strange and random happenstance

Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron by Julia Quinn and Violet Charles
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: May 10th, 2022
Format: Paperback, 160 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Priscilla Butterworth's luck has never been the best. She was born in a small town the day before the pox arrived. She lost almost her entire family. Her mother and grandmother mercifully survived and then thrived turning the family coffin business into a hostelry. But everything went downhill one day when Priscilla was almost killed by a wild boar. A kindly older man saved her but sadly died in an attempt to vault over the boar to save himself. His two grandsons were devastated by the loss while Priscilla was soon to regret her survival as her mother was carted off to prison due to tax evasion. At least Priscilla had her grandmother she thought. She did try to always look on the bright side. But her grandmother had a secret, she was dying of consumption. Therefore she sent Priscilla to live with family, her brother's son's wife. This callous lady wanted nothing to due with Priscilla but decided she and her three daughters could do with a servant and so Priscilla was allowed to stay on. But one day when Priscilla was left behind to clean the house while her family vacationed Priscilla snuck out to see her mother in prison. And she couldn't just leave her there! What kind of daughter would she be? Therefore using a washerwoman's cart she breaks her mother out of prison. They might have nothing but each other but will that stop them? No it won't! They will become pirate queens and sail the high seas and make their fortune! Sadly, that future isn't to come. As they sit under the very tree where Priscilla was saved by that kindly older man from the boar her mother is killed by pigeons. While Priscilla has both her legs broken by a runaway cart. She drags herself and her mother's body back to her relatives and begs to be taken back in. They reluctantly accept and she pays for her keep by keeping bees. But she overhears a plan to do away with her so that the money wasted on Priscilla can go to new dresses. She comes up with an elaborate plan to sell the honey in Brighton but uses the trip to escape, but it's a dark and stormy night when she stumbles on the Baron's estate. And that is when her story and her happily ever after really start.

The origins of this book are both bitter and sweet, much like Priscilla Butterworth's story. Julia Quinn created this book with her younger sister Violet Charles, though Quinn is quick to point out that really, this is Violet's baby. Which makes it all the more sad that she didn't live to see it published, being killed in a car crash last year by a drunk driver along with her father, her beloved dog, and her husband, who died later from injuries sustained in the crash. Just the facts of this book's release have me tearing up. Miss Butterworth's story? Neither in sadness or mirth. Sadly. So who will like this book? Well, the Briderton fans, which are legion, because this book is not for the graphic novel aficionados. The main problem lies in the fact that I'm just not a fan of Violet Charles's artwork. I feel eyes should be where eyes should be and anatomy is important. If this artwork was to succeed the writing needed to be far crisper and over-the-top. Just look to Kate Beaton, she of Hark! A Vagrant fame. Kate Beaton's art is very rough and stylized and yet it just works. Her style and writing fit together like peanut butter and jelly or pastries and gooseberries as the case may be. Whereas Violet Charles's style is cartoonish, and not in a good way. Kind of like Adam Ellis, whose work is good but best in small doses. Or like that Sense and Sensibility graphic novel Marvel released a few years ago which missed the mark so badly and very much because of the art. And this disparity for who will like this book and who won't is problematic for me because I fall on the graphic novel end of the spectrum because I've only been a Bridgerton fan for a year and a graphic novel addict my entire life. I have favorite artists and creators I follow just for the look if not for the story as well. I have high expectations in art and this just didn't float my boat. And as for the story? I kind of wish it had stuck more to what we know the plot was from what Hyacinth and Lady Danbury have said. There needed to be more hills, more than one cliff, and Priscilla needed to be a little stupider and not so resilient. Personally, what I think would fix it would be annotations by Lady Danbury. That would be enough.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adam Ellis, Graphic Novel, Hark a Vagrant, Hyacinth Bridgerton, Julia Quinn, Kate Beaton, Lady Danbury, Marvel, Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron, Pigeons, Priscilla Butterworth, Regency Romp, Violet Charles

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Published by: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 1848
Format: Hardcover, 486 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Wildfell Hall has a new resident. A mysterious widow and her young son who want nothing to do with the outside world. The outside world disagrees. The nosey neighbors must know everything they can about the mysterious Mrs. Graham. Young Gilbert Markham wants to know everything but for a very different reason, he is inexorably drawn to the young widow and cannot understand why she remains aloof and detached, craving solitude over companionship and love. Gilbert Markham's attentions to the young widow do not go unnoticed by others and leads his spurned ex, Eliza Millward, to spread malicious gossip throughout the small community about the widow. The whispers combined with Helen Graham's feelings for Gilbert lead her to make a decision she might regret. She decides she must disclose her past so that he can move on and realize their love is doomed, and not just because her husband isn't dead, but because he doesn't really know who she is. To that extent she gives him her diaries. All her inner feelings and thoughts and all her secrets bound forever between the pages of a book.

