strange and random happenstance

The Garden Intrigue by Lauren Willig
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: February 16th, 2012
Format: Paperback, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

There's only so many times you can throw yourself at someone's feet till you start to fall for the owner of said feet. Augustus has been throwing himself at the feet of the Pink Carnation for over a year now. Working with her as an undercover agent in Paris and using his horrible poetry to foil the French has made him invaluable to the British Government for over a decade now, but really, he only wants to be invaluable to one person; Jane, the Pink Carnation. Despite his flowery poetry that goes beyond the ridiculous, his sentiments of love are becoming more and more real. Jane though does not share these sentiments. She would gladly throw a distraction in his path for the good of Britain, and if said distraction happens to result in true love, well, so be it. Emma Delagardie is an American living in Paris. She spent most of her life in France, going to school with Napoleon's stepdaughter, then eloping with a man whom she didn't quite get, becoming the scandal of society, resulting in her parents cutting off the fifteen year old. Widowed young, she flung herself back into life, even making a few mistakes along the way. One in the attractive yet despicable form of Georges Marston. Yet her new favorite pastime is heckling Augustus. She is ever by the side of Jane and Augustus is ever by Jane's feet... he makes a very logical target. Jane thinks though that perhaps Emma's taunting is a deflection of her true feelings for Augustus. Emma does talk about his tight breeches a lot. Throwing the two of them together to write a masque for Napoleon's house party seems the perfect way to see if these two crazy kids might not find a way to work things out and hopefully foil whatever that wacky emperor is doing next... Because declaring himself emperor seems a pretty big step onto the crazy train for Napoleon. One that Emma can not reconcile with the world she knew.

Augustus is perhaps the most beloved character we have been waiting to get his happily ever after. That is after Turnip. I'm sorry Augustus lovers, but Turnip will always be my man. On the plus side, Turnip got his happily ever after so now it's time to spread the love. Ever since this absurd poet flung himself at the feet of the Pink Carnation speculation has been running wild as to whether this would be the man to win the heart of the elusive spy. As is the case in fiction as reality, the course of love never runs smooth. While busy admiring "The Princess of the Pulchritudinous Toes", the Princess's short little American companion heckling him has never left a good impression. She's American, for a start. A little too gaudy, a little too sultry, and a little too much "the Grand Inquisitor for Poetical Excellence, Greater Paris Branch." Emma Delagardie is the perfect foil for Augustus. Until this book I have always pictured Augustus as one of those over the top, Byronic poets, like Shelley, Byron and Coleridge, but as depicted in Blackadder III, laying about prostate in Mrs. Miggins' Coffee Shop half dead of consumption, but with a very puffy shirt on. Never discount the puffy shirt! AKA, a stereotypical poet ensemble, which for Augustus is the perfect disguise. Lauren does a wonderful job though of showing what playing this stereotype for so long might do to one's mind. Like all deep undercover agents, sometimes it can be too much, and sometimes you just can't get away from the bad rhymes, even in your head. I felt an empathy towards Augustus and his muddled mind. Are his feelings for Jane even real, or has the job just fully taken over control of his senses? He is far more tragic and dark than one might expect... A true romantic poet, not just some parody, with the bubbly Emma as the perfect counterpoint. She too has inside turmoil, but there's an exuberance about her that is undeniable. I can never get enough of this series. More!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: An American in Paris, Augustus Whittlesby, Blackadder, Emma Delagardie, Emperor, Jane Wooliston, Lauren Willig, Napoleon, Poet, Poetry, Regency Romp, The Garden Intrigue, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: October 28th, 2010
Format: Paperback, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Arabella Dempsey has been thrown back onto the bosom of her family. Her Aunt has made a bit of a to-do, marrying a man closer in age to her niece than herself, who might have been a little too close to her niece's heart. Arabella's years being raised as her Aunt's companion and nominal heiress have been brushed aside with one wedding vow. She must now return to her family, whom she barely knows, and be a burden on their already strained income. But Arabella is determined to make her way in the world and not go back to be her Aunt's lapdog while the man she loves can never be hers. She is for teaching. Which, according to her old family friend Jane, should really be reconsidered. Has she ever even seen the inside of an all girls school? But Arabella is hired by Miss Climpson, of Miss Climpson's Select Seminary for Young Ladies, and promptly bowled over by one Mr. Reginald Fitzhugh, Turnip to his friends. Turnip has been at the school visiting his sister Sally and her new very "peculiar" particular friends, Lizzy Reid and Agnes Wooliston, who replace the now shunned Catherine Carruthers, she did take Sally's most favorite ribbons after all. Turnip quickly realizes that being in a small room with three very rambunctious teenagers is the last place he wants to be, let alone in a building full of them. Taking the proffered Christmas Pudding, he walks out the door and straight into Miss Dempsey. Despite having met her many a time on the dance floors of the ton Turnip has no memory of this slightly begrimed girl. But then again, Arabella and him never quite occupied the same side of the dance floor, she being more there to wait on her aunt and balance out the numbers. Turnip, always the cheerful gentleman, profusely apologizes and takes his leave of her and his Christmas Pudding. Arabella rushes after Mr. Fitzhugh with his forgotten Pudding only to be attacked by a man outside the school desperate for the pudding. After Mr. Fitzhugh once again picks Miss Demspey out of the gutter, she does have a talent for falling at his feet, they find the deuced oddest thing. A secret message in the pudding! Well, written on the pudding's muslin wrapper to be precise. The message says to meet at Farley Castle, where there is to be a Frost Fair the next day. In a time of spies and the terrors in France, secret messages in puddings are not to be taken lightly, even in all girls schools. Especially if those messages are written in French! But hopefully with an earnest and loving root vegetable all will turn out just as it should, with a kiss under the mistletoe.

Rarely has a book made me smile from ear to ear and laugh aloud as I have reading after reading of The Mischief of the Mistletoe. Loosely based on the skeleton of the story The Watsons by Jane Austen, Lauren has taken Austen and amped it up to farce level in the best possible of ways. She has taken Austen, and dare I say, improved it for a modern audience. Austen, while humorous, has a staid and classical voice to her narration, while Willig lets her characters loose, losing hair pins and perhaps their reputations in the process in a hilarious page turner that isn't above adding in a few modern Blackadder references. The hero of the hour, while, according to Willig, is based on Bertie Wooster, is perhaps the most lovable root vegetable hero in history, even if this means you start confusing Hugh Laurie in Jeeves and Wooster with Hugh Laurie as the Prince Regent, I can't but help love Turnip more than Bertie and Hugh. Sorry Hugh! He may not be smart, he doesn't overthink things, but he has the biggest heart to match the biggest smile, that you will find yourself sporting one as you race towards his happy ending. While fans of Willig love that Turnip finally got the girl, despite his overly florid taste in waistcoats, I have to say, that I think this novel could easily stand alone. In fact it's the one I pick up most often as a reread, especially around the holidays because I can't get enough of the world Lauren has created, and in particular, Turnip. I want to have young adult novels of the three little sisters. I want to know if Turnip and Arabella ever decided to try some Strawberry jam to replace the standard Raspberry. And I need to know why Sally is scared of chickens. Austen created a memorable world, but each of her six novels are in a rarefied and finite world, whereas the world is messy. Love has complications and pudding and torn sleeves and missed moments and kisses that could have been. All of this needs mess with the tears and the joy, and Austen might not be messy enough to reflect how life is. Not that we still don't get the fairy tale ending, as Austen was wont to do, but the ride is a little more boisterous, as Deanna Raybourn said, it's "frothy with an edge of cynicism."

