes it sounds like it would be incredibly dull and boring but, in fact, Kloester’s book is extremely readable. I started with the intent to read it front to back and before I was in more than 30 pages, I found myself reading a bit that made me think of a question, so I checked the table of contents and index and thereafter I skipped and dipped into the book at will, checking on those things that had niggled at the back of my brain when reading one book or another.

I wanted to read this book because I read a fair number of books that take place during the Regency Period. I will admit that I don’t read a lot of Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels. So, while the book is filled with examples from Heyer’s writings, I wasn’t familiar with the works cited; however, that’s not a problem because Kloester gives enough background that if you’ve read in the period you’ll get pick up what’s being explained from the books you have read.

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World is well organized so that the reader can go to a specific section to find an answer to questions about what the society was like and how it worked. Chapters are titled: Up and Down the Social Ladder; At Home in Town and Country; A Man’s World; The Gentle Sex; On the Town; The Pleasure Haunts of London; The Fashionable Resorts; Getting About; What to Wear; Shopping; Eat, Drink and Be Merry; The Sporting Life; Business and the Military; and Who’s Who in the Regency. Each chapter in the table of contents is listed with a subset of what’s included in that chapter, for example; the chapter on Getting About includes: All Kinds of Carriages; On Drivers and Driving; Public Transport; On the Road; Long-Distance Travel; and Turnpikes, Toll-gates and Tickets. Each individual chapter starts with an overview of what will be covered in that chapter. I was surprised to learn that long distance travel was considered anything further away than 10 miles. That’s rather difficult to wrap your mind around when most of us travel further than that one-way to work now-a-days.

There are also black and white illustrations throughout the book. I found the pictures of the various types of carriages, the cut-a-way view of a London townhouse, types of dress, and a circulating library, among others to be worth more than words while changing the mind pictures I’d built up while reading. There are also several appendices: A Glossary of Cant and Common Regency Phrases; Newspapers and Magazines; Books in Heyer; Timeline; Reading about the Regency and Where Next?; and Georgette Heyer’s Regency Novels.

For readers of books set in the Regency period, Georgette Heyer’s Regency World is an outstanding resource for understanding the world and society those characters lived in. For those who read books that take place in historical settings, the world has changed. Many of the social conventions that ruled the lives of the people living in Regency England no longer apply. Even during that period people who were born into the lower social classes found it difficult to deal with the myriad levels of behavior that those in the upper class were breed and trained to exhibit in their behavior. Many of the books set in that period mention the misunderstandings and missteps that characters took when moving into a higher social circle than that which they grew up in.

If you enjoy the Regency period, and want to have a better understanding of what society was like, this is probably the best, most accessible and readable book you’ll find on the subject. Even though I haven’t yet read Heyer’s Regency novels (I now have several on my to be read pile), I found Georgette Heyer’s Regency World a wonderful guide to the ins and outs of this social, cultural, historical time period of so many of the books that I read as a Jane Austen fan.

I’d like to hear other readers’ impressions of this work. Have you read it? Do you plan to?

The zines went live last night at midnight but I added at least four from people today and expect another one or two tomorrow. So the official announcements have not yet gone out to our mailing list.  If you want to be on the mailing list just go to either SFRevu.com or GumshoeReview.com and join the mailing list. We only send one email a month — we might do a special announcement email once in a blue moon and those, as you know, are pretty rare.

I expect that I’ll soon be back to actually  making posts with content soon. In fact, I’m working on a book review for tomorrow. It’s a fun, light romance with a British slant but oh, so relevant to most of us city folks dreaming of the quiet country side.

Finally, I’ve wrestled my Jali Sweater chart into submission and have almost completed a full pattern repeat. Yeah, me! I only ripped the entire thing out and started from scratch about 6 or 7 times before the light bulb over my head went on. Boy that’s embarrassing to know that somehow you forgot how to read between casting on and following the chart. But more about that project in another post.

Raining off and on all day.  Rain always seems to create the perfect day for reading, especially mysteries — maybe it’s the grey sky, overcast cloudiness, and feeling of oppression — or is that just the headache .

Anyway, I spent a good part of the day reading Holly Blues by Susan Wittig Albert. It’s a China Bayles mystery and the review will be in the May issue of Gumshoe Review — got the book too late to make the April issue. So far, it’s exactly what I expected — lots of interesting characters, lots of surprises, and new interactions between people, and the mystery keeps you reading. Check out the full review next month.