Mrs. Helen Graham is really Mrs. Helen Huntington, the wife of a cruel man who has more vices than she could enumerate and surrounds himself with the worst of humanity at their home, Grassdale. Though their marriage wasn't destined to debauchery. At first Arthur Huntingdon was witty and pretty and Helen in her naivete thought she could reform this bad boy. At the birth of their son though things changed. Arthur didn't like his son and heir getting all of Helen's attention and set out to form the boy in his own image. Helen fled her husband because he was trying to imprint their your son with his own dubious morals. She could have suffered anything if it was just herself that was the target of Huntington's malice, she stubbornly married him after all, but their son is another matter. Her brother helped her escape the life she trapped herself in only to find herself wanting that which she can not have due to her circumstances. But after years of feeling hunted in her own home can she remake her life? Is freedom enough without Gilbert Markham? Or will her old life haunt her until she or Huntington is dead?

Sometimes I am a very contrary person, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a case in point. Instead of reading the book before watching the miniseries I decided to watch the miniseries first which then put me off the book. I know, it has Toby Stephens and James Purefoy in it so how could it be bad? But I watched it prior to Sherlock partially redeeming Rupert Graves in my eyes and my hate of Rupert Graves has been a long standing issue. My hate is also a hard thing to put my finger on, was it The Forsyte Saga or Take a Girl Like You, both where he played cheating cads, that made me want to forever punch him in the face? I think I might never know. Putting the Rupert rant behind us my steadfast rule of reading the book prior to watching any adaptation for some reasons is exempt when it has to do with the Brontes. I had seen so many adaptations of their books prior to ever picking one up that they are grandfathered into my weird reading habits with this clause. Yet I still question how this adaptation failed with that cast! It was dull and lifeless and I remember barely being able to finish it and this from a girl who finished the Jane Eyre adaptation with Ciaran Hinds. PS I hate Ciaran Hinds more than I've ever hated Rupert Graves.

The miniseries turned me off the book and because of this the book languished for years waiting for the time when I would pick it up and love it. I seriously can not think of any reasonable excuse why it took me this long to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I was under so many misconceptions about this book that I should have just trusted my gut which tells me that Anne Bronte is awesome. I am serious when I say that I think Anne might just be my favorite Bronte. This isn't just me rooting for the underdog, though she is the least embraced of the sisters, this is totally to do with how awesome her books are. Let me brake it down for you. Charlotte is the most famous, I mean, Jane Eyre, while Emily is the one the more malcontent readers are drawn to with her sole writing credit, Wuthering Heights, and that leaves Anne kind of stuck in the middle with her two books, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey. And I call foul! To all the readers and especially English teachers out there the world over who gravitate towards the two ends of the Bronte spectrum and fail to educate others that Anne is the best of both worlds! She has the darkness of Emily with the narrative structure of Charlotte. I think I need to form an Anne support group...

But what's so interesting about Anne is that in her work she is in some ways responding to her own siblings as people and writers. Anne's desire for "truth" in this novel comes from a desire to counter the pro bad boy image her sisters had created in their works. But there's a deeper part of me that wonders if she's not just messing with Charlotte and Emily a little. Who, given the chance, wouldn't try to mess with their siblings a little? Her sisters did everything to make this bad boy redeemable by love trope and then in comes Anne and blasts them out of the water. Huntington is a bad boy to equal Heathcliff and Rochester, but love is unable to sway him. He even wants to corrupt his own child! The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an opus to the irredeemable. I can just picture the sisters sitting around their fireplace on a cold night in Haworth talking about their dream men and Anne just looking askance at them and plotting how to prove them wrong, preferably in three volumes, she was, after all, a silent plotter. I don't think anyone has ever summed this up better than Kate Beaton in her "Hark, a Vagrant" comic, "Dude Watchin' with The Brontes," so I won't attempt to and move onto other things. Though I will mention I have this piece framed in my library I love it so much.