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arabella Dempsey, Bertie Wooster, Blackadder, Deanna Raybourn, Hugh Laurie, Jane Austen, Lauren Willig, Pink Carnation, Prince Regent, Regency Romp, The Mischief of the Mistletoe, The Watsons, Turnip Fitzhugh

What I am about to say is going to sound like blasphemy to a lot of people, but when Alan Rickman was first cast as Severus Snape I wasn't that enthused. And while I admit he had that lovely menacing and melodious voice he never really became Snape for me until later. Don't get me wrong, I love Alan Rickman, just not in Harry Potter. I have a few friends who are probably disowning me at this moment for saying this, especially one specific friend who shall remain nameless who asked me to distract the security guard while she dove for Alan Rickman's Snape costume when we went to Harry Potter: The Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I opted to restrain her versus acting as a distraction. Seemed far more prudent. And I know the reason I disapproved is going to sound ageist... but there is no getting around the fact that he was too old to play Snape! Because of casting Alan every one of the adults was aged up, which annoyed me so much. In the first movie Snape should have been 31, not 55! That's a 24 year age gap and James and Lily Potter didn't even live to see 24! When I read the books I pictured a different Alan, Alan Cumming, as Snape because, when I first read the books Alan was 34, so about the right age. Then one day I watched The Barchester Chronicles and everything I thought I held dear changed. Because he was a 36 year old Alan Rickman and he WAS Severus Snape. There's a scene with Rickman as Obadiah Slope where he and Mrs. Proudie are trying to change the opinion of Obadiah's boss and Mrs. Proudie's husband, the Bishop Proudie, that isn't just sheer perfection showcasing a level of humor rarely achieved, but in that moment I realized I didn't hate Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, I hated the fact that he played the role too late. Yes, it's impossible for him to have starred in a movie of a book that wouldn't come out for over a decade, but now I can forgive the films. A bit. I can at least see a young Alan Rickman as Snape when reading the books. I also am starting to wonder if Rowling didn't see Rickman all those years ago and see him as the character herself... Slope/Snape... not too different. And don't get me started on how I am totally convinced she wrote Hagrid for Robbie Coltrane because of an episode of Blackadder.      

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alan Cumming, Alan Rickman, Anthony Trollope, Blackadder, Chicago, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Hagrid, Harry Potter, Obadiah Slope, Robbie Coltrane, Severus Snape, The Barchester Chronicles

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are gateway drugs to the best of British comedy. For me it all started with Peter's Friends, which is technically not a comedy, but Fry and Laurie also go beyond the bounds of the comedic label, so I think that's a good starting off point. From there I found The Young Ones, Filthy Rich and Catflap, Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and, of course, Jeeves and Wooster. To this day they are to me everything that is great and good about British acting and television. I will listen to or watch anything that they are in, but it's when they are working together that they reach new heights. Jeeves and Wooster was actually made concurrently with A Bit of Fry and Laurie and I think that them working together at all times made the relationship between Bertie and Jeeves that much more real. What's more, their personalities kind of fit their characters so much so that at times I might wonder if Stephen Fry is wandering around Hugh Laurie's house tidying it up and putting things to rights. Stephen Fry's fussy side comes out while Hugh Laurie's goofy side with a large dollop of musicality come to the fore. Jeeves and Wooster is pure fun comfort viewing, it has the beautiful country houses, troubles that aren't too troubling, and there's the fact that you'll see all your favorite British actors playing minor rolls which were constantly being recast, usually to delightful results. I mean four different actresses playing Aunt Dahlia kind of lends itself to the idea that Bertie has a never-ending stream of interfering aunts. But series two was when the show found it's stride. Series one they rouged Laurie's checks so much he looked like a comical vaudeville drunk. But in series two Simon Langton took over as director! Not only did he direct the seminal Pride and Prejudice adaptation, the one with Colin Firth, but episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs, The Duchess of Duke Street, Love for Lydia, Rebecca with Jeremy Brett, Poirot, Rosemary and Thyme, Foyle's War, and Midsomer Murders! Plus series two happens to have my most watched episode of Jeeves and Wooster. How is it I've seen "Chuffy" what seems like a million times? Perhaps because it's the episode where Jeeves quits... Heaven forfend! Don't worry, it all works out! It always does in the England that never was of P.G. Wodehouse.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Blackadder, Colin Firth, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Hugh Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, P.G. Wodehouse, Peter's Friends, Pride and Prejudice, Simon Langton, Stephen Fry, Upstairs Downstairs

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab by Gideon Defoe
Published by: Pantheon
Publication Date: October 4th, 2005
Format: Hardcover, 160 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

After the main-mast falls over for the third time in a week the pirate with a scarf reluctantly and cautiously approaches the Pirate Captain about perhaps getting a new boat. After admitting to his number two that perhaps covering the holes in his quarters with dashing pictures of himself isn't the best way to keep a boat afloat, seeing as a stiff breeze could conceivably kill off half the pirate crew and the Pirate Captain himself has never bothered to learn to swim he agrees that they go to Nantucket and Cutlass Liz's boatyard. There they run into two interesting people. One is Ahab, a dour whaler who is searching the world for the great white whale who took his leg off with a big chomp, the other is the Pirate Captain's Nemesis, Black Bellamy. Black Bellamy eggs the Pirate Captain on to buying a boat, The Lovely Emma, which the crew can in no way afford. Desperate to quickly get the cash for fear of Cutlass Liz and her ways of dealing with those who don't pay the pirates go in search of treasure! When that fails they try gambling. When that fails they try putting on a Vegas show. When that fails the pirate in red suggests perhaps they try some piracy? When that fails they just might take up Ahab's quest, they keep running into him and he's now offering a reward equal to the cost of their new boat. But can the Pirate Captain and his crew really succeed where Ahab has failed? And if they do can they succeed before Cutlass Liz gets violent?

What seems like years ago now, probably because it was, I remember seeing a few of Gideon Defoe's Pirates! books at Half Price Books and thinking they looked rather fun. I promptly forgot about them because do you realize the number of books I look at on a daily basis? It's seriously staggering. But shortly thereafter Lauren Willig mentioned them in passing as being hilarious so this confluence of events led me to order the first two books, handily sold as one volume, and I put it on my bookshelf and promptly forgot about them again. Fast forward to 2012 and Aardman Animation has adapted the first book for the screen. David Tennant, Hugh Grant, Russell Tovey, no wait, not Russell Tovey in the US, grumble, grumble, but once again I thought of the books and again promptly forgot. For some reason all my encounters with Gideon Defoe's work was promptly forgotten until his third book, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists, was picked out of the hat for book club in 2016. Not being one to start in the middle of a series I picked up my copy of the first two books, promptly fell in love, ordered the next three books and plundered my way through them all.

The thing is, I've always had a soft spot for pirates. This started quite young with my parents reading Irene Haas's The Maggie B. to me. A young girl wishes for a boat to travel the world in with her little brother. I wanted a boat just like it for myself. A pirate ship in miniature with flora and fauna and the coziest rooms you could ever imagine that weathered all storms. As I grew up there were Lego pirate ships and Playmobil pirate ships that actually floated helmed by my Star Wars figures. There were hideouts down by the railway tracks and in my back yard with hammocks, just like on a real pirate ship. There were other books too like Peter Pan and The Princess Bride, and tons of movies from The Goonies to Muppet Treasure Island to Hook. Finally there was Pirates of the Caribbean, opening night at Point Cinema on the UltraScreen with my girlfriends. Some were there to see Johnny Depp, some to see Orlando Bloom, and some to see an anvil three stories tall. I was there for the pirates!

But these Pirates! by Gideon Defoe, they are a breed apart. They are the love children of Blackadder and the briny deep, with historical cameos thrown in just as much as historical accuracy is thrown out. With this lovability that makes you just want to take them home give them a big feast predominately of ham and tell them a good bedtime story before tucking them in for the night. Gideon Defoe's writing combines the wit and love of footnotes of Terry Pratchett with the absurdity of Monty Python. Yet it's so uniquely his own that while I can draw comparisons all day it will never do justice to a series of books that need to be read for their hats and their love of ham. And I'm not joking that once you start you won't be able to stop until you've read them all. From Darwin and Bobo, the "man-panzee," to Ahab and what hunting the great white whale does to the Pirate Captain's sanity, to Wagner trying to blacken the name of Communism, to beekeeping on St. Helena where Napoleon causes quite a ruckus, to Byron and the Pirate Captain forming a true bromance while the Pirate Captain tries to woo Mary Godwin away from Shelley, you will just pillage your way through Defoe's prose.

