Reading Wednesday
Apr. 23rd, 2014 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Duchess War by Courtney Milan. Robert is a Duke with radical politics, involved in printing handbills that encourage factory workers to strike, introducing pensions for workers fired for trying to organize unions, and just generally working to "abolish the hereditary peerage in its entirety" (in his own words). YES IT IS ACTUALLY A ROMANCE NOVEL THAT IS CRITICIZING THE STRUCTURE OF THE ARISTOCRACY I LOVE IT (I mean, the hero's still a Duke, so there's a limit to the amount of credit you can give it, but I'm impressed). And Robert isn't perfect! He makes mistakes, he's a bit self-centered, and could do with listening to others a bit more, but it is generally an excellent portrayal of someone with privilege genuinely trying to work against it.
Minnie is a woman on the very poor end of 'Society', striving very hard to be normal and find an entirely unremarkable husband. Because she has a Tragic Backstory, wherein as a child her father dressed her as a boy and when the truth was eventually discovered, Minnie was caught by a stone-throwing mob, leaving her unable to handle large crowds or much attention. They both have issues with trust (Minnie is certain that her backstory renders her illegible, Robert was very nearly criminally neglected by both his parents as a child, leaving him both needy and doubtful of love). I love a lot of the little details here: Robert's mother and her character growth, the enjoyment both characters take in exploring sex once they get together, dramatic fainting and rescuing scenes!, the charity Minnie works on, Robert encouraging Minnie to be extraordinary. Also, God, I loved the entire scene on the train, in which Robert's friend embarass him in front of Minnie, SO MUCH. Here's an excerpt:
Miss Pursling looked over at the other woman, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “Play princess?”
“Yes,” Violet answered. “We did when we were children. Over the summers, his father would go off visiting, and he’d leave Robert with his sister—Sebastian’s mother. Robert, Sebastian, and I used to play a game that they called ‘Knights and Dragons,’ and that I called ‘Extremely Boring.’ They got to be knights, but I had to sit around as the princess and wait for them to rescue me.”
“I see.”
“So one day,” the countess continued serenely, “while they were charging about pretending to attack the dragon, I wrote a note saying that I had run away to tread the boards.”
Mr. Malheur snorted. “I believe you added that you meant to give your virtue to an entire group of bandits first.”
The countess didn’t seem the least bit offended by this. “At the time I had no notion what that entailed, but my governess was constantly warning me to protect my virtue with my life. It seemed the worst threat I could muster.”
Miss Pursling leaned forward with a slight smile on her face. She lifted her eyes to Violet’s. “What did your valiant knights do when your defection was discovered?”
“They decided it was their duty to hunt me down and feed me to the dragon as punishment.” Violet frowned at the mess she’d made of her knitting and then calmly began to pick out the last row. “They were not successful. In any event, it made for a far more amusing game.”
“Mud was involved,” Sebastian supplied.
“Thereafter,” Violet continued equably, “it was agreed that it was patently unfair for me to play princess every time. So we tossed a coin for it. But Robert never would play princess—not even when it was his turn.” The countess frowned at Robert, and he looked about.
“A coin only has two sides,” he said. “There was no way to assign a side to me.”
“Except by—”
Robert raised a hand. “And now is not the time to get into methods for making coin tosses balance amongst three. Suffice to say, I would have made a very bad princess.”
“I see,” Minnie said slowly.
“You don’t,” Mr. Malheur threw in. “You’re thinking that Violet might make a reasonable princess. But she was exactly like this when she was a child—all prim and proper on the outside, but a hellion when no adults were looking. She only looks respectable. I don’t know how she did it, but Robert and I would return from our outings covered head to toe in mud, and Violet would look fresh as a spring day.”
“There is this lovely thing called water,” Violet put in. “Boys seem to be unaware of its existence.” She cast a look at Minnie over her knitting. “Hygiene is important.”
Miss Pursling smiled and looked down.
“Incidentally,” Mr. Malheur added, “for the sake of my dignity, Miss Pursling, I must inform you that when I played the role, it was called ‘prince.’ Not princess.”
“Called prince by you,” Robert put in. “The rest of us called you ‘princess.’ It doesn’t make sense otherwise. Dragons want to devour princesses. They don’t care about princes.”
