A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Bad Heir Day: A Comedy of High Class and Dire Straits by Wendy Holden. Sourcebooks Landmark; Reprint edition (September 1, 2010); ISBN: 978-1402240614; 352 Pages. Price: List $14.99 (Amazon: $10.79 / Kindle: $9.99).

Anna Farrier’s life is going nowhere when Bad Heir Day begins. She’s living with Sebastian “Seb” Lavenham, an upper-class playboy with commitment problems. After attending a wedding of one of Seb’s school friends at Dampie Castle on the Island of Skul, Anna begins to take a hard look at her current situation and reluctantly admits it’s going beyond depressing. She hasn’t written anything in a long time and in reality she’s nothing but Seb’s live-in maid with benefits. She’s ready for a change.

Luckily, at the wedding, while Seb was making out with all his old girlfriends, she met Geri, a woman with a plan for her life, who was full of helpful hints on how to get Anna’s life on track, beginning with becoming an author’s assistant. Anna puts up an ad and gets a call from Cassandra Knight who just lost her au pair – again – and needs a replacement but the service won’t send anyone else out to care for her hellion of a son, Zachary. Anna accepts the position thinking it’s to help with research and writing and ends up being an extremely low-paid babysitter and household help.

It turns out the waiter she met at the wedding actually owns the castle and he’s in desperate need of a wife. By the time he shows up in London, Anna’s experience as Cassandra’s pseudo-slave, Zach’s victim, and Jett’s (Cassandra’s husband) potential conquest has not helped her self-esteem or her writing. She’s ready for a change.

Bad Heir Day is a lot of fun even while being totally predictable. However, I read this almost immediately after reading Farm Fatale and found the underlying structure to be quite similar. I think if I’d had more time between the two books, the plot structure wouldn’t have been as noticeable. Even so there were some great one liners and lots of eye-rolling moments as the story unfolded. The characters are more archetypes than fully developed but in the context of the odd-ball romantic comedy story, it really doesn’t matter.

Bad Heir Day is pure entertainment with a mild message of “don’t ruin your life trying to be someone you’re not”. Just grab a cup or glass of your favorite beverage, put up your feet, and enjoy watching someone else’s life going off the rails and somehow finding a perfect mate in spite of the chaos their life has become.

I noticed that today would have been Julia Child’s birthday. I remember seeing her on TV when her cooking show was new and I was young. I remember her voice and the fact that she made it look like no matter what happened, or what went wrong, it was okay, because who’d know what went on in your kitchen if the guests were all in the living room. I have to wonder what she’d think of the popularity of open floor plans where your guests gather around the kitchen island and watch you get dinner ready. Somehow I doubt that it would bother her.

Last week we finally watched Julie & Julia based on the book by Julie Powell. Powell wrote a blog where she cooked her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, in a period of 365 day making 524 recipes. You can still read the blog online — the Julie / Julia Project. The last post is about when Julie heard that Julia Child died. (Amazon has the book available in paperback with a look inside so you can get a taste of the writing.)

Julia Child was an amazing woman. She did so much at a time when women were so circumscribed in what they should or shouldn’t do with their lives. If you haven’t seen the movie here’s the trailer — maybe you’ll decided it’s a must see too.

I thought the movie was informative and affirming. I like cooking and I’m no great chef — I’m more a plain home cooking type with once in a great while a foray into making something fancy. I admire Julie Powell for working her way through all those recipes — that’s a lot of work, especially when holding down a full-time job. Seems there are lots of daring women in the world we just need to keep our eyes and ears open.

One Fine Cowboy by Joanne Kennedy
Sourcebooks Casablanca, ISBN: 978-1-4022-3670-9, pages 416
(List: $6.99 / Amazon: $6.99 / Kindle: $4.79).