Yet what makes this series really unique is that, aside from them being kind of hopeless as pirates, is that the characters names aren't really names, instead being character descriptions. There's the Pirate Captain and his faithful number two, the pirate with a scarf, there's the pirate in green, the pirate with rickets, the albino pirate, Jennifer, and every one's least favorite pirate, the pirate in red. While this could be viewed as just a humorous joke at the readers expense, I mean, think how many times we as readers when faced with a new story with oodles of characters has picked up on a character trait to remember them all by? Instead I don't think it's about readers and the inability to remember names, instead I think it's a clever conceit. While yes, there is a bit of poking fun at stereotypes, I think it actually goes beyond this and is making the character archetypes. The Pirate Captain is THE DEFINITIVE pirate captain. He's the only one that matters, suck it Black Bellamy! Just like the pirate with a scarf is the perfect number two, and the pirate in red is the perfect red shirt for us to hate on. These are the lovable essence of all the pirates we wanted to sail the high seas with as a kid and therefore we gleefully go with them wherever that may be. Even if there might be ghosts. And we all know how scared pirates are of ghosts!

In fact I think that the film by Aardman Animation, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, is doing a disservice to the books. While these pirates are true characters by making them cartoonishly animated it has turned them into caricatures. This movie has lessened them. In the books they are larger than life fiendish friends, on the screen they are a kind of boring movie. Which is really odd when you consider that Gideon Defoe wrote the screenplay. When I think back to when I first saw the movie, it in no way made me want to rush out and read the books, which is such a shame. Think of all those people out in the world who are judging these books based on that movie? The movie has far more "presence" and it's overshadowing these lovely, sweet, and comical adventures. When reading the books I thought how much they reminded me of the TV series Galavant. There's an absurdity and a gallantry and a sense of humor that makes it similar to The Pirates! Plus done as live action, there's a basis in reality with having actors like the brilliant Timothy Omundson bring the characters to life. This humor works best with the dichotomy of the absurd versus the real. Which leads me into my next point, when is there going to be a live action movie with Timothy Omundson as the Pirate Captain?

As for why I chose to pick their adventure with Ahab as my favorite? Partly it's because I had yet to read them hanging out with the Romantics last year, but also it has to do with this balance of fantasy and reality that elevates the humor in these books. In taking The Pirates! and placing them in their natural setting you get to see how atrocious they actually are as pirates. The fact that when they desperately need money to pay for their new boat that actual piracy is their second to last resort shows where their priorities lie. They'd rather look at clouds and have feasts with ham. Again and again it's brought home how not at home they are on the sea. They know nothing about whales! As for mermaids... well, the Pirate Captain did date a rather attractive halibut for three months thinking the rather normal fish was something more... While Black Bellamy may be a successful pirate, he isn't that enjoyable a pirate to be around. He's too suave, too together. I actually like my pirates a little on the lost side. Perhaps that is the one thing that the movie got right? They are a band of misfits, and I love them so much for not conforming to any stereotype. They are archetypes and I love them!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Ahab, Archetypes, Blackadder, Book Clubs, Galavant, Gideon Defoe, Irene Haas, Johnny Depp, Lauren Willig, Monty Python, Peter Pan, Pirates, The Maggie B., The Pirate Captain, The Pirates!, Timothy Omundson

War Horse
Based on the book by Michael Morpurgo
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, Matt Milne, David Thewlis, Robert Emms, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Patrick Kennedy, David Kross, Celine Buckens, Niels Arestrup, Nicolas Bro, Toby Kebbell, Julian Wadham, Liam Cunningham, Eddie Marsan, and Pip Torrens
Release Date: December 25th, 2011
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Young Albert Narracott's dreams come true when his father, drunken and surly, outbids their landlord for a young colt. The Narracott's were in desperate need of a plow horse but Albert has spent months watching the young colt grow, spying through the various fences of Devon, and knows that he can train him because they were destined to be together. Against all odds Albert succeeds only to lose his horse, Joey, because their crop failed and his father had no other recourse, drunk and bitter from the Boer War, he sells Joey. Another war has begun and Joey is sold to a Captain James Nicholls, an upstanding solider who promises to return Joey to Albert after the war. Albert begs to accompany Captain Nicholls but is too young to join up. Tearfully he promises Joey that they will be reunited. In France Joey a has steep learning curve, especially when it comes to being around other horses. But he quickly bonds with Major Jamie Stewart's black stallion and the two are inseparable, even as their riders are mowed down by German gunfire they remain together behind enemy lines. It is a long war and soon Albert is old enough and enlists and is stationed abroad. Will he find Joey or will they forever be separated?

War Horse, by it's episodic nature following Joey through all his adventures is reminiscent of Black Beauty. Therefore you could basically call this film Black Beauty Goes to War. The problem with this kind of storytelling is that you really have to be invested in the character of the horse. And while the horse who played Joey could easily be singled out as one of the best actors in the film, it still didn't make this film work. The main problem I had was that the film seemed to be taking it's subject matter too lightly. This could be seen in every frame with the overly perfect shutters and thatching on the Narracott's overly large farmhouse to the goose being used as comic relief. I don't think that Spielberg got the memo that England is supposed to be a little gloomy and run down. Instead he artifically lit most scenes, seriously, look at the two light sources in almost every scene! Oh, and that spotlight on Emily Watson when she leans out the window? What the hell? This was the best lit war EVER! The problem with this is that it literally felt like you were watching Babe or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, forever waiting for the animals to start talking or a Teletubby to wander by. I would also totally recommend those films before this one.

This overall stylization makes for a very sanitized Disneyfication of World War I. Yes, I know the lack of blood and the cunning use of windmill blades was to secure that ever important family friendly PG-13 rating to make this the holiday film of 2011, but still... why? Why the hyper exaggerated colors? Why this muted horror? Why tone down The Great War!?! This is an event that forever changed the world and this movie almost makes light of it. Yes, there are moments that pull on your heartstrings, but I don't think it gets across any important message that could be said about this war. If you wanted to really make this film right, don't pull punches. I mean, would you ever seriously imagine the director of Schindler's List pulling punches? This film could have opened up a dialogue with the younger generations who didn't know about the war and everyone could sit around sipping eggnog and discussing the atrocities. Instead it focuses on the more "romantic" nature of the war, wherein instead of soldiers putting down their weapons on Christmas and meeting in no man's land to have a sing-a-long and a game of football they all unite to save Joey from the barbed wire, even with comedic throwing of wire cutters. There shouldn't be comedic throwing of wire cutters people!

Speaking of the comedy... this film highlights the fact that comedy shouldn't be banned from the saga of war, just look to Blackadder! Comedy can be used if done right. Which is why I must hang my head in bafflement that this film was co-written by the co-writer of Blackadder! Richard Curtis! YES! I was just as shocked as you are, I'm assuming you're shocked here by the way. I couldn't believe that a man who handled the first world war with such insight, such nuance, could produce this schmaltz. SHAME ON YOU RICHARD CURTIS! You have let the schmaltz take over. Let's look to your IMDB credits shall we? Comedic and insightful genius through the eighties, I particularly love The Tall Guy and Rowan Atkinson's performance in that. The nineties are a little rockier, I hate Mr. Bean but my love of The Vicar of Dibley outshines anything because it's one of my favorite shows ever. The turn of the century started off strong with Bridget Jones's Diary and then it quickly went to hell in a handbasket. Love Actually, yes I know I'm alone in my hatred of that but I can't be alone in my hatred of the Bridget Jones sequel! Oh, and The Girl in the Cafe! You Richard Curtis have turned into some sort of romantic bleeding heart that has to have a "message" in their work. What happened to the quality of the work emphasizing the message versus the work being solely about the message? You have failed me sir, and you have failed War Horse.

Because the thing is, everyone I know who has read the book or seen the stage adaptation has been moved by the brilliance of War Horse. This wasn't brilliant, unless you are talking about the lighting. You can kind of glimpse what made the book stand out if you look for it. What I did find interesting was that by tracking Joey's journey we get to see the war from both sides. It's kind of like he is a prisoner of war, yet the English, aside from the stalwart Captain Nicholls, are just as barbarous and uncaring to their animals as the Germans. So buried deep there is the message hidden from sight that despite their differences, despite being on different sides, both sides are the same, just young boys being killed by the great war machine that cares little for them or animals. So I guess I could say it was nice that this wasn't all one-sided? We saw not very nice Englishmen, and some very nice Germans. And that poor French girl and her grandfather did a nice job representing those caught in-between the conflict. So, I guess what I'm trying to get at is that all the pieces where kind of there, just put together in such a way that the whole didn't work. It was too jumbled, too scattered, too toned down, too saccharine. And the thing is, the movie has kind of turned me off ever wanting to see the play or read the book and what if they really are as brilliant as people say? Then I'm just losing out because of some misguided desire of Spielberg's to make another war movie, but this time for the whole family.