Moving on... What I find amazing in this book, and in fact all the work by the Brontes, is how they were able to capture an entire outside world while living their cloistered lives and put it on the page. It just goes to show that sometimes writing what you know isn't the only answer, but writing what you feel is. Over a hundred and fifty years later this book pulses with life. It was criticized at the time for being too repulsive and scandalous, but that is why it resonates till this day. It is the truth of human nature and fallibility that Anne sought out to capture and did. Infidelity, adultery, drugs, drink, games of chance, everything not written about in literature of it's day that still causes so much heartbreak. Yes, you could argue that Anne was filtering this all through the lens of the hedonist lifestyle her brother Branwell lived. But you can't say that dealing with Branwell's multiplicity of addictions and personality defects didn't bring the darker aspects of humanity right to Anne's front door. So, arguing against myself, maybe she was writing what she knew? Either way, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall shows that no matter how you live your life it gives you an understanding of the world at large and it's degradation's.

The degraded life that Helen lives made me connect to her because, not only did I pity her, I worried that she wouldn't make it out of this situation, ironic because having watched the miniseries I knew the outcome, but still I worried. But as to the debauchery, one problem I have always had and mention repeatedly in literature set during this time is the overuse of the Hellfire Club. It seems if you are debauched during the Regency or early Victorian eras you therefore have to belong to some incarnation of said Hellfire Club. But here I make an exception. Usually the Hellfire Club is just a trope used by modern writers, as in those still currently writing, as a basic touchstone for debauchery that modern readers will latch onto. Think of the spunk it took for a little ex-governess to allude to the Hellfire Club in a book written in 1848! You Anne Bronte are the exception that proves the rule! When you wrote those few lines alluding to fire and brimstone it was not yet hackneyed, it was controversial. I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me and literature. This poorly written review will have to suffice.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Bronte, BBC Miniseries, Branwell Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Ciaran Hinds, Emily Bronte, Hark a Vagrant, Hellfire Club, James Purefoy, Rochester, Ten Years, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Toby Stephens

The Marvels by Brian Selznick
Published by: Scholastic Press
Publication Date: September 15th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 640 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Caldecott Award winner and bookmaking trailblazer Brian Selznick once again plays with the form he invented and delivers a moving and mesmerizing adventure about the power of story. Two seemingly unrelated stories -- one in words, the other in pictures -- come together with spellbinding synergy! The illustrated story begins in 1766 with Billy Marvel, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, and charts the adventures of his family of actors over five generations. The prose story opens in 1990 and follows Joseph, who has run away from school to an estranged uncle's puzzling house in London, where he, along with the reader, must piece together many mysteries. How the picture and word stories intersect will leave readers marveling over Selznick's storytelling prowess. Filled with mystery, vibrant characters, surprise twists, and heartrending beauty, and featuring Selznick's most arresting art to date, The Marvels is a moving tribute to the power of story."

Even if you think that Brian Selznick isn't for you, I urge you to pick up any of his books, you will be surprised and most likely blown away simultaneously.

Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton
Published by: Drawn and Quarterly
Publication Date: September 15th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 160 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"A follow-up to Hark! A Vagrant, which spent five months on the New York Times bestseller list.

Ida B. Wells, the Black Prince, and Benito Juárez burst off the pages of Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection, armed with modern-sounding quips and amusingly on-point repartee. Kate Beaton's second D+Q book brings her hysterically funny gaze to bear on these and even more historical, literary, and contemporary figures. Irreverently funny and carefully researched, no target is safe from Beaton's incisive wit in these satirical strips.

Beaton began her infectiously popular web comic, Hark! A Vagrant, in 2007 and it quickly attracted the adoration of hundreds of thousands of fans. It was an unequivocal hit with critics and fans alike, topping best-of-the-year lists from E!, Amazon, Time, and more. Now Beaton returns with a refined pen, ready to make jokes at the expense of hunks, army generals, scientists, and Canadians in equal measure. With a few carefully placed lines, she captures the over-the-top evil of the straw feminists in the closet, the disgruntled dismay of Heathcliff, and Wonder Woman's all-conquering ennui. Step Aside, Pops is sure to be the comedic hit of the year: sharp, insightful, and very funny."

While Kate Beaton's comics range from crap to the sublime, the sublime make the crap worth it. Yes, it's uneven, but so are most things and she does make up for it!

The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen by Katherine Howe
Published by: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 15th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"A haunting, contemporary love story from the New York Times bestselling author of Conversion.