Meanwhile, tea, aspirin, and a good book makes a dreary day go by much better.

The Darcy Cousins: Scandal, Mischief, and Mayhem arrive at Pemberley… by Monica Fairview, Sourcebooks, ISBN: 978-1-4022-3700-3, pages 432.

The rift between Darcy and his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh has been somewhat mended since Elizabeth has given birth to an heir. Of course that doesn’t mean that Lady Catherine actually recognizes Elizabeth’s presence. But the entire family is gathering at Rosings once more for Easter. Joining the family are Robert Darcy (see The Other Mr. Darcy) and his wife and two relatives from America, Frederick Darcy and his sister Clarissa Darcy.

Georgiana is hoping that she and Clarissa will become close friends. Georgiana has been feeling that she’s in the way or not really wanted. Darcy marrying Elizabeth was definitely a good thing but where Georgiana always had her brother for company now he seems always involved with Elizabeth and their son — they don’t purposely exclude her they just don’t seem to notice.

Once Frederick and Clarissa arrive, they seem to get off on the wrong foot with Lady Catherine. While Frederick can be accepted, after all he is American, a business man, and rich. Clarissa must learn to become a lady — of course that’s the type of lady that Lady Catherine approves of, and that’s where all the trouble begins. Clarissa is neither tractable or docile.

Georgiana and Clarissa do become friends. Georgiana learns that one can be a lady and still have strong opinions and interests of her own. When Clarissa is appalled by the way everyone ignores Anne de Bourgh and has Georgiana join her in her campaign to become friends with Anne, Georgiana begins to realize that she’s always just accepted things and never looked at them from the outside. She’s also surprised by what they learn. Her eyes opened, she begins to look at other behaviors she’s always accepted.

As is usual, one things leads to another and before long Lady Catherine is convinced that Clarissa is practically the devil personified, and there to ruin the family. Once again the family finds itself rent by Lady Catherine’s insistence on her point of view. Everyone decamps for London and the season.

Georgiana struggles to find her own way in society with her new insights. She learns that Clarissa is in England for more than this visit and that there are depths to her American cousin. In fact, soon Clarissa and Georgiana find themselves interested in the same man. But is he the right man for either of them? Will their friendship last through the season?

To say any more would spoil the fun of learning all the secrets, intrigues, and adventures to be had in The Darcy Cousins. The book’s advanced press implies that the book is all about Clarissa and her problems but this is really Georgiana’s story. Clarissa is the spur that goads Georgiana to action and change. Georgiana is firmly front and center. She’s always been in the background and this time Monica Fairview gives the reader a chance to get to know her a bit better. Shy? Yes, but also she has the same strong Darcy stubbornness and loyalty. It’s a turbulent story as Georgiana becomes a person most of us would like to know better and have stand at our side in adversity.

Another excellent follow on to Pride and Prejudice that maintains the integrity of the original characters while moving the story of their lives forward.

I got a link to this video today from a friend.  It’s on “The Future of Publishing”.    If you’ve been seeing the recent bru-ha-ha about ebooks and their various readers and the pricing of ebooks for consumers, it’s possible to get the impression that books and reading are a thing of the past.  Roll this belief in with the belief that young people  don’t read, have short attention spans and don’t know anything about the world around them .  This set of ideas and beliefs are what seem to be driving much of today’s marketing.

I enjoyed the video.  Using the  same message to express two totally opposite points of view is amazingly well done.  It feed into the widely held beliefs and then turns them on their head.

Publishing isn’t dead.  I’ve got a Kindle and I love it.  I’ve  also got tons of  traditional books. I say tons because in the last move we had more books in boxes to move than the total of all other items we moved from our apartment to our house.  I love reading and can’t imagine a time when I won’t read.  If my eyes fail me — I’ll get the Kindle to read to me with its Hawking’s voice (imagine having a great physicist read to you).

What is most likely to kill publishing is the unwillingness of the industry to move forward.  The world has changed.  They way people live their lives has changed and they need to change with it.  I’ll still read books on paper but the Kindle is what I take when I travel.  As a computer programmer/software analyst who has helped put together a book or two to be published — I know that an electronic books should not be priced more than a paperback.  There’s a big difference between making a paper-book only and then using the same file to create an electronic version and not having storage and distribution issues.