I also can not lie about the fact that I really had to see this movie eventually because of the Hiddles/Cumberbatch confluence. Now, I'm not trying to be biased here, there are performances of theirs I haven't liked so I'm not always fawning on them. Hiddles was in that awful A Waste of Shame and was in the abysmal Cranford sequel, and I can not forget the mess that was High-Rise. As for Benedict... avoid Tipping the Velvet, Starter for 10, Atonement, and all those "Hobbit" but not really The Hobbit movies. Oh, and Parade's End! So when I say they were a highlight of this film I'm NOT playing favorites. But their appearances were more bitter than sweet, because for just a second you could see what this movie might have been. They are true actors, they fully physically embody the characters they play. In fact Benedict's performance as Major Jamie Stewart was fabulous because I one hundred percent hated him. The brusque voice, the posture where it always looked like he had a stick up his ass. This wasn't Benedict in all his goofiness, this was Major Stewart, and he could have been an interesting character if given more screen time. As for the naivety that Hiddles brought to Captain James Nicholls, the ability of him to show the horror of the realization that he is about to die using just his eyes... perhaps the most touching and real moments in this entire film. And there's not much reality to be had here.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Fall of Poppies, Babe, Benedict Cumberbatch, Black Beauty, Blackadder, Disney, England, France, Germany, Horses, Richard Curtis, Rowan Atkinson, Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hiddleston, War Horse, WWI

Blackadder Goes Forth
Starring: Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Hugh Laurie, Tim McInnerny, Stephen Fry, Stephen Frost, Gabrielle Glaister, Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Miranda Richardson, and Geoffrey Palmer
Release Date: September 28th, 1989 - November 2nd, 1989
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

When Edmund Blackadder decided on a career as a solider it was made when the most dangerous fighting he could expect to see was a native with a sharpened mango. He didn't expect the Germans and their war machine, no one did. He would never have signed up if it meant spending all his time in the mud with two dimwits praying that his baaahing mad General, Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett, KCB, doesn't decide for them to go over the top or pay for the death of his beloved pigeon, Speckled Jim. All Blackadder's time is spent trying to conceive of ways to get as far away from the front and the trenches as possible, though hopefully not by being removed and placed in front of a firing squad as the Flanders Pigeon Murderer. Blackadder is forever hindered by General Melchett's nefarious adjutant Captain Darling. Combine Darling's antipathy with Blackadders two disastrously dysfunctional "friends," Baldrick and Lieutenant George, and if they survive the war it will be a miracle. If only they could put on the best music hall showcase and decamp to London. Or perhaps a stay in hospital is needed. Then there's the flying corps. So many schemes, can one of them save them?

One Christmas my friend Sara gave me the first half of Blackadder the Third on VHS and we promptly sat down and watched all three episodes. I immediately had to have the second half of the season and over the years I have rewatched those tapes so many times that I wore them out. Sara grew up with a love of all things relating to British Comedy thanks to her older brother Paul. Once they became a part of my life my British Comedy horizons expanded. Paul was forever searching for the elusive Blackadder: The Cavalier Years. It just so happens that I was the one who found it on eBay. I remember as we watched the grainy bootleg tape Paul's disbelief that this young girl who was rapidly gaining in British Comedy knowledge had somehow beat him to the punch. It was an odd little tape made up of Comic Relief Sketches and a music video of Cliff Richard singing "Living Doll" with The Young Ones. But it also had one episode of Blackadder on there that I hadn't seen. I was very strapped for cash at the time and most of my money was going towards my Red Dwarf purchases so I hadn't yet gotten Blackadder Goes Forth. Figuring I knew enough about Blackadder I watched "Goodbyeee" and was just floored by the episode.

The episode is so poignant as I watched these characters die. Sure, we'd seen certain characters bite the big one before on previous seasons, but this was just so much more. This was the final goodbye. Blackadder Goes Forth was the final of four series and we had come to know and love these characters over many years and here they were leaving us forever. How could the writers give the perfect send off while also doing right by their creations? At the time when it was revealed that this final season was to be set during World War I it was criticized for being inappropriate. But I defy you to find any show that shows the horrors of the Great War so heartrendingly. When the show fades to black and white and then the field turns into a field of poppies, I dare anyone not to cry. It does justice to the war by showing how these characters we love reacted to it. It makes so much sense to end the show when the world forever changed. Each season was a different epoch, but I don't think anything quite got the point across to me that history was forever changed by the advent of World War I than a single episode of a rather silly British Comedy.

While people were initially concerned that this series would trivialize the war it not only forged a closer connection and understanding to the war with viewers but it continued the honorable tradition of using humor to shine a light on the truth. Yes, who would have thought that a show based on sarcastic put-downs and sex jokes would show the true horrors of the war? It's not like there was precedence? Oh wait says 'Allo 'Allo, Dad's Army, F Troop, Hogan's Heroes, M*A*S*H*, McHale's Navy and others. Comedy is, in my opinion, the best way to understand a situation but also to make it bearable. Humor is healing. Just as I said when I read Nancy Mitford's Nazis satire, Wigs on the Green, by taking something scary and laughing at it we take away it's power. We memorialize while putting the pain in it's place. But Blackadder Goes Forth does so much more. I remember when I first watched this last episode I couldn't believe that a show that had made me laugh so hard could also make me cry so much. Could make me really care about the Great War. For all those history books I read and even for my love of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for some reason I never got the human element, it was all larger than life. It was the humor that revealed the humans.

But it's the asides, the throwaway jokes that shed a light on what World War I was really like. You might laugh at Baldrick saying he's grateful for the new trench ladders because they had kindling for the first time in months, or how rat is what is on the menu, cooked in a variety of fashions that are all eerily similar, or drinking coffee that is actually just mud, but the truth was the war was full of privations and attrition. We may think of it now as beautiful fields of poppies and heroic men and women who gave their lives, but it was mud and diseases these heroes faced. Plus, the humor used doesn't just aid in understanding the war but in understanding how the soldiers probably survived. If they couldn't think like Blackadder and use a little dark humor now and again how could they survive without all going wooble? Just look at the terrifying thought of the flying squadron? The 'Twenty Minuters.' Called such not because of the length of a mission but because that was the average life expectancy of a new pilot. While this might be stretching the truth a little, it's not by much. Remember, the planes they fought in were mostly made of canvas!

The show also tackles the problem of the "old boys club" that was the military at the time. World War I was the last war where rank was almost solely decided by social ranking. The upper classes taking on the more senior leadership roles, no matter how inept they were. I mean, how messed up was it that you could buy your commission? Pompous, childish, incompetent, and rather dim we see this "club" in the interactions between George and Melchett who speak in their own weird language at the top of the ladder. George is even given a "get out of jail free card" when Melchett offers him the chance to leave the trench before the big push. George though isn't just of the "old boys club" he also embodies the idealistic young men who joined up in a group thinking they'd all be home for Christmas. George is in fact the last one left of the tiddlywinking leapfroggers. When he talks about all the others he joined up with, and their ludicrous nicknames, you see the idealism that was the start of the war. The fact that George has been able to hang onto that throughout is something of a miracle. That he didn't turn into a cynic like Blackadder just goes to show that the war was made up of many good men, of all different kinds, that did what had to be done, even if it seemed contrary to just walk at the guns, they did it for liberty and their loss will be forever felt.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Fall of Poppies, Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth, British Comedy, Hugh Laurie, Nancy Mitford, Red Dwarf, Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, VHS, Wigs on the Green, WWI

Sometime last year I realized that two of my most favorite authors, Mary Robinette Kowal and Lauren Willig, were coming out with books this year set during The Great War. This couldn't be a coincidence I could just dismiss. Oh no. Both these authors have been a part of theme months in the past, so it only made sense to fashion a new theme month out of this random happenstance! And thus A Fall of Poppies was born! Taken from the time of year and the title of the short story collection Lauren was a part of I had the seed of inspiration. But what else could I do? Because while I am fascinated by World War I, I feel that often World War II overshadows it and takes the bulk of the narratives. I felt it was my duty to not only shine the spotlight on an event that forever changed the shape of history, but that in doing so affected every form of medium, from books to films to television to photography to poetry to art. The Great War, in all it's horror, gave inspiration to so many. And I'm not talking about how it inspired the Germans to start another World War and try to get it right this time.