“You have a great deal to learn about dragons. Think about it: We get more beef from steers than cows. It’s well known that the male of the species produces finer flesh.”
“I thought,” Miss Pursling said, “that we didn’t eat female cows because we preferred to save them for their milk.”
Not this argument. Down this road there could only lie doom. Robert hunkered back in his chair and waited for the inevitable time in which Sebastian would send Miss Pursling screaming.
Mr. Malheur winked at Miss Pursling. “Dragons like cheese.”
“But dragons cannot milk princesses,” Miss Pursling responded. “They do not have opposable thumbs.”
Mr. Malheur looked upward. “Very clever, and you’d almost be right. But dragons have minions. In any event, it’s quite clear that the female of the human species has inferior meat. They are saddled with those unfortunate fatty deposits round the front. Whereas flank of manflesh is lean, tender, and succulent.” He emphasized this by standing up and setting one hand against the seat of his trousers.
The countess rolled her eyes. “The least said about flank of manflesh, the happier we all will be. Besides, I thought you rather liked those unfortunate fatty deposits round the front. You spend enough time—”
Robert coughed loudly.
“My preferences are irrelevant,” Sebastian managed, with a great deal of haughty grandness. “I am not a dragon.”
“True,” Robert put in. “You’re a peacock—flaunting your feathers for the female of the species.”
“If it works…” Sebastian smiled, and then turned his head, peering at imaginary tail feathers on his behind. “And yes, that is one of my better features, thank you.”
The countess let out a loud, defeated sigh. “Are we talking about Sebastian’s buttocks again? Has he no other body parts?”
SO GOOD.
A Kiss For Midwinter by Courtney Milan. This was a short novella about Lydia, Minnie's best friend, and her relationship with Dr. Jonas Grantham. When Lydia was fifteen, an older man took advantage of her youth and ignorance, and lied and manipulated her into a relationship which ended when she became pregnant. Her parents, despite receiving advice to the contrary, supported her, and when she has an unfortunate miscarriage, they agree to keep the whole thing a secret, so that Lydia may have the same sort of life and marriage she would have expected before.
Years later, Lydia is a grown woman, determined to be optimistic and see the bright side of any situation. She also mistrusts her own emotions, especially love, and associates passion with bad decisions. Jonas, one of the doctors who treated her while pregnant, has fallen in love with her after meeting her again years later. Jonas's father is a hoarder in ill-health (Jonas has a strong reaction to this which I'm not quite sure is supposed to be read as mild OCD or not), and Jonas himself is a cynic with a sarcastic, black sense of humor. I really enjoyed this book's emphasis on optimism as an act that takes strength and which is no less mature than pessimism. I also really liked the emphasis on condoms (and other preventive measures) and women having knowledge about sex and their own bodies.
The Countess Conspiracy by– guess who?– Courtney Milan! Sebastian is a joker and a rake and infamous for his scandalous scientific theories about the heritability of traits (essentially Mendel's experiments with pea flowers). However, they're not actually his theories, but those of Violet, a respectable widow who could not get any scientific journals to accept her papers under her own name. Violet is heavily constrained by the rules of proper behavior that her mother drilled into her as a child, to survive the scandal when Violet's father committed suicide. The rules worked well enough that Violet married an Earl, in what turned out to be an INCREDIBLY TERRIBLE marriage that has left her with its own scars. Sebastian has been in love with her since they were children, but has to convince her (and his brother) that he's actually serious this time. Basically it is an entire novel about Victorian lady scientists claiming their own work and acknowledgement and it is AWESOME. I love the scene where they discover and name chromosomes! I love that it is explicitly a relationship where penetrative sex is not the default! I REALLY LOVETHAT VIOLET'S MOTHER KILLED HER HUSBAND OMG AWESOME. I didn't see that coming at all! "A lady protects what is hers!" Violet's niece's plot! Violet hiding scientific articles in fashion magazines so that she can read them without anyone else knowing! The marbles! The entire scene about Oliver's bachelor party!
What are you currently reading?
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. Taking a break from Courtney Milan, now that I've finished her Brothers Sinister series, to get back to this. It's getting good and scary!