Charlie Banks is a graduate student in psychology who is looking to do research on non-verbal communication, especially between species.  Her advisor has sent her to a clinic at Latigo Ranch with Nate Shawcross who is a horse whisperer.   It seemed like a great idea to Charlie except that the ranch is out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, with no sizable town, let alone a city, for miles in any direction, and she’s a city girl through and through.   Of course her car breaks down just short of the ranch. Luckily, a cowboy stops by to offer assistance.

Nate Shawcross, her cowboy rescuer and the owner of Latigo Ranch, doesn’t know a thing about the clinic, or the people who signed up.  Seems his girlfriend wrote the brochures, sent then out, collected the deposits, and then wiped out his bank accounts, took the deposits, and left for Denver.  Charlie, of course, is attracted to Nate in spite of herself, and steps in to help him out.   Luckily the other three guests are understanding and more interested in learning to work with the horses than in having a fancy dude ranch experience.

Being a novel,   the readers, know that that’s not the end of Nate’s problems or Charlie’s or the last we’ll see or hear of Nate’s ex-girlfriend, Sandy.  In fact, as a romance this story is predictable; however, that doesn’t take away from the fact that the story is absorbing.  Kennedy manages to stay to the usual tropes of romance writing but give as an intriguing story of people and relationships on many levels.

“No one is an island” said John Donne, and that is still true today and in this story.  Each character acts upon the others and together that forms a community that supports and helps them to cope with their problems and issues rather than retreating into isolation.  Charlie being a graduate student in psychology is not simply a device to get the character out to a ranch in Wyoming, but a choice that allows the author to explore relationships a bit deeper within the story.  It also brings up the question of what is the best use of a person’s talents.  Aren’t the people who work quietly in the background making contributions to society as much, or even more than those on the public stage?  (Discuss among yourselves after you finish the book or bring your thoughts here and share.)

Whether you’re looking for a typical romance or a story that has people dealing with real problems then give Joanne Kennedy’s One Fine Cowboy a try.

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?

Conquering Mr. Darcy by Abigail Reynolds, Sourcebooks Casablanca, August 2010, ISBN: 978-1-4022-3730-0, 416 pages, Mass Market Paperback. [Note: Previously published as Impulse & Initiative: What if Mr. Darcy had set out to win Elizabeth’s heart? (Pride & Prejudice Variation)]

To Conquer Mr. Darcy, by Abigail Reynolds, is truly a “What If” novel. The critical question is what if Mr. Darcy didn’t give up on Elizabeth after his first disastrous proposal and Elizabeth’s unequivocal refusal? What if instead of meeting her again purely by chance at Pemberley, he returned with Bingley to Netherfield and made a concerted effort to win Elizabeth’s love and respect.

The book begins with Colonel Fitzwilliam stopping at Darcy’s townhouse in London. Georgiana has been worried about Darcy. Ever since the visit to Rosings, Darcy has spent his time alone, in the dark, drinking himself into a stupor and refusing to see anyone. This is totally out of character for him to be so depressed but he stubbornly resists all efforts to find out what is bothering him. Fitzwilliam luckily is a soldier and he barrels in where Georgiana and Bingley fear to tread and drags the story out of him. His advice is to go after Elizabeth if she means that much to him and win her.  For to do otherwise is evidence that he really doesn’t care. Darcy is angry but he pulls himself together and sets out determined to win Elizabeth.

At this point, we’ve diverged from the original story of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and Reynolds has to weave her story between the incidents of the original story with a few changes. Darcy supports Bingley in his desire to marry Jane Bennet. Thus Darcy is with Bingley when he visits Jane and can pursue Elizabeth’s good opinion.

You can imagine that things are awkward at first as she’s refused his offer of marriage and while his explanation of his dealings with Mr. Wickham have somewhat changed her opinion of him, she doesn’t care to be more than acquaintances. Darcy on the other hand, really makes an effort to be civil and courteous to Elizabeth’s family members. He makes sure that he meets Elizabeth when she goes for walks and rambles and essentially treats her as you would a wild animal — kindly, slowly taming her — getting her used to the idea of him being around.