While the easy way out would be to take a traditional look at World War I and the literature of the time; literature being the great medium it is, World War I has had a myriad of influences on speculative and alternative histories as well as British Comedies. This decision to choose non-traditional books, shows, and movies wasn't taken lightly or solely because Mary's book is an alternative history and would otherwise feel out of place, but in order to show how many different people handle one idea. From the more traditional to the more Steampunk. From the more TV movie of the week to the more comic. I was inspired to seek out sources that would be different and that had helped inform my own knowledge. So expect some Blackadder, expect some Young Indiana Jones, expect some Benedict Cumberbatch, expect the unexpected, and join me in looking back at the war that so changed the world it was never dreamed there could be another.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Fall of Poppies, Benedict Cumberbatch, Blackadder, British Comedy, Fall of Poppies, Ghost Talkers, Indiana Jones, Lauren Willig, Mary Robinette Kowal, Steampunk, The Great War, Theme Month, WWI, WWII

Courtship and Curses (Leland Sisters Book 3) by Marissa Doyle
Published by: Square Fish
Publication Date: August 7th, 2012
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
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Sophie spent years dreaming of what it would be like to have her first season in London. Needless to say her daydreams were nothing like the reality her life has become. When the illness came no one could have guessed the toll it would take on the Rosier family. Sophie lost her mother, her sister, and the assurance of two strong limbs holding her up. She is now crippled and must rely on a cane to support her. Therefore spending months in ballrooms unable to dance escorted by her aunts isn't exactly what she hoped for. That doesn't even take the rumors into account. The fact that the ton has somehow gotten it into it's collective consciousness that she is some kind of malformed freak that can't string two words together, let alone form a sentence, is galling. At least if they see her their misconceptions should be fixed, shouldn't they? But for all that Sophie has endured nothing has cut her to the quick more than the loss of her magic. The illness that ravaged her body also took away what was most precious and secret to her. What's worse is that she has no one to turn to. Her mother taught her in secret, and with her mother gone who can she trust?

Soon Sophie's lack of magic is a major worry. Her father, Lord Lansell, is almost the victim of a tragic accident. The almost had nothing to do with Sophie but with the dashing Lord Woodbridge. In fact Sophie only made matters worse. But soon another "accident" leads Sophie to a startling discovery, many members of the War Office have been "attacked" in these seemingly random ways. Could a French Spy be using magic in order to undermine the British war effort against Napoleon? If this is the case Sophie needs her magic back more then ever! But protecting her father isn't the only thing occupying her time. Lord Woodbridge won't leave her alone. Sure she could see herself prior to her deformity falling for such a man, but that was before. What could he see in her now? As for his cousin Parthenope and her parakeet Hester, they have quickly become Sophie's trusted allies. So why can she trust Parthenope but can't trust her feelings for Lord Woodbridge? It is all too confusing and she really needs her mother. But perhaps Sophie will realize that even with a cane she can stand on her own two feet and make a contribution to the world.

This is THE Regency Magic book you've been waiting for in Marissa Doyle's series. While the first two books were lovely, being set during the time of Victoria they weren't so much Regency and therefore had a different, if still magical, writing style. Courtship and Curses though is all Regency all the time! Tangentially relating to the previous Leland sisters book by following Pen and Persy's mother, Parthenope, and her first season, there's a moral formal, more Jane Austen air to the writing that some people might find too stylized but which I reveled in. There's just something magical about books set during the Regency, whether they contain magic or not. Personally I would never want to do "the season" and as for paying house calls everyday? Spare me now. It's a world that I wouldn't ever necessarily want to live in, yet somehow these books about bygone days of balls and manners just draw me in. Now I don't want you thinking I'm not a connoisseur of this style, because I am. It takes a special kind of author and story to whisk me away and Marissa Doyle did an admirable job of providing me with the cheapest kind of time travel around.

Being fully back in the Regency means that we get war and Wellington. I kid you not that Wellington is one of my favorite characters to be portrayed fictionally. He was such a symbol of the time and such a lightning rod for the war with France that I seriously just want him at every ball being boisterous and opinionated. Of course I always picture Wellington as Stephen Fry from Blackadder and that doesn't hurt. But Marissa Doyle doesn't just use Wellington as a signifier for the war with France or even for comedic purposes, she uses him to show the actual danger that the war represents and also as a sort of catalyst for Sophie to embrace herself and her magic. This entire volume actually serves to remind us of the dangers of life during wartime. In the previous volumes everything that occurred was building to one great and dangerous event that would change everything. Here there is constant peril for members of the War Office. Attack after attack after attack. It's not that it just ups the suspense, it's that you feel the danger more. This isn't your typical Jane Austen with balls and courting, with officers only entering to show off their lovely uniforms. I would say that Marissa Doyle captures more of what Thackeray did with Vanity Fair. The harsh reality versus the rose-tinted glasses.

One of the harsh realities of war is prejudice. Of course this is something our heroine Sophie has had to face with her deformity. But during a war prejudice is pretty much universally shifted to the country that you are fighting, in this instance France. There are two prominent French characters in Courtship and Curses, Madame Carswell, the widow of Lord Lansell's oldest and dearest friend, and a confidant to Sophie, and the Comte de Carmouche-Ponthieux, a lost love of Sophie's Aunt Molly. Madame Carswell more than the Comte is the subject of much gossip, not just because she's French, but because she's a threat to those older women who want to get their claws into Lord Lansell. Sophie is wonderful in that she stands by her friends. She has known the evil glares of others and tries to protect those who protect her. Yet what I find most interesting is that in one of these two instances her trust actually isn't justified. Prejudices form for a reason, no matter how stupid, and while we should always fight it, sometimes, just sometimes the reason for them rears it's ugly head. And I like that Marissa Doyle doesn't make it so clear cut, because that isn't the way of the world. Not everyone we prejudge is deserving of exoneration, just as we should try to be less prejudiced. Life is full of these contradictions and to have both innocence and guilt shown goes to the heart of life's messiness. Plus, manipulating our prejudices does keep a story going.

Yet the heart of this book is Sophie. What really struck me about this book is that Sophie is a very different type of heroine. With her deformity she has a very different vantage point from anyone else. It's not just that she's more passive in society being relegated to the sidelines of the ballrooms and therefore sees more, it's that the way people viewed deformities during this time was so different that it would be so easy to think badly of yourself. Because deformities were thought to outwardly show an inner malignancy. That obviously Sophie's foot was because she had something very wrong with her, not that she was the victim of a serious illness she couldn't control, despite being a witch. Now most authors would use this set up to give us a "teaching moment" on what it means to be broken and to willingly accept our limitations, or how to overcome this, but thankfully that isn't what Marissa Doyle does at all. Instead we are shown Sophie's very real struggle and her inner turmoil that asks how can we be strong when we think ourselves crippled in mind or in body? Because it isn't the affliction it's the attitude that is important. So while we are "taught" that a positive attitude can overcome anything, we aren't "taught" it with a stick.