The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye. Still terrible! In recent developments of the terribleness, Anjuli (Ash's One True Love) and her sister Shushila have been condemned to be burned alive. (I also have a lot of Doylist criticisms of the climatic event of the novel being a European dude rescuing an Indian woman from sati, but let's stick to Watsonian terribleness for the moment.) But obviously Ash only really cares about saving one woman from this fate, because, yo, he's not in love with Shushila so who cares what happens to her? Or, as he says to Anjuli when she feels obligated to watch Shushila (WHO, AGAIN, IS HER SISTER) till the end:
"Shushila!" Ash spat out the name as though it were an obscenity. "Always Shushila – and selfish to the end. I suppose she made you promise to do this? She would! Oh, I know she saved you from burning with her, but if she'd really wanted to repay you for all you have done for her, she could have saved you from reprisals at the hands of the Diwan by having you smuggled out of the state, instead of begging you to come here and watch her die."
"You don't understand," whispered Anjuli numbly.
"Oh, yes I do. That's where you are wrong. I understand only too well. You are still hypnotized by that selfish, hysterical little egotist."
Or later, after Shushila has died and Anjuli is still mourning her (it's been, like, less than a month, by the way):
"You will not", said Ash, speaking between clenched teeth, "say that name to me again. Now or ever! Do you understand? I'm sick and tired of it. While she was alive I had to stand aside and see you sacrifice yourself and our whole future for her sake, and now that she's dead it seems that you are just as determined to wreck the rest of our lives by brooding and moping and moaning over her memory. She's dead, but you still refuse to face that. You won't let her go, will you?"
He pushed Anjuli away with a savage thrust that sent her reeling against the wall for support, and said gratingly: "Well, from now on you're going to let the poor girl rest in peace, instead of encouraging her to haunt you. You're my wife now, and I'm damned if I'm going to share you with Shu-shu. I'm not having two women in my bed, even if one of them is a ghost, so you can make up your mind here and now; myself or Shushila."
OH ASH SO ROMANTIC. But hey, it turns out to be okay, because then Anjuli relates a long story about how Ash was right all along, and Shushila was totally an evil bitch just like her mother, because I guess evil (and sexiness!) is genetic. I can't wait until I'm done with this book.
The Duchess War by Courtney Milan. Robert is a Duke with radical politics, involved in printing handbills that encourage factory workers to strike, introducing pensions for workers fired for trying to organize unions, and just generally working to "abolish the hereditary peerage in its entirety" (in his own words). YES IT IS ACTUALLY A ROMANCE NOVEL THAT IS CRITICIZING THE STRUCTURE OF THE ARISTOCRACY I LOVE IT (I mean, the hero's still a Duke, so there's a limit to the amount of credit you can give it, but I'm impressed). And Robert isn't perfect! He makes mistakes, he's a bit self-centered, and could do with listening to others a bit more, but it is generally an excellent portrayal of someone with privilege genuinely trying to work against it.
Minnie is a woman on the very poor end of 'Society', striving very hard to be normal and find an entirely unremarkable husband. Because she has a Tragic Backstory, wherein as a child her father dressed her as a boy and when the truth was eventually discovered, Minnie was caught by a stone-throwing mob, leaving her unable to handle large crowds or much attention. They both have issues with trust (Minnie is certain that her backstory renders her illegible, Robert was very nearly criminally neglected by both his parents as a child, leaving him both needy and doubtful of love). I love a lot of the little details here: Robert's mother and her character growth, the enjoyment both characters take in exploring sex once they get together, dramatic fainting and rescuing scenes!, the charity Minnie works on, Robert encouraging Minnie to be extraordinary. Also, God, I loved the entire scene on the train, in which Robert's friend embarass him in front of Minnie, SO MUCH. Here's an excerpt:
“Yes,” Violet answered. “We did when we were children. Over the summers, his father would go off visiting, and he’d leave Robert with his sister—Sebastian’s mother. Robert, Sebastian, and I used to play a game that they called ‘Knights and Dragons,’ and that I called ‘Extremely Boring.’ They got to be knights, but I had to sit around as the princess and wait for them to rescue me.”
“I see.”
“So one day,” the countess continued serenely, “while they were charging about pretending to attack the dragon, I wrote a note saying that I had run away to tread the boards.”
Mr. Malheur snorted. “I believe you added that you meant to give your virtue to an entire group of bandits first.”