It’s July in New York City, and aspiring filmmaker Wes Auckerman has just arrived to start his summer term at NYU. While shooting a séance at a psychic’s in the East Village, he meets a mysterious, intoxicatingly beautiful girl named Annie.

As they start spending time together, Wes finds himself falling for her, drawn to her rose-petal lips and her entrancing glow. There’s just something about her that he can’t put his finger on, something faraway and otherworldly that compels him to fall even deeper. Annie’s from the city, and yet she seems just as out of place as Wes feels. Lost in the chaos of the busy city streets, she’s been searching for something—a missing ring. And now Annie is running out of time and needs Wes’s help. As they search together, Annie and Wes uncover secrets lurking around every corner, secrets that will reveal the truth of Annie’s dark past."

Totally didn't realize this was YA, it will still be good though...

Dishing the Dirt by M.C. Beaton
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: September 15th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 304 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"When therapist Jill Davent moved to the village of Carsely, Agatha Raisin was not a fan. Not only was this therapist romancing Agatha's ex-husband but she dug up details of Agatha's not-too-glamorous origins. Jill also counsels a woman, Gwen Simple, that Agatha firmly believes assisted her son in some grisly murders, although there is no proof. Not one to keep her feelings to herself, Agatha tells anyone that would listen that Jill is a charlatan and better off dead. Agatha could only sigh with relief when the therapist took an office in Mircester.

When Agatha learns that Jill had hired a private detective to investigate her background, she barges into Jill's office and gives her a piece of her mind, yelling "I could kill you!" So when Jill is found strangled to death in her office two days later, Agatha becomes the prime suspect. But Agatha, along with her team of private detectives, is determined to prove her innocence and find the real culprit. This time Agatha must use her skills to save her own skin."

Two "Beatons" this week, interesting...

Driving Heat by Richard Castle
Published by: Kingswell
Publication Date: September 15th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Richard Castle, New York Times mega-bestselling mystery writer and star of ABC's hit primetime show Castle is back. In the seventh novel of his popular Nikki Heat series, the NYPD's top homicide detective has been promoted to captain just in time to face a thrilling case with a very personal twist. Captain Heat's fianc , Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jameson Rook, is deep in an investigation. Professionally for Heat, Rook's meddling in the case compromises her new job. Privately, it becomes an early test of their engagement when Rook becomes a distraction at best, and an obstacle at worst, as their parallel lives not only cross, but collide."

The "Castle" books keep coming on!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Raisin, Brian Selznick, Driving Heat, Hark a Vagrant, Kate Beaton, Katherine Howe, M.C. Beaton, Nikki Heat, Richard Castle, The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen, The Marvels

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Published by: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 1848
Format: Hardcover, 486 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Wildfell Hall has a new resident. A mysterious widow and her young son who want nothing to do with the outside world. The outside world disagrees. The nosey neighbors must know everything they can about the mysterious Mrs. Graham. Young Gilbert Markham wants to know everything but for a very different reason, he is inexorably drawn to the young widow and cannot understand why she remains aloof and detached, craving solitude over companionship and love. But soon Helen Graham realizes that her feelings for Gilbert mean that she must disclose her past so that he can move on and realize their love is doomed, and not just because her husband isn't dead.

Mrs. Helen Graham is really Mrs. Helen Huntington, the wife of a cruel man who has more vices then she could enumerate. She has fled her husband because he was trying to imprint their your son with his own dubious morals.  Helen could have suffered anything if it was just herself that was the target of Huntongton's malice, she stubbornly married him after all, but their son is another matter. After years of feeling trapped and hunted in her own home, can she remake her life, or will the old one haunt her?

Sometimes I am a very contrary person, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a case in point. Instead of reading the book before watching the miniseries I decided to watch the miniseries first which then put me off the book. For some reason I view the steadfast rule of reading the book first not applying to the Brontes. I had seen so many adaptations of their books prior to ever picking one up that they are grandfathered into my weird reading habits with this clause. Yet I still question how an adaptation with Toby Stephens and James Purefoy, not to mention Rupert Graves, Pam Ferris, and Paloma Baeza, could be so bad. It was dull and lifeless and I remember barely being able to finish it.

The miniseries turned me off the book and because of this the book has languished for years waiting for the time when I would pick it up and love it. I seriously can not think of any reasonable excuse why it took me this long to read it. I was under so many misconceptions about this book that I should have just trusted to my gut which tells me that Anne Bronte is awesome. I am serious when I say that I think Anne might just be my favorite Bronte. This isn't just me routing for the underdog, though she is the least embraced of the sisters, this is totally to do with how awesome her books are.