Reynolds uses much of the original dialogue and manages to incorporate Elizabeth’s trip with the Gardiners and Lydia’s pseudo-elopement with Wickham. Of course, the changing relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy, changes the way these events play out.

And for purists, I have to mention that his book is a romance — there’s several very steamy scenes along with some that are more conventional for the time period such as holding hands, kisses. But, the real non-cannon event is Elizabeth and Darcy having sex prior to their marriage. Reynolds builds up to this slowly over the books so that when it occurs it seems a logical extension of their relationship within context of this book. By the way, this doesn’t give anything away as it’s on the blurb on the back of the book and in the Amazon description. So, purists are warned.

In summation, I felt that it was a well done. Reynolds took her “what ifs” and wove them into the plot points of the original books so seamlessly that you might have to refer back to the original to scope out the magnitude and number of changes those what ifs cause. At heart To Conquer Mr. Darcy is a romance — now it’s just a bit more racy romance than we’re used to between these two well-loved characters.

[Note: Edited 10 Aug 2010 to change book title to match the actual published title as it change since I read the review copy.]

Farm Fatale by Wendy Holden. Sourcebooks Landmark (July 1, 2010). Trade Paperback. ISBN: 978-1-4022-3716-4. Pages: 402. Price: $14.99 (Amazon: $10.79 Book/Kindle $9.99).

Book Description:

Cash-strapped Rosie and her boyfriend Mark are city folk longing for a country cottage. Rampant nouveaux riches Samantha and Guy are also searching for rustic bliss-in the biggest mansion money can buy. The village of Eight Mile Bottom seems quiet enough, despite a nosy postman, a reclusive rock star, a glamorous Bond Girl, and a ghost with a knife in its back. But there are unexpected thrills in the hills, and Rosie is rapidly discovering that country life isn’t so simple after all.

Review:
Rosie dreams of living in the country away from the noise of London’s streets, especially the one they lived on which always seemed to be under repair — with big trucks and loud noises. Mark, however, barely pays attention to Rosie’s chatter about finding a place in the country. He loves the city and doesn’t want to leave because he’s just about to get his own column in the newspaper where he works as an assistant editor on the Sunday lifestyle section. Besides, they don’t have the money to move. That worked out well for Mark, he went to an office everyday which got him out of the noise and their grubby little apartment. Rosie, a freelance illustrator, was stuck working in the noise day after day, trying to draw when she could barely hear herself think. It seemed hopeless.

But suddenly, Mark was all for moving to the country. It seemed that he did listen to Rosie’s talk on how good a move to the country would be because he pitched it to the senior editor for a column and they were going to let him run with it — provided he moved to the country.

They finally settled on a small village called Eight Mile Bottom. However all they could afford was a small terrace cottage (in the US a row house) with a small garden area. Rosie throws herself into country life getting to know the neighbors, the nosy postman, and barkeep at the local pub, and many other colorful characters. Mark, however, barely leaves the house, ignoring and insulting Rosie by turns as he tries desperately to come up with a column.

Interspersed with Rosie and Marks plot line is one involving Samantha, a has-been actress with delusions of grandeur, and her husband, Guy, a banker. Samantha thinks that hiring the newest, brightest, whoever (architect, interior decorator, new age guru) will somehow put her in the same social strata as the famous people the newest and brightest whoever was with, in whatever fashion magazine she found them in. Guy on the other hand is thinking he made a mistake in marrying Samantha. Seeing a great spread in a home magazine about someone elegant country home Samantha begins to scheme to sell their London home and move to — you guessed it — Eight Mile Bottom.

These plotlines alternate and spin around each other throughout the book. Throw in a reclusive rock star, some ghosts, a farmer desperate for a wife who doesn’t mind hard work, an ex-Bond girl who raises racing chickens, a very nosy postman, loud hippy SCA neighbors, great dialogue, a few plot twists, and you get a wonderful romantic comedy with a definite English flair.