This goes even deeper when you look at the "good" and the "bad" people that surround Sophie. Being brought out in society by her Aunts, Sophie's Aunt Isobel is always telling her how lucky she'll be to get a second son with no prospects because of what she is. It's never about WHO she is, but WHAT. I can't help thinking about the analogy of being overweight. I was told my entire life that I was overweight. Looking back at pictures when I was younger I wasn't overweight in the least, yet I believed it. I believed it so much that I developed the mindset that this was something that would never change and therefore what I ate and how I took care of myself didn't matter and I did become overweight as a result. But I don't think that way anymore, or at least I try not to, and it's because of my friends. It's about surrounding yourself with good people, people who see who you are. People who boost you up and not drag you down. That is what Madame Carswell, Parthenope, and Lord Woodbridge do for Sophie. They make her realize that she is special. That she isn't defined by some outward feature that people can point at and laugh. That is why her magic returns. That and a stern talking to by Wellington. Sophie's magic is basically her self-esteem. She learns to love herself and therefore she is powerful. Now that is something we all need to remember!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Courtship and Curses, Deformity, France, Jane Austen, Leland Sisters, Magic, Marissa Doyle, Napoleon, Napoleonic War, Prejudice, Regency Magic, Self Esteem, Stephen Fry, Thackeray, Vanity Fair

Time and Time Again by Ben Elton
Published by: Thomas Dunne Books
Publication Date: December 22nd, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
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The official patter:
"If you had one chance to change history...Where would you go? What would you do? Who would you kill?

In Time and Time Again, international best-selling author Ben Elton takes readers on a thrilling journey through early 20th-Century Europe.

It's the first of June 1914 and Hugh Stanton, ex-soldier and celebrated adventurer is quite literally the loneliest man on earth. No one he has ever known or loved has been born yet. Perhaps now they never will be.

Stanton knows that a great and terrible war is coming. A collective suicidal madness that will destroy European civilization and bring misery to millions in the century to come. He knows this because, for him, that century is already history.

Somehow he must change that history. He must prevent the war. A war that will begin with a single bullet. But can a single bullet truly corrupt an entire century? And, if so, could another single bullet save it?"

It's the week of Christmas, so few books come out... but that doesn't mean I didn't find a good one! Ben Elton seems to be taking his love of messing with history as immortalized in his TV show Blackadder and making it more serious and scholarly. So yes, I will totally be checking this out. Who knows, maybe Shakespeare ended up being the inventor of ballpoint pen?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Ben Elton, Blackadder, Christmas, Shakespeare, Time and Time Again, Tuesday Tomorrow

If you haven't noticed by now I have a tendency to always cast the books I'm reading with actors from film and television. It's just a weird quirk of mine that I've always had, like the first time I read Harry Potter and saw Richard E. Grant as Lupin, an impression that stuck so thoroughly that whenever I watch the movies I can't help thinking how wrong they got it with David Thewlis. Not that I have anything wrong with him, well maybe he could be held accountable for The Island of Dr. Moreau, he's just not who I pictured. Ever since I started this blog I've started to share my odd little casting ideas, and I figured, well, why stop now when I have to tell you who I think should star in George Mann's books if (fingers crossed) they were ever to become a series.

Name: Ioan Gruffudd

"Dream" Character Casting for the George Mann Newbury and Hobbes Miniseries: Sir Maurice Newbury

First Impression: My love of Ioan is actually one of my very first big celebrity crushes. Because I have spent so much time hopelessly in love with his acting I actually don't remember the first time I sat up and took notice. I devoured everything he's ever been in from the oddly Welsh Very Annie Mary, to that horrid drug movie Shooters. But there's a part of me that's pretty sure, deep down, that it was his role as the doomed Philip Bosinney in The Forsyte Saga that captured my heart. Even if he did have some follicular issues...

Why they'd be the perfect actor for the Newbury and Hobbes Miniseries: Not only does Ioan have that upper class bearing, but there's a jovialness to him that makes me think the camaraderie with Veronica and the strolling off to fight crime arm in arm wouldn't come off as false being said by him. Yet there's a darkness that he is able to portray that makes it not seem impossible that he might dabble in the occult or various dangerous substances.

Lasting Impression: Horatio Hornblower. I mean how could this NOT be my lasting impression of him. I devoured this series from beginning to end in a very rapid fashion. I even became so obsessed with the time period of the show I watched all the DVD extras about ships and sailing, hence I know all about powder monkeys!

What else you've seen them in: Ioan is probably best known for his forays into blockbusters, starring in the Fantastic Four movies as Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic, and yes, I did sadly see this in the theaters, but it wasn't nearly as embarrassing as paying to see that horrid King Arthur adaptation. And I just saw that he was on a few episodes of Glee... ok, that's weird. Also he did a guest stint on Castle which made me realize why I'd fallen for him all those years earlier. Though the average person will probably know him for his string of failed or failing television shows, Century City, Ringer, and Forever. Though if I were you I'd totally check out Forever because it's campy fun with a Sherlock Holmes vibe, and it's his first show that I really hope won't be cancelled.

Can't believe it's them: He was in a Westlife video? OMG! This video for their cover of "Uptown Girl" is totally awesome and has Charles Bingley and Tim McInnerny from Blackadder in it! And the guy who left Edith at the altar in Downton Abbey! Though of course the version of "Uptown Girl" from Ashes to Ashes will win every time in a contest. You have to watch the Ioan version though!



Wish they hadn't: Of all the shows I've seen him in I'd say Ringer with Sarah Michelle Geller was the absolute worst. So let's remove that from his CV if you please! Though Shooters was pretty bad as well... and why did he do that Madonna movie? I mean, I know it's his job and he needs to make money, but there's some bad movies here for such an amazing actor.

Bio: Despite many people thinking he's English, he's actually Welsh, which you can occasionally detect from the lovely lilting tone in his voice. His name, despite spelling (ah, those crazy Welsh), is pronounced Yo-wahn Griffith. As a teenager he got a start on a Welsh soap opera and then he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts from 1992-1995. A year after graduating he was cast in the new version of Poldark, which was sadly not picked up despite how good it was. Small roles in big budget movies started to come in as well as leads in television shows. Perhaps the most famous movie he was in is Titanic! He met his wife on the set of 102 Dalmatians and they have two daughters and live in LA. Hopefully his new starring lead show Forever will make him a bigger household name, a name he totally deserves... at least hopefully it will lead to people learning how to pronounce his name!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Downton Abbey, Dream Casting, Forever, George Mann, Horatio Hornblower, King Arthur, Newbury, Newbury and Hobbes, Poldark, The Forsyte Saga, Titanic, Welsh

Players by Terrance Dicks
Published by: BBC Books
Publication Date: April 26th, 1999
Format: Paperback, 306 Pages
Rating: ★★
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While trying to show Peri a glamorous time after a particularly sewer based adventure, the TARDIS gets the right when not the right where and they end up smack in the middle of the Boer War. Not only in the middle of the strife in South Africa, but in the middle of an assassination attempt against a young Winston Churchill. Winston pooh-poohs the idea that the assassin was after him, but the Doctor knows how integral Churchill is to the coming century so he can't discount this theory. By eliminating Churchill the entire course of future history will be changed. What's more disconcerting is that this has happened before, in The Doctor's second incarnation, almost twenty years in Churchill's future, there was an odd assassination attempt during WWI that The Doctor thwarted. Could there be someone, or a group of someones, so invested in the death of Churchill that they would be willing to wait decades till the perfect opportunity to strike presented itself again?

The Doctor is disturbed by these events and decides to set himself and Peri up in London society in the 1930s. They're bound to run into Churchill, Peri will get her luxury and glamour, and The Doctor will get his answers. Not long after they arrive there is an attempt on their lives quickly followed by one on Churchill. The Doctor doesn't take any risks and hires some Pinkerton agents to see to their safety. But whomever their opponents and would-be killers are, determined and ruthless is how they operate. In the midst of the abdication crisis, could these mysterious assassins be playing some sort of game with The Doctor as their pawn and Churchill's death as a significant move?

One of the fun aspects of Doctor Who is that because he can go anywhen, well, we have the chance to run into some rather august personages, even previous versions of himself. So far in this series of books he hasn't run into anyone of note, but then again, he hasn't really been hanging around earth that much...  in the television series he has met everyone from Dickens to Da Vinci, here we have someone who has even shown up on the show, Winston Churchill. I like that this gives a little bit of context and background to The Doctor's relationship with Churchill, because when the 11th Doctor gets that phone call at the end of "The Beast Below" there is obviously a prior and congenial relationship between the two. I like to think that this book is where it all started.

Yet at the same time I couldn't help be reminded of the first Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair. While I know that this book came out after Players, the fact remains that it is more well known, and I can't help but keep thinking about Thursday's father showing up again and again and asking if she knew who Churchill was. Because, quite literally, if there's one person who was a force for good in the last century, it was Churchill.