There's a part of me that knows Anne's desire for "truth" in this novel comes from a desire to counter the pro bad boy image her sisters had created in their works. But there's a deeper part of me that wonders if she's not just messing with Charlotte and Emily a little. Who, given the chance, wouldn't try to mess with their siblings a little? Her sisters did everything to make this bad boy redeemable by love trope and then in comes Anne and blasts them out of the water. Huntington is a bad boy to equal Heathcliff and Rochester, but love is unable to sway him. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an opus to the irredeemable. I can just picture the sisters sitting around their fireplace on a cold night in Haworth talking about their dream men and Anne just looking askance at them and plotting how to prove them wrong, preferably in three volumes, she was, after all, a silent plotter. I don't think anyone has ever summed this up better then Kate Beaton in her "Hark, a Vagrant" comic, "Dude Watchin' with The Brontes" so I won't attempt to and move onto other things.

So, other things! What I find amazing in this book, and in fact all the work by the Brontes, is how they were able to capture an entire world from outside their cloistered lives and put it on the page. It just goes to show that sometimes writing what you know isn't the only answer, but writing what you feel is. Over a hundred and fifty years later this book pulses with life. It was criticized at the time for being too repulsive and scandalous, but that is why it resonates till this day. It is the truth of human nature and fallibility that Anne sought out to capture and did. Infidelity, adultery, drugs, drink, games of chance, everything not written about in literature of it's day that still causes so much heartbreak.

The degraded life that Helen lives made me connect to her because, not only did I pity her, I worried that she wouldn't make it out of this situation, ironic because having watched the miniseries I knew the outcome, but still I worried. But as to the debauchery, one problem I have always had and mentioned repeatedly in literature set during this time is the overuse of the Hellfire Club. It seems if you are debauched during the Regency or early Victorian eras you therefore have to belong to some incarnation of said Hellfire Club. But here I make an exception. Usually the Hellfire Club is just a trope used by modern writers, as in those still currently writing. Think of the spunk it took for a little ex governess to allude to the Hellfire Club in a book written in 1848! You Anne Bronte are the exception that proves the rule! When you wrote those few lines alluding to fire and brimstone it was not yet hackneyed, it was controversial. I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me and literature, this poorly written review will have to suffice.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Bronte, BBC Miniseries, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Bronte, Hark a Vagrant, Hellfire Club, James Purefoy, Mary Barton, That Summer, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, This Summer, Toby Stephens

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Published by: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 1848
Format: Hardcover, 486 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition then one reviewed)

"I have to confess: I loved this book as a teenager (an oppressed heroine fleeing from an abusive husband! A devoted hero who sees the good in the reclusive heroine! An adorable little moppet of a boy!), but when I was researching That Summer, I decided to watch the BBC version, since the costumes are exactly the right time period for me (and, yes, I may have a little weakness for BBC costume dramas). The heroine in the film version irked me. And now I can’t quite separate the two.

Anyhow, now that I’ve got that out of the way….

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was a seminal work for me on the way to That Summer because, like Mary Barton, it was published in 1848. Unlike Mary Barton, it deals with the propertied classes with which my heroine, Imogen, would have been familiar. Like my Imogen, the heroine of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen, fancies herself in love in her youth, marries unwisely and then is forced to live out the consequences.

This is a theme that fascinates me. Remember your crushes in your teens? Remember the unwise romantic choices you made? What if you’d married one of them? And found yourself owned by that man, his property under the law, with no legal identity, no independent means, no recourse?

Sends a chill down your spine, doesn’t it?" - Lauren Willig

Wildfell Hall has a new resident. A mysterious widow and her young son who want nothing to do with the outside world. The outside world disagrees. The nosey neighbors must know everything they can about the mysterious Mrs. Graham. Young Gilbert Markham wants to know everything but for a very different reason, he is inexorably drawn to the young widow and cannot understand why she remains aloof and detached, craving solitude over companionship and love. But soon Helen Graham realizes that her feelings for Gilbert mean that she must disclose her past so that he can move on and realize their love is doomed, and not just because her husband isn't dead.