The countess didn’t seem the least bit offended by this. “At the time I had no notion what that entailed, but my governess was constantly warning me to protect my virtue with my life. It seemed the worst threat I could muster.”
Miss Pursling leaned forward with a slight smile on her face. She lifted her eyes to Violet’s. “What did your valiant knights do when your defection was discovered?”
“They decided it was their duty to hunt me down and feed me to the dragon as punishment.” Violet frowned at the mess she’d made of her knitting and then calmly began to pick out the last row. “They were not successful. In any event, it made for a far more amusing game.”
“Mud was involved,” Sebastian supplied.
“Thereafter,” Violet continued equably, “it was agreed that it was patently unfair for me to play princess every time. So we tossed a coin for it. But Robert never would play princess—not even when it was his turn.” The countess frowned at Robert, and he looked about.
“A coin only has two sides,” he said. “There was no way to assign a side to me.”
“Except by—”
Robert raised a hand. “And now is not the time to get into methods for making coin tosses balance amongst three. Suffice to say, I would have made a very bad princess.”
“I see,” Minnie said slowly.
“You don’t,” Mr. Malheur threw in. “You’re thinking that Violet might make a reasonable princess. But she was exactly like this when she was a child—all prim and proper on the outside, but a hellion when no adults were looking. She only looks respectable. I don’t know how she did it, but Robert and I would return from our outings covered head to toe in mud, and Violet would look fresh as a spring day.”
“There is this lovely thing called water,” Violet put in. “Boys seem to be unaware of its existence.” She cast a look at Minnie over her knitting. “Hygiene is important.”
Miss Pursling smiled and looked down.
“Incidentally,” Mr. Malheur added, “for the sake of my dignity, Miss Pursling, I must inform you that when I played the role, it was called ‘prince.’ Not princess.”
“Called prince by you,” Robert put in. “The rest of us called you ‘princess.’ It doesn’t make sense otherwise. Dragons want to devour princesses. They don’t care about princes.”
“You have a great deal to learn about dragons. Think about it: We get more beef from steers than cows. It’s well known that the male of the species produces finer flesh.”
“I thought,” Miss Pursling said, “that we didn’t eat female cows because we preferred to save them for their milk.”
Not this argument. Down this road there could only lie doom. Robert hunkered back in his chair and waited for the inevitable time in which Sebastian would send Miss Pursling screaming.
Mr. Malheur winked at Miss Pursling. “Dragons like cheese.”
“But dragons cannot milk princesses,” Miss Pursling responded. “They do not have opposable thumbs.”
Mr. Malheur looked upward. “Very clever, and you’d almost be right. But dragons have minions. In any event, it’s quite clear that the female of the human species has inferior meat. They are saddled with those unfortunate fatty deposits round the front. Whereas flank of manflesh is lean, tender, and succulent.” He emphasized this by standing up and setting one hand against the seat of his trousers.
The countess rolled her eyes. “The least said about flank of manflesh, the happier we all will be. Besides, I thought you rather liked those unfortunate fatty deposits round the front. You spend enough time—”
Robert coughed loudly.
“My preferences are irrelevant,” Sebastian managed, with a great deal of haughty grandness. “I am not a dragon.”
“True,” Robert put in. “You’re a peacock—flaunting your feathers for the female of the species.”
“If it works…” Sebastian smiled, and then turned his head, peering at imaginary tail feathers on his behind. “And yes, that is one of my better features, thank you.”
The countess let out a loud, defeated sigh. “Are we talking about Sebastian’s buttocks again? Has he no other body parts?”
SO GOOD.
A Kiss For Midwinter by Courtney Milan. This was a short novella about Lydia, Minnie's best friend, and her relationship with Dr. Jonas Grantham. When Lydia was fifteen, an older man took advantage of her youth and ignorance, and lied and manipulated her into a relationship which ended when she became pregnant. Her parents, despite receiving advice to the contrary, supported her, and when she has an unfortunate miscarriage, they agree to keep the whole thing a secret, so that Lydia may have the same sort of life and marriage she would have expected before.