And because we are dealing with Churchill, well, we are dealing with some of my favorite time periods. Africa, England, pulling together for the empire in times of crisis... ah, this book had me hooked from page one... but then it lost me. I wanted to love it, it was a fast read in a time period I love, but it just flat lined. The problem I had was with the anachronisms. In any historical fiction, and in particular in a story dealing with time travel and the ability to accidentally change the past, butterfly wings and all that, there are acceptable anachronisms and unacceptable anachronisms. There can be things played for laughs, like in Blackadder: Back and Forth when Edmund messes up the time lines and Shakespeare ends up being known as the inventor of the ballpoint pen. And there can be serious changes, like here if Winston Churchill were eliminated before England's hour of need.

But then there are things that just get under my skin and piss me off, aka, the unacceptable anachronisms. In this book there where two that just drove me crazy. One was the fact that while playing out the abdication crisis with Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII that Wallis was going to be there for his abdication broadcast. Now the clever and acceptable anachronisms is what was going to happen because of the Players... what annoyed me was Wallis's presence. She had fled the country at this point! You can mess with history, you just can't mess with it this much. It's keeping the details intact that make a story like this work. As for the Pinkerton Dekker, who is a little too much Harrison Ford in Bladerunner, well, he was too much of an earlier era. His tommy gun wielding prohi just felt so out of place, it's like Terrance Dicks was taking Boardwalk Empire and trying to force it to breed with the new Upstairs, Downstairs. It was so wrong, not all period dramas mesh, and it didn't surprise me in the least when I learned that Dekker was in a previous Terrance Dicks novel... sometimes you just need to let your characters go. And don't get me started with the Rebbecca joke or the fact Dicks then pulled a Dashiell Hammett and decided to bring in the Continental Op... sigh, sometimes less is more and it's best to separate styles.

As for our big bad? I really loved the Players and their nebulous unexplained nature. In the previous book with the 5th Doctor, Fear of the Dark, I felt that one of the failings was taking a mysterious entity and making it have too too solid flesh. By instead having this race of immortals from who knows where or when and them just playing a game with our history just for fun... well, I like it. I also like that they will obviously return. But what I loved is that at the end they let The Doctor live, not because he wasn't a threat to them, but because they saw his potential as either a player or a very powerful pawn.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Bladerunner, Boardwalk Empire, Boer War, Doctor Who, Jasper Fforde, Peri, Players, Terrance Dicks, The 6th Doctor, The Eyre Affair, Upstairs Downstairs, Wallis and Edward, Winston Churchill, WWI, WWII

Most people know Dickens before they know Dickens. That sentence does seem like a tongue twister, yet it relates to the basic fact that people know of his stories and his characters long before they ever hear his name. Miss Havisham works as a secondary character in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books because people know of the slightly off lady dressed in her wedding gown as if it where widows weeds even if they haven't read Great Expectations. Dickens's stories have a universality to them. You know the stories, and most of us know them through the medium of film.

I was very young when I first discovered Dickens, again, that name meant nothing to me, what meant something to me was Mickey's Christmas Carol. I remember watching it on tv and being enraptured by it. This was so much better than any other Christmas special on tv. Mickey had Snoopy beaten by a mile. Scrooge was mean and sad and so many things, and awesomely a duck! Also, for the first time I can ever think of, Goofy wasn't just totally lame. As Marley's Ghost, he was actually a little scary, in particular with the door knocker scene. This aired long before such a thing as a VCR existed in my family, so it was something I looked forward to every Christmas. I even remember dreaming about it. This was almost as good as Christmas itself.

Dickens got me at that young age. Over the years I have watched many an adaptation of A Christmas Carol, from plays where my 6th grade teacher's brother was in the production, a production I might add that cast everyone by if they could fit the costumes because they didn't have the money to replace any of them, to Muppets to Bill Murray, to bad animation to Captain Picard to Blackadder. I have watched them all hoping to find the same joy. But none have come up to the wide eyed childish joy of Mickey Mouse. I'm sure my father would be appalled that I chose a Duck over George C. Scott, so I should probably mention that at this juncture. Love live the Duck!

While I connected to a cartoon from the 1980s, Dickens's works have been adapted continuously for the screen since the invention of cinema. Many of his works were adopted for the stage during his own lifetime and as early as 1913 the first film version of his work appeared with The Pickwick Papers. Today there are a least two hundred motion pictures and tv adaptations based on his works. So for the bicentenary, the first question on everyone's lips was, what adaptations will be made? Well, besides the dueling Miss Havishams, for my money, I think Gillian Anderson might be able to beat Helena Bonham Carter in a fight, we had an adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, as well as the biopic staring Ralph Fiennes slated for early 2013, missing the centenary there Ralph. While not as heavy as in past years, Dickens is a major tent pole for the BBC with its previous star studded adaptations, Bleak House being the most raved about.

Yet, as Ralph Fiennes shows, we have even gone beyond just dramatizing Dickens's works, we are now dramatizing the man himself. Simon Callow has gained a bit of notoriety playing Dickens, much like Hal Holbrook and Mark Twain. Callow has not only played Dickens several times on stage and screen, notably on Doctor Who, in my mind, he has also written a book on Dickens, because Dickens transcends all boundaries of media. Dickens will continue to live on through many mediums, besides the written word. Now is the time to gather your family together, sit back and watch a few Dickensian adaptations, to capture that perfect holiday mood. Might I interest you in a Duck as the protagonist?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Dickensian, Doctor Who, Edwin Drood, Gillian Anderson, Great Expectations, Jasper Fforde, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Miss Havisham, Muppets, Simon Callow, Thursday Next

Last April I received an email from my book dealer (basically my drug dealer, because books are my crack), John, recommending a new series that everyone was raving about. John has very rarely been wrong so he sent me the first book in the new Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Series, Phoenix Rising. Needless to say I adored the first book as you probably noticed because it received one of my rare five stars... or at least, they seem rare to me these days. Instantly I had to read all the short stories and the second book and was very happy to read in my email that "we're hard at work on book three". When I was devising Steampunk Summer, Philipa (Pip) Ballantine and her husband, Tee Morris, where up there at the very top of a short list of dream authors I hoped would participate.

Thanks to their combined love of pioneering media, podcasts, blogs, epubs, I was lucky enough to friend them through goodreads and lure them into participating in my summer event. They also love cats, but that's a whole other level of awesome. Not only that, but two lucky winners have a chance to win signed and personalized copies of one of their two books! It goes without saying I'm more than a little jealous of my followers who have the chance to not only have these awesome books, but signed ones at that! So make sure you go and enter to win, and then come right back and read what Pip had to say to some of my silly questions! Or better yet, read and then go enter!

Question: What is the definitive Steampunk book for you?

Answer: Even though they weren't called steampunk, and don't actually involve steam, I would always go with Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It has the sense of wonder and amazement that I feel is inherent in the genre.

Question: What drew you to this genre?

Answer: The style. The history. The people. The gadgets. There are so many wonderful things going on in steampunk, but if I had to pick one alone, it would be the history. I've always liked messing about with the past, and steampunk lets me wander far and wide. In the Janus Affair for example I take one of New Zealand's prominent suffragette and give her a steampunk make-over.

Question: How do you take your tea?

Answer: Milk and sugar- especially if it is Earl Grey. If not then as it comes.

Question: Must have sartorial accessory?

Answer: So hard to choose one! Personally I love to have a quirky, shiny, pretty necklace. No matter if you are wearing an evening gown or an engineer's overalls, a necklace makes a statement.

Question: Sartorial leaning: Street Urchin, Tinker, Explorer or Aesthete?

Answer: I tend to lean towards the Explorer. I love a good pith helmet, bandoleer, and ray-gun.

Question: Top hat or bowler hat?

Answer: I am definitely a bowler hat chick—when not wearing previously mentioned pith helmet.

Question: Subgenre you most identify with: Boilerpunk, Clockpunk, Dieselpunk, Gaslight Romance, Mannerspunk, Raygun Gothic or Stitchpunk?

