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Nov. 6th, 2012 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSince my absentee ballot never arrived, today I took an early-morning bus down to Philadelphia to vote! Now I am sitting in 30th Street Station, tired but aglow with virtuous citizenship.
Anyway. That being done, I think it is time to stick my head in the sand for the rest of the day and post about the fluffiest thing I have read recently, Julia Quinn's A Night Like This, which I picked up in desperation from the cheap airport bookstore when I realized I was out of reading material on the flight home from DragonCon.
This is a Regency romance novel with a plot that goes something like this:
HERO: I've been away from home because of my Dark Past, WHO IS THIS STRANGE AND SEXY LADY?
HEROINE: I am your cousins' governess! I also have a Dark Secret.
HERO: If you wanted you could also be . . . my GIRLFRIEND. In defiance of social mores and all that but this is a fluffy Regency so who cares about those!
HEROINE: I care about those, because yes, on the one hand, you're very hot, on the other hand, I could lose my job, so please go away.
HERO: I can't go away. I love my cute little cousins. I have to spend EVERY DAY around my cute little cousins. For REASONS.
COUSINS: . . . you never loved us that much before we got a hot governess. We're just saying.
HEROINE: >.<
(THE PLOT: I'm here! I involve, like, a villain and a murder plot and REVENGE and kidnapping and all kinds of dramatic stuff, but you'd never know it from the first three-quarters of the book.
REGENCY MORES: We are also here! But you'd never know it from the last quarter of the book when everyone's like "sure, follow your heart I guess!" and nobody actually cares.)
So predictably, I did not care about the plot, but I was fully entertained by all the fluffy wacky family hijinks to do with governessing and the cousins, including The One Who Wants To Be A Great Playwright and The One Who Wants To Be A Unicorn.
Equally predictably I had very little patience for the hero, because a dude who sticks around when a lady has made it very clear that it would negatively impact her life for him to stick around is not a dude who gets a lot of respect from me.
This sort of seems to be a pattern when I read historical romance novels that are not written by Georgette Heyer, but on the other hand my sample size is I think about two? So I'm still keeping my mind open!
(Okay, that are not written by Georgette Heyer or byqian.)
Anyway. That being done, I think it is time to stick my head in the sand for the rest of the day and post about the fluffiest thing I have read recently, Julia Quinn's A Night Like This, which I picked up in desperation from the cheap airport bookstore when I realized I was out of reading material on the flight home from DragonCon.
This is a Regency romance novel with a plot that goes something like this:
HERO: I've been away from home because of my Dark Past, WHO IS THIS STRANGE AND SEXY LADY?
HEROINE: I am your cousins' governess! I also have a Dark Secret.
HERO: If you wanted you could also be . . . my GIRLFRIEND. In defiance of social mores and all that but this is a fluffy Regency so who cares about those!
HEROINE: I care about those, because yes, on the one hand, you're very hot, on the other hand, I could lose my job, so please go away.
HERO: I can't go away. I love my cute little cousins. I have to spend EVERY DAY around my cute little cousins. For REASONS.
COUSINS: . . . you never loved us that much before we got a hot governess. We're just saying.
HEROINE: >.<
(THE PLOT: I'm here! I involve, like, a villain and a murder plot and REVENGE and kidnapping and all kinds of dramatic stuff, but you'd never know it from the first three-quarters of the book.
REGENCY MORES: We are also here! But you'd never know it from the last quarter of the book when everyone's like "sure, follow your heart I guess!" and nobody actually cares.)
So predictably, I did not care about the plot, but I was fully entertained by all the fluffy wacky family hijinks to do with governessing and the cousins, including The One Who Wants To Be A Great Playwright and The One Who Wants To Be A Unicorn.
Equally predictably I had very little patience for the hero, because a dude who sticks around when a lady has made it very clear that it would negatively impact her life for him to stick around is not a dude who gets a lot of respect from me.
This sort of seems to be a pattern when I read historical romance novels that are not written by Georgette Heyer, but on the other hand my sample size is I think about two? So I'm still keeping my mind open!
(Okay, that are not written by Georgette Heyer or by
qian.)
no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 07:54 pm (UTC)Carla Kelly is much less funny and fluffy but much more realistically Regency, if that's to your taste.