I had several books on my electronic wish list at Amazon until the pricing thing happened.  Now those books are too expensive.  I’ll buy them at a library sale or in a used books store.  Electronic would have been nice but I’m not paying nearly hardcover sale prices for an electronic book.  It’s the same reason I don’t buy DVD until they hit the below $10 sales (they should never cost more than $10 anyway). Corporations should make a profit off their work but since the creative artists aren’t the ones reaping the benefits of these too-high prices — it’s the must-make-even-more-profit that’s driving the bus.  People will buy your product but only when it’s useful, usable, and priced appropriately.  Otherwise most of us can find other ways to spend our money.

Companies should learn to listen to their customers.  You know the people who actually buy or are expected to buy the products you produce.  Listen and learn.

The mystery genre has whole series of   books that have a knitting, crocheting, spinning, weaving, and other fiber arts mentioned in them.  In many, the amateur  detective/sleuth owns a yarn store or art gallery and so the characters use these skills — either to help them solve the crime or in the background as the story unfolds.   An example would be Miss Marple calmly knitting as she observes the people around her and listens to what’s going on and then puts it all together to solve the crime.

In talking with friends, I couldn’t really come up with anything  similar in SF/fantasy/horror (and all subgenres).

The closes I could come to that off the top of my head is the Pern series by McCaffrey where many characters weave, knit, or whatever as part of their household duties.  In the Harry Potter series, Mrs. Weasley knits the family and Harry sweaters and other item, Dobby knits socks,  Hermione  knits hats,  and Hagrid knits various items throughout the books.

I read another book YA retelling of Rumplestiltskin, Spinners  by Donna Jo Napoli and Richard Tchen where  they not only mention the spinning into gold but throughout go through the process of spinning wool (cleaning, carding, spinning, and plying).

I’m looking for the titles and authors of other books for children, YA, and adults that have  the fiber arts (spinning, weaving, knitting, crocheting, and other crafts)  as an integral part of the story line.

Are there others in the science fiction or fantasy category?  Comment with the author, title and how the craft is used…I’m really interested.

Recollections of Rosings by Rebecca Ann Collins is book 8 of The Pemberley Chronicles. (Published by Sourcebooks, ISBN: 978-1-4022-2450-8, 336 pages, $14.99 US/$17.99 CAN/£7.99 UK)

While this is book 8, I found it fairly easy to get into. This is only the second book in the series that I’ve read. I reviewed Postscripts from Pemberly back in December 2009. If you’ve read Pride and Prejudice, you’ve got an understanding of the major characters.  And while these characters have moved on, had children, had their children marry, lost loved ones — reading Collins’ work is like dropping in on a huge family reunion after being out of touch for a long while. The books, or at least the ones that I’ve read have an Appendix that lists the major characters and the relationships between them.

I’m starting by pointing this out because there’s a relaxed atmosphere about the stores in Postscripts… and now Recollections…. Collins has a way of presenting the stories partly through the type of narrative/interactive story you’d expect, but she also uses journal or diary entries and letters to help us get a deeper understanding of the characters that have a major part to play. This makes reading the books a lot like being asked to read someone’s personal journal when you know all the people involved (society pages without the cattiness).

Recollections of Rosings is, as you’ve probably guessed about Rosings, the major residence of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Lady Catherine has been gone for sometime and the estate is run by a board of trustees on which Fitzwilliam Darcy serves. The story opens with the terrible news that there has been a fire at Rosings that has caused considerable damage. The current Vicar, Mr. Harrison, suffers a heart attack and his continuing illness causes some drastic changes to his situation for himself and his family. His wife Catherine, one of Charlotte and Mr. Collins’ daughters, is now caring for her husband and dealing with her grief over the damage done to Rosings where she lived when Lady Catherine took her in as a young child to be a companion for Anne.

The Rosings estate has recently hired a curator to deal with the historic artwork and others treasures of Rosings. Luckily he had done much of the work to catalog what was in the house and it will be useful to the board in determining their loss and what can and should be done to rebuild. That he is also someone who had worked at Rosings while Catherine lived with Lady Catherine helps to bring back many memories and releasing many emotions of her childhood and early adulthood before her marriage.