Mrs. Helen Graham is really Mrs. Helen Huntington, the wife of a cruel man who has more vices then she could enumerate. She has fled her husband because he was trying to imprint their your son with his own dubious morals.  Helen could have suffered anything if it was just herself that was the target of Huntongton's malice, she stubornly married him after all, but their son is another matter. After years of feeling trapped and hunted in her own home, can she remake her life, or will the old one haunt her?

Sometimes I am a very contrary person, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a case in point. Instead of reading the book before watching the miniseries I decided to watch the miniseries first which then put me off the book. For some reason I view the steadfast rule of reading the book first not applying to the Brontes. I had seen so many adaptations of their books prior to ever picking one up that they are grandfathered into my weird reading habits with this clause. Yet I still question how an adaptation with Toby Stephens and James Purefoy, not to mention Rupert Graves, Pam Ferris, and Paloma Baeza, could be so bad. It was dull and lifeless and I remember barely being able to finish it.

The miniseries turned me off the book and because of this the book has languished for years waiting for the time when I would pick it up and love it. I seriously can not think of any reasonable excuse why it took me this long to read it. I was under so many misconceptions about this book that I should have just trusted to my gut which tells me that Anne Bronte is awesome. I am serious when I say that I think Anne might just be my favorite Bronte. This isn't just me routing for the underdog, though she is the least embraced of the sisters, this is totally to do with how awesome her books are.

There's a part of me that knows Anne's desire for "truth" in this novel comes from a desire to counter the pro bad boy image her sisters had created in their works. But there's a deeper part of me that wonders if she's not just messing with Charlotte and Emily a little. Who, given the chance, wouldn't try to mess with their siblings a little? Her sisters did everything to make this bad boy redeemable by love trope and then in comes Anne and blasts them out of the water. Huntington is a bad boy to equal Heathcliff and Rochester, but love is unable to sway him. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an opus to the irredeemable. I can just picture the sisters sitting around their fireplace on a cold night in Haworth talking about their dream men and Anne just looking askance at them and plotting how to prove them wrong, preferably in three volumes, she was, after all, a silent plotter. I don't think anyone has ever summed this up better then Kate Beaton in her "Hark, a Vagrant" comic, "Dude Watchin' with The Brontes" so I won't attempt to and move onto other things.

So, other things! What I find amazing in this book, and in fact all the work by the Brontes, is how they were able to capture an entire world from outside their cloistered lives and put it on the page. It just goes to show that sometimes writing what you know isn't the only answer, but writing what you feel is. Over a hundred and fifty years later this book pulses with life. It was criticized at the time for being too repulsive and scandalous, but that is why it resonates till this day. It is the truth of human nature and fallibility that Anne sought out to capture and did. Infidelity, adultery, drugs, drink, games of chance, everything not written about in literature of it's day that still causes so much heartbreak.

The degraded life that Helen lives made me connect to her because, not only did I pity her, I worried that she wouldn't make it out of this situation, ironic because having watched the miniseries I knew the outcome, but still I worried. But as to the debauchery, one problem I have always had and mentioned repeatedly in literature set during this time is the overuse of the Hellfire Club. It seems if you are debauched during the Regency or early Victorian eras you therefore have to belong to some incarnation of said Hellfire Club. But here I make an exception. Usually the Hellfire Club is just a trope used by modern writers, as in those still currently writing. Think of the spunk it took for a little ex governess to allude to the Hellfire Club in a book written in 1848! You Anne Bronte are the exception that proves the rule! When you wrote those few lines alluding to fire and brimstone it was not yet hackneyed, it was controversial. I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me and literature, this poorly written review will have to suffice.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Bronte, BBC Miniseries, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Bronte, Hark a Vagrant, Hellfire Club, James Purefoy, Mary Barton, That Summer, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, This Summer, Toby Stephens

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Published by: Little Brown
Publication Date: September 27th, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 432 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Karou is a seventeen-year-old art student with a most unusual family. From his desk in a dusty, otherworldly shop, her mysterious, monstrous father sends her on errands across the globe, collecting teeth for a shadowy purpose. On one such errand, Karou encounters an angel, and soon the mysteries of her life and her family are unraveled--with consequences both beautiful and dreadful. National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor has created a lushly imaginative, fully realized world in Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Taylor’s writing is as sumptuous as poetry, and the story overflows with dark and delightful magic, star-crossed love, and difficult choices with heartbreaking repercussions. Readers of all ages will be utterly enchanted."

I've recently been recommended by my friend Jess to read Laini Taylor, and here she has a new book coming out with the wonderful quote from Patrick Rothfuss: "Wow. I wish I had written this book." So I guess that's settled, out to the bookstore I go!