My only problem with the book and it’s one that I have with most romances is that Rosie was too darn accommodating to Mark. Just because he’s extremely handsome isn’t any reason to stay with someone who treats you like hired help. He’s lucky it was Rosie — I’d have booted him out long ago. I wished fervently that I could reach into the book and hit her upside the head with a clue stick. In a way that means the book is very well written — if the characters didn’t seem so real — no matter how outrageous — I wouldn’t have cared.

Since this is a romance, you know there will be the traditional HEA or happy ever after. What you don’t know is just who is going to get that HEA — will it be just Rosie or someone else, or several characters. To find out you’ll have to get the book and settle in for a delightfully funny and occasionally poignant getaway to the English countryside with Farm Fatale.

I Survived the Sinking of the Titantic, 1912 by Lauren Tarshis. Scholastic Paperbacks (June 1, 2010). ISBN: 978-0545206945. 112 pages. Cover by Steve Stone. Interior Illustrations by Scott Dawson. RL4 007-010. Includes Facts about the Titanic and an Author’s Note.

Book Blurb:

Ten-year-old George Calder can’t believe his luck — he and his little sister, Phoebe, are on the famous Titanic, crossing the ocean with their Aunt Daisy. The ship is full of exciting places to explore, but when George ventures into the first class storage cabin, a terrible boom shakes the entire boat. Suddenly, water is everywhere, and George’s life changes forever.

Tarshis opens the story on Monday, April 15, 1912 at 2:00 a.m. on the deck of RMS Titanic, the ship is sinking and ten-year-old George Calder is on the deck holding on to the rail in the freezing cold. The ship begins to tilt and George looses his grip and is knocked unconscious. Thus ends Chapter 1. What? The ship is already sinking and our main character is unconscious. I doubt there is a reader born who could put the book down at this point. We’re hooked.

Chapter 2 starts nineteen hours earlier on Sunday, April 14 at 7:15 a.m. in a first class suite on B Deck. Now we go back and meet George and his eight-year-old sister Phoebe. They are returning to America after visiting London and the surrounding area with their Aunt Daisy.

As we follow George, we learn that he is always getting in trouble and is as curious as a cat. He’s been all over the ship even to areas where he is not supposed to go. He’s made friends in steerage and exasperated his aunt and his sister — not to mention a number of the other first class passengers.

George, in other words is a typical boy who if there isn’t an adventure handy will invent some of his own. We also learn that his behavior had previously been causing problems between him and his father. Since George and Phoebe’s mother died a few years ago the family just hasn’t been the same. This trip was a time-out for father and son — a chance to get some distance and calm down.

So, even though he’s only ten, George is observant and makes a great point of view character for us. We see the ship through his eyes as he explores the ship. He meets some of the people who become famous or infamous due to their connection with this ship and the tragic end of its maiden voyage.

The author researched the ship and the accident that sunk her and tells a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat even knowing what is going to happen. Now though, it’s seen and told through the experiences of a ten-year-old boy who will never be the same. He saw great courage and great cowardice. He found strength he didn’t know he had. He survived and, while he doesn’t understand survivor’s guilt, he nonetheless feels it keenly.

The George who survives the sinking of the Titanic, is not the same person we got to know when we flashed back nineteen hours and then moved forward to the collision with the iceberg.

At the end of the book there’s an author’s note listing the references used and a section of Facts about the Titanic. I think it would have been nice to list some books where young readers could learn more about the Titanic and the people who survived and died that night in 1912.

I can’t think of a better way to learn about history than through fictional stories that allow you the opportunity to see how a historic event affected the people who lived through it. If you know a young person who is interested in the Titanic, this just might be the book they’re looking for.

On a side note, a few years ago I attended a convention in California where the Queen Mary is anchored. The ship is now a hotel. In walking about the decks that first day I wondered how much smaller it was than the Titanic. I found a chart target in the little soda shop and learned that the Queen Mary is much larger, which surprised me. The Titanic always looked so huge in the movies and reading about all the decks and people (staff and passengers), I just assumed it was huge. We all keep learning all the time.