Years later, Lydia is a grown woman, determined to be optimistic and see the bright side of any situation. She also mistrusts her own emotions, especially love, and associates passion with bad decisions. Jonas, one of the doctors who treated her while pregnant, has fallen in love with her after meeting her again years later. Jonas's father is a hoarder in ill-health (Jonas has a strong reaction to this which I'm not quite sure is supposed to be read as mild OCD or not), and Jonas himself is a cynic with a sarcastic, black sense of humor. I really enjoyed this book's emphasis on optimism as an act that takes strength and which is no less mature than pessimism. I also really liked the emphasis on condoms (and other preventive measures) and women having knowledge about sex and their own bodies.
The Countess Conspiracy by– guess who?– Courtney Milan! Sebastian is a joker and a rake and infamous for his scandalous scientific theories about the heritability of traits (essentially Mendel's experiments with pea flowers). However, they're not actually his theories, but those of Violet, a respectable widow who could not get any scientific journals to accept her papers under her own name. Violet is heavily constrained by the rules of proper behavior that her mother drilled into her as a child, to survive the scandal when Violet's father committed suicide. The rules worked well enough that Violet married an Earl, in what turned out to be an INCREDIBLY TERRIBLE marriage that has left her with its own scars. Sebastian has been in love with her since they were children, but has to convince her (and his brother) that he's actually serious this time. Basically it is an entire novel about Victorian lady scientists claiming their own work and acknowledgement and it is AWESOME. I love the scene where they discover and name chromosomes! I love that it is explicitly a relationship where penetrative sex is not the default! I REALLY LOVE
What are you currently reading?
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. Taking a break from Courtney Milan, now that I've finished her Brothers Sinister series, to get back to this. It's getting good and scary!
The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye. Still terrible! In recent developments of the terribleness, Anjuli (Ash's One True Love) and her sister Shushila have been condemned to be burned alive. (I also have a lot of Doylist criticisms of the climatic event of the novel being a European dude rescuing an Indian woman from sati, but let's stick to Watsonian terribleness for the moment.) But obviously Ash only really cares about saving one woman from this fate, because, yo, he's not in love with Shushila so who cares what happens to her? Or, as he says to Anjuli when she feels obligated to watch Shushila (WHO, AGAIN, IS HER SISTER) till the end:
"Shushila!" Ash spat out the name as though it were an obscenity. "Always Shushila – and selfish to the end. I suppose she made you promise to do this? She would! Oh, I know she saved you from burning with her, but if she'd really wanted to repay you for all you have done for her, she could have saved you from reprisals at the hands of the Diwan by having you smuggled out of the state, instead of begging you to come here and watch her die."
"You don't understand," whispered Anjuli numbly.
"Oh, yes I do. That's where you are wrong. I understand only too well. You are still hypnotized by that selfish, hysterical little egotist."
Or later, after Shushila has died and Anjuli is still mourning her (it's been, like, less than a month, by the way):
"You will not", said Ash, speaking between clenched teeth, "say that name to me again. Now or ever! Do you understand? I'm sick and tired of it. While she was alive I had to stand aside and see you sacrifice yourself and our whole future for her sake, and now that she's dead it seems that you are just as determined to wreck the rest of our lives by brooding and moping and moaning over her memory. She's dead, but you still refuse to face that. You won't let her go, will you?"
He pushed Anjuli away with a savage thrust that sent her reeling against the wall for support, and said gratingly: "Well, from now on you're going to let the poor girl rest in peace, instead of encouraging her to haunt you. You're my wife now, and I'm damned if I'm going to share you with Shu-shu. I'm not having two women in my bed, even if one of them is a ghost, so you can make up your mind here and now; myself or Shushila."
OH ASH SO ROMANTIC. But hey, it turns out to be okay, because then Anjuli relates a long story about how Ash was right all along, and Shushila was totally an evil bitch just like her mother, because I guess evil (and sexiness!) is genetic. I can't wait until I'm done with this book.
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Date: 2014-04-23 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-25 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-23 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-23 09:23 pm (UTC)(Posted a link in the comment I just tried to make, but it was marked as spam, so if you wanna hear it, you'll have to google for it yourself, ha.)
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Date: 2014-04-25 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-24 12:06 am (UTC)Ash continues to be insufferable. Why do you do this to yourself?
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Date: 2014-04-25 06:00 pm (UTC)Well, at this point I've only got about 200 pages left, so I mostly want to finish it just so I can say I did.
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Date: 2014-04-24 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-25 06:05 pm (UTC)