My new fav is Courtney Milan, who writes mid-Victorian and tends to have fairly unstandard romance plots and heroes. The politics are a bit modern, but given that it's often about class instead of Pasted-On Feminism, that's okay by me.
But yeah, romance tropes are kind of their own thing all together...
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Date: 2012-11-06 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:13 pm (UTC)I've heard good things about Courtney Milan though; I was actually looking for her in the airport bookstore when I picked this one up, but sadly it did not provide.
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Date: 2012-11-06 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:15 pm (UTC)What else is on your romance reading list? What are you looking for? (I am very self-serving and always looking for more people to talk romance with.)
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Date: 2012-11-06 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:27 pm (UTC)In general I am looking for screwball hijinks and/or entertainingly epic plot twists (kidnappings, secret twins, etc.) and/or legitimately good historical culture-building. I like important friendships and family stuff and women with agency! I do not like love triangles. I very very gladly take recommendations. :D (That works out well as I am always looking for more people to talk books of any sort with!)
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Date: 2012-11-06 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:28 pm (UTC)But I'd love to have more of her books in print, so I could hand them to people and go read this.
I am FULL of unsolicited advice this week
Date: 2012-11-06 08:28 pm (UTC)For historical romances about POC: Beverly Jenkins and Jeannie Lin.
Of course, Kinsale is my very favorite, so you may not want to trust me on this.
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Date: 2012-11-06 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:34 pm (UTC)So AFAIK, Proof by Seduction (okay but has Roma brownface boooo), Trial by Desire (one of my favs, has white hero in Opium War China that doesn't make me want to throw things), Unveiled, and Unclaimed (virgin hero meets courtesan determined to seduce him) are published and hopefully still in print somewhere, but everything after that is self-pubbed and probably not stocked in local bookstores because of that. Though apparently you can get them in print via Amazon!
The good thing about her self-pubbed books is that her personal copyright policy okays lending her books out to people, so you aren't circumventing copyright!
Re: I am FULL of unsolicited advice this week
Date: 2012-11-06 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:35 pm (UTC)Re: I am FULL of unsolicited advice this week
Date: 2012-11-06 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:38 pm (UTC)Re: I am FULL of unsolicited advice this week
Date: 2012-11-06 08:39 pm (UTC)I feel like I should make it clear that I really deeply enjoyed the wacky-plot-twist levels of Midsummer Moon! It was only the romance itself I didn't like and I tend to be a hard sell on that anyway, so I am TOTALLY WILLING to give her another go.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:43 pm (UTC)Gothics
I'm pretty poorly read in this area. Barbara Michaels is shorter on the romance factor than most genre romance, but I've liked some of what I've read a lot. My fav has been Into the Darkness. Mary Stewart does the other fairly famous gothics; I think her best known ones are Nine Coaches Waiting and maybe The Ivy Tree. I've read the latter because
Screwball hijinks
Loretta Chase!! Her earlier Regencies are lighter but good, though I have been warned off Sandalwood Princess for terrible Orientalism. Alas, she also engages in this for Lion's Daughter and maybe something else. I think her best is still Lord of Scoundrels, which has one of my fav romance heroines ever and pokes fun at the angsty broody hero type.
Jennifer Crusie is good for modern stuff, though she's stopped writing romance genre IIRC. I like Faking It and Bet Me best, and she's very feminist, albeit in a very white middle-class way.
(doh have to go now but I am sure I will spam you more later....)
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Date: 2012-11-06 08:47 pm (UTC)Re: I am FULL of unsolicited advice this week
Date: 2012-11-06 08:47 pm (UTC)Well, also PTSD, so the general level of wacky hijinks is relatively low. For Kinsale.
I would probably recommend starting with Flowers from the Storm. This is the one with the stern Quaker woman and the mathematician duke who develops aphasia after a stroke. (Oh, Laura Kinsale. So my favorite.)
Re: I am FULL of unsolicited advice this week
Date: 2012-11-06 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-06 08:53 pm (UTC)Also yes to Jennifer Crusie--I also like _Bet Me_, though I think _Faking It_ is kind of overstuffed plot-wise (a thing with her books), and also like her co-written _Agnes and the Hitman_ for chosen-family stuff.
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Date: 2012-11-06 08:53 pm (UTC)(PLEASE DO :D :D :D It is coming up on thesis season for me which means I need all the brain candy I can get.)
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Date: 2012-11-06 08:56 pm (UTC)