Answer: It like to skip lightly over sub-genre. I just love adventure, exploration, and interesting characters to travel with me there.

Question: If there was one thing that could truly exist from the world of Steampunk what would it be?

Answer: I would love to have an automaton manservant. I hate housework, but realize it is important (with five cats, if we did not do it, we'd be buried in fur in mere weeks). The idea of someone else doing it and casting no judgement on my housekeeping skills is bliss!

Question: If there was one element in the Steampunk genre you could remove forever what would it be?

Answer: I don't think anything should be removed. Everyone has something to say about different aspects. Some folk like to explore the dark side (sexism, colonialism, and racism) while others like the adventure. I think there is plenty of room for everyone in the genre.

Question: Favorite movie or television series with Steampunk elements?

Answer: The Prestige. David Bowie as Tesla. I don't think I need to say more.*

*No she doesn't!

Question: Preferred mode of transport: celestial, aether, terra firma or aquatic?

Answer: Actually I am rather partial to train travel, but unfortunately transport by steam train is not as easy to come by these days...

Question: Favorite Queen to have had a diamond jubilee, Victoria or Elizabeth?

Answer: Victoria! No, insult to Elizabeth II. Mum is quite nice, but Victoria has so many interesting blips in her personality and reign.

Question: Victorian or Wild West?

Answer: Arghhhh....can't pick. In The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences we have done both—or are planning to.

Question: Would you like an automaton butler or ladies maid, considering that it might be the first step in the robotic apocalypse?

Answer: As I mentioned above, yes I want one. I would trade in the chance on the apocalypse for someone to scoop the kitty litter...

Question: If The Doctor showed up at your door, where would you go?

Answer: So many places! But I think I would pop in on some of my favourite writers and poets. I would love to meet Byron, Keats and Shelley. They'd probably freak me out, but it would be awesome and worth it!

*Ok, so technically, this picture is of Shelley, Byron, and Coleridge, but, I'll take every chance I get to showcase this picture from one of my favorite episodes of Blackadder!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 4 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Cats, David Bowie, Earl Grey, Jules Verne, Ministry of Peculiar Occurances, Phoenix Rising, Pip Ballantine, Queen Victoria, Suffragettes, Tee Morris, Tesla, The Janus Affair, The Prestige

The Garden Intrigue by Lauren Willig
ARC Provided by Dutton
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: February 16th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy
There's only so many times you can throw yourself at someones feet till you start to fall for the owner of said feet. Augustus has been throwing himself at the feet of the Pink Carnation for some time now. Working with her as an undercover agent in Paris and using his horrible poetry to foil the French has made him invaluable to the British, but really, he only wants to be invaluable to one person; Jane, the Pink Carnation. Despite his flowery poetry that goes beyond the ridiculous, his sentiments of love are becoming more and more true. Jane though does not share these sentiments. She would gladly play matchmaker though.

Emma Delagardie is an American living in Paris. She spent most of her life in France, going to school with Napoleon's stepdaughter, then marrying a man whom she didn't quite get. Widowed young, she flung herself back into life, even making a few mistakes along the way in the form of Georges Marston. Yet her new favorite pastime is heckling Augustus. She is ever by the side of Jane and Augustus is ever by Jane's feet... he makes a very logical target. Jane thinks though that perhaps Emma's taunting is a deflection of her true feelings for Augustus. Throwing the two of them together to write a masque for Napoleon's house party seems the perfect way to see if these two crazy kids might not find a way to work things out and hopefully foil whatever that wacky emperor is doing next... because declaring himself emperor seems a pretty big step onto the crazy train.

Augustus is perhaps the most beloved character we have been waiting to get his happily ever after. That is after Turnip. I'm sorry Augustus lovers, but Turnip will always be my man, on the plus side, Turnip got his happily ever after so now it's time to spread the love. Ever since this absurd poet flung himself at the feet of the Pink Carnation speculation has been running wild as to whether this would be the man to win the heart of the elusive spy. As is the case in fiction as reality, the course of love never runs smooth. While busy admiring "The Princess of the Pulchritudinous Toes", the Princess's short little American companion heckling him has never left a good impression. She's American, for a start, a little too gaudy, a little too sultry, and a little too much "the Grand Inquisitor for Poetical Excellence, Greater Paris Branch." Emma Delagardie is the perfect foil for Augustus.

Until this book I have always pictured Augustus as one of those over the top, Byronic poets, like Shelley, Byron and Coleridge, but as depicted in Blackadder, laying about prostate in Mrs. Miggins' Coffee Shop half dead of consumption, but with a very puffy shirt on. Never discount the puffy shirt! Aka, a stereotypical poet, which for Augustus is the perfect disguise. Lauren does a wonderful job though of showing what playing this stereotype for so long might do to ones mind. Like all deep undercover agents, sometimes it can be too much, and sometimes you just can't get away from the bad rhymes, even in your head. I felt an empathy towards August and his muddled mind. Are his feelings for Jane even real, or has the job just fully taken over control of his senses. He is far more tragic and dark than one might expect... a true romantic poet, not just some parody.

The bubbly Emma as Augustus' counterpoint was perfect. She too has inside turmoil, but there's an exuberance about her that is undeniable. I kept trying to think of petite blond Americans who could due her justice, seeing as I always cast books in my head for my dream miniseries. I thought Kristen Bell would be good, but for some reason that wouldn't stick. The initial spark in my mind was Bernadette from The Big Bang Theory, and you know what, I think Melissa Rauch is Emma. The way she has that bubbly way of speaking, but then her happy smile can freeze and all of a sudden there is menace and you are very afraid. I think she is Emma. The facade and the interior, the whole shebang if you will. I got a "Bang" joke in, yeah!

The only flaw this book has, which can be said of all the books in this series, is once the couples are paired off, they rarely make a return performance. They are forever relegated to supporting or cameo roles. I think perhaps a sequel or two might one day be in order... the love I have for these characters just can't be contained to one book and then a shout out. Even when the wicked Georges Marston makes a come back, having been MIA since book once, it gives me a thrill. Ah Lauren, you have created a world I love to visit, and a new book once a year is never enough.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Byronic, Lauren Willig, Melissa Rauch, Napoleon, Pink Carnation, Poetry, The Big Bang Theory, The Garden Intrique, Turnip Fitzhugh

Now, I'm not just talking about a love for books that are Regency romances, that would limit the field of all those yummy books out there that you love to curl up with on a cold winters day as the season of love and hot cocoa descends on us. I'm talking about a love, a romance, with all things Regency. A love of the time period from the end of the 18th century till the beginning of the 19th century, of course embodied by the works of Jane Austen. The Empire waist line on dresses making you giddy. Knowing the differences between a barouche and chaise (four versus two wheels). Understanding the horrors of an entail. Having an unending love of knee breeches. And being giddy when you hear any quote from Blackadder season 3 and ALWAYS picturing Duke Wellington as Stephen Fry. HURRAH FOR THE REGENCY! A mad king and dachshund named Colin.

And of course, a themed month can't be complete without a giveaway!

Prize: A signed arc of Lauren Willig's the new book, The Garden Intrigue (direct from Lauren).

The Rules:1. Open to EVERYONE, just because you haven't been following me all along doesn't mean you don't matter, you just get more entries if you prove you love me by following.
2. Please make sure I have a way to contact you if your name is drawn, either your blogger profile or a link to your website/blog or you could even include your email address with your comment(s).
3. Contest ends Wednesday, February 29th at 11:59PM CST (yes folks, it IS a leap year!)
4. How to enter:

Answer me this: Who is your favorite regency author? Now, they don't have to have been writing during the Regency, but they have to be writing about the Regency.

• +1 for answering the question above
• +2 for becoming a follower
• +10 if you are already a follower
• +10 for each time you advertise this contest - blog post, sidebar, twitter (please @MzLizard), etc. (but you only get credit for the first post, so tweet all you like, and I thank you for it, but you'll only get the +10 once). Also please leave a link!
• +25 if you comment on any of the posts this month (aka February), with something other than "I hope I win" or a variation thereof.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 6 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Colin Firth, Duke Wellington, Giveaway, Knee Breeches, Lauren Willig, Regency, Regency Romance, Stephen Fry, The Garden Intrique