Meanwhile, Catherine’s daughter seems to be falling in love with a young man in the neighborhood that few people know anything about other than he’s a gentleman and very good at his job. Beck Tate, Catherine’s sister, is at loose ends as her husband has gone to America on business, leaving her behind. Unfortunately for Catherine, Becky feels it is her duty to watch out for her supposedly more naive and unsophisticated sister.

That sets out the parameters of the book, but the journey and the experience of reading it yourself is the frosting on the cake. Collins is not flamboyant — the writing is very reminiscent of sitting about with a best friend talking about family, friends, what is happening with the neighbors, what’s going on, what can be done to make life better for those around you — and yourself, of course.

That’s not to say that you won’t shed tears, laugh out loud, try to get characters to look before they leap, get angry about how some are treated, wonder why other won’t mind their own business, and smile because sometimes love does conquer all. And best of all, for some people there are second chances and, while they don’t come often, when they happen you should not stand and watch them pass you by but reach out for new dreams and a new life.

There’s a very comfortable feel to The Pemberly Chronicles. These are people most of us have spent a lot of time with. Austen created characters that still resonant with us so many years after she wrote her books. That Austen often left her characters just as the leave they church after their wedding, it’s no wonder that so many of us want to know what happened next. Rebecca Ann Collins gives us one possible future — it’s a comfortable one that we can relate too that differs only in degree from the future we see around us for our friends and family.

These are wonderful books for a rainy day — or any day — when you want to believe that people are good at heart and that families stand together in times of trouble. These are books that continue the story of some well loved characters but they are also books of hope and of dreams of communities that many of us would like to live in.

Cowboy Trouble by Joanne Kennedy. ISBN: 978-1-4022-3668-6, 416 pages. $6.99 mass market paperback/ $4.79 Kindle edition. On sale March 2, 2010.

Libby Brown always wanted to have a farm. That was definitely impractical while working as a journalist in Atlanta — not much scope in farming on your balcony. However, when her love life goes up in flames, she decides “chickens will never break your heart” and buys a ranch and heads to Wyoming. She barely arrives before her next door (but miles away) neighbor show up to welcome her to the area. Luke Rawlins makes a fine first impression even though he’s decked out like a cliché movie cowboy. But she welcomes the help and the information and who wouldn’t want to spend time with those eyes and the dimples. There’s a lot to learn about running a ranch with a herd of chickens while holding down a job on the local paper.

She begins to meet the people of Lackaduck, Wyoming. There’s the handsome sheriff who seems very committed to his job and is definitely making an effort to get to know Libby. Luke seems to always be around and the tension between the sheriff and Luke is palpable. When Libby hears that there’s next to no crime in Lackaduck but there is an unsolved murder still on the books, her journalistic juices start to flow.

I’d never read anything by Joanne Kennedy before but she sure got my attention with Cowboy Trouble. The story moves at a snappy pace with the point of view shifting smoothly from Libby to Luke to fill in some background information and keep the reader in the information loop. The unsolved mystery drives the story as Libby uses all her skills to identify the killer or at least to turn up some new evidence in the case.

On the level of a mystery, the story is top notch. Kennedy plays fair with the reader and the clues are all there to be collected so that the reader should be able to figure out what’s going on. Of course, the fact that Libby is a bit slower than the reader just adds to the tension. We can guess what’s going to happen but no matter how much you yell at the page, Libby just does her own thing.

The book is billed as a romance and there’s definitely all the expected tropes of a romance. Kennedy has a light touch and even while ratcheting up the tension on the mystery, she keeps the romance boiling and the humor unexpected but appropriate and a welcome tension reliever. Though I must warn you that even though the sex is very low key and more vague innuendo than exactingly detail (vague is good, and Kennedy is great at this) some of those scenes sizzle so much I thought the book was going to spontaneously combust.

All in all this is one heck of a good book when you just want to put your cares on the back-burner and forget about your problems for a few hours. Libby is strong, independent, witty, and definitely not to be trifled with. Kennedy manages to write Libby as a fully developed character who doesn’t do dumb things just to move the plot along. She does occasionally do some real dumb things, but always with solid reasoning behind the acts — you could imagine if you were Libby you’d do something similar.

Reading Cowboy Trouble by Joanne Kennedy is like stepping into another world and being the proverbial fly on the wall. If you enjoy mystery, romance, or a bit of both — you’ll want to add this to your To Be Read stack (and maybe bump it to the top).