The Immorality Engine by George Mann
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: September 27th, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"On the surface, life is going well for Victorian special agent Sir Maurice Newbury, who has brilliantly solved several nigh-impossible cases for Queen Victoria with his indomitable assistant, Miss Veronica Hobbes, by his side. But these facts haven’t stopped Newbury from succumbing increasingly frequently to his dire flirtation with the lure of opium. His addiction is fueled in part by his ill-gotten knowledge of Veronica’s secret relationship with the queen, which Newbury fears must be some kind of betrayal. Veronica, consumed by worry and care for her prophetic but physically fragile sister Amelia, has no idea that she is a catalyst for Newbury’s steadily worsening condition.
Veronica and Newbury’s dear friend Bainbridge, the Chief Investigator at Scotland Yard, tries to cover for him as much as possible, but when the body of a well known criminal turns up, Bainbridge and Veronica track Newbury down in an opium den and drag him out to help them with the case. The body is clearly, irrefutably, that of the man in question, but shortly after his body is brought to the morgue, a crime is discovered that bears all the dead man’s hallmarks. Bainbridge and Veronica fear someone is committing copycat crimes, but Newbury is not sure. Somehow, the details are too perfect for it to be the work of a copycat. But how can a dead man commit a crime?"

The newest Newbury and Hobbes book which I really need to read because Mann is going to be at Telsa Con, the big steampunk convention in Madison in November. Can't wait!

Ganymede by Cherie Priest
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: September 27th, 2011
Format: Paperback,  352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he’s happy to run alcohol guns wherever the money’s good, he doesn’t think the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side-effects. But becoming legit is easier said than done, and Cly’s first legal gig—a supply run for the Seattle Underground—will be paid for by sap money.
New Orleans is not Cly’s first pick for a shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he also loved a beautiful mixed-race prostitute named Josephine Early—but that was a decade ago, and he hasn’t looked back since. Jo’s still thinking about him, though, or so he learns when he gets a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. It’s a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once, one he can’t refuse. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New Orleans, with no idea of what he’s in for—or what she wants him to fly.

But he won’t be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it…. If only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River… If only it hadn’t killed most of the men who’d ever set foot inside it.

But it’s those “if onlys” that will decide whether Cly and his crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean."
It really must be steampunk week over at Tor. Yeah more steampunk!

I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
Published by: Harper Collins
Publication Date: September 27th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Pratchett returns to the terra firma of his popular, sprawling Discworld series, the young-reader corner of which centers around teen witch Tiffany Aching. Being a good witch mostly means tending to the locals’ minor aches, pains, and kerfuffles—which she does with as much aplomb as anyone could be expected to muster—but to become a great witch, she’ll have to contend with the malevolent ghost of an ancient witch-burner. Yet even that might not be as terrifying as trying to keep the peace between the humans and the wee Nac Mac Feegles (whose primary skills are drinking, brawling, having Scottish brogues, brawling a bit more, and stealing every scene they’re in) and, shudder, getting wrapped up in the wedding of her childhood friend, who is suddenly a very myopic baron. The action never picks up much more momentum than a determined amble, but readers won’t care a whit because in terms of pure humor per square word, Pratchett may be the cheeriest writer around. Now that Tiffany Aching’s adventures are concluded, readers can explore the nearly three decade’s worth of other Discworld books. "

So, I love this book so much I have a US and UK hardcover 1st editions, the UK one signed. I have the limited edition Amazon exclusive, signed and stamped by Terry. I have the US ARC, the British black paperback and I'm STILL going to buy this one. That's how awesome this book is!

Deadly Storm by Richard Castle
Published by: Marvel
Publication Date: September 27th, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 112Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"CASTLE fans rejoice! For the first time anywhere, CASTLE's titular hero Derrick Storm comes to life in the pages of this all-new graphic novel. This "adaptation" of Derrick Storm's first novel adventure takes our hero from the gritty world of the private eye all the way to the globe-hopping intrigue of the CIA. Eisner Award-winning Marvel Architect Brian Bendis and red hot Osborn writer Kelly Sue DeConnick worked closely with CASTLE creator Andrew Marlowe to create the one thing millions of CASTLE fans have been asking for: Their first real Derrick Storm adventure. A wall-to-wall, gritty, witty, globe-hopping detective thrill ride for fans of the hit