Sunday, January 18, 2009

The first book I read in 2009


I'm really bad about reading books other people recommend for me. I appreciate them doing so, but I have such a backlog of books I want to read that have been sitting in my TBR (To Be Read) pile for years in some cases that I don't feel like I have time to get to these recommendations, and I feel guilty about it. My mom's been telling me about Georgette Heyer for a while now, suggesting I try one of her books, and it's been on my mental TBRAMTBRLR (To Be Read After My To Be Read List is Read), but when she gave me a copy of "The Grand Sophy" I started reading it and got hooked. It's a Regency Romance, a term I was not familiar with, but according to Wikipedia, Regencies "feature a great deal of intelligent, fast-paced dialog between the protagonists and very little explicit sex or discussion of sex." I made the mistake of letting the office busybody at work see it and she stuck up her nose and expressed surprise that I would read a "girl book." But I'll read anything that's well written, and this certainly was. My mother and most of the critics compare Georgette Heyer to Jane Austen and I think that comparison is an apt one, but the way Sophy broke up all the wrong relationships and got all the right people together reminded me of P.G. Wosehouse -- although I don't think Sir Plum ever had one of his heroines shoot somebody in the arm to make one of her schemes work out right.

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