Bibliographic info: A Woman of Influence by Rebecca Ann Collins, Pride & Prejudice sequel series, Book 9, Sourcebooks Landmark, Pub. Date: June 1, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-4022-2451-5, 336 pages, List: $14.99. (Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle $9.99)

I came late to this series, so I first met Rebecca “Becky” Tate in Recollection of Rosings where she seemed a bit like one of those women who, at loose ends, trys to take charge of the lives of those around her. Becky, throughout that book, tried to impress upon her sister Catherine that her daughter was making the wrong match. Over the course of the novel, Becky began, as she became closer to her sister and reacquainted herself with Huntsford and the surrounding area, to realize that her London friends were not really friends at all. She began to question her values and just what she wanted to do with her life. Most of this story was in the background because Recollection of Rosings is Catherine’s story.

In A Woman of Influence, Becky Tate is the main character. She’s sold her London house and moved to Huntsford to the house that she fell in love with…Edgewater. She’s within walking distance of the small church that her father, Mr. Collins, preached at when she was a child, and to the home of her sister, Catherine, and also the school that she helped Catherine establish for children in the area. She’s changed her life and she’s content but feels restless and is often overwhelmed with grief when she thinks of the death of her daughter, Josie, and the estrangement that caused with the Darcys.

It is little wonder that Becky becomes embroiled in the life of a young woman and her child. The child was caught looking into the windows of Edgewater and he refused to say what he was doing there. The mother rushed up in time to explain that the child didn’t talk since his father was arrested. Becky thought the young woman was well-spoken and, concerned for the woman and her child found living rough,  she employs the girl in her home. The girl’s story causes Becky to take an interest and she begins to unravel the threads of the story and to look into the facts. This task becomes difficult as Becky must find a solution that will bring the family together while managing to not let anyone involved know that she is looking into the legalities of the original arrest and testimony.

Becky’s quest to help this young girl is the thread that keeps you reading as she follows the clues and gathers information. There is a secondary love story as Becky once again meets a gentleman who had helped her through the worst of her grief after her daughter’s death. As they renew their acquaintance, they find that they pick up their friendship as if only a day had past rather than years. Will it deepen to true love? For that you’ll need to read the book.

Once again, Collins uses straight narrative from Becky’s point of view, mixed with letters, diary entries, and other material to lead us through the story and to fill us in on necessary information without having to resort to long information dumps. Though one could say the letters and the diary entries are just that — info dumps — they don’t feel like it to the reader because they fit so nicely into the setting of the story.

Rebecca Ann Collins’ writing is well paced but slower than many readers might be used to.  However, it has much the same tone and pacing of the original Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice, which was the precursor to the series. Collins continues the characters of Pride and Prejudice, taking them forward in time and allowing them to change and grow with the changing times. The Appendix lists the main characters in the book and their relationships to each other. The main characters of Pride and Prejudice now have grandchildren and the world is changing around them.

Becky Tate was a women of her times with dreams and ambition that would be difficult to achieve for a woman. She married to achieve some of those goals. However, that marriage was a partnership rather than a love match and while she had much influence and did a lot of good with her charity work, she was dependent on her husband. In A Woman of Influence, you’ll see how much the world has changed and women have moved forward and gained some ability to steer their own course through life, but they are still not as free as women are today to be able to choose the life they wish to lead. It’s important to remember that Collins didn’t make up the rules that women in this period must live by, she’s only reflecting the historical period in which these books take place.

So, visit the world of the 1860s, take the time to slowing sink into the narrative and, for a while, enjoy a time when people took the time to talk to each other without a cell-phone or ipod in sight. Life was lived, at least on the economic level of our main characters, at a more leisurely pace. Curl up with this book and a cup of tea and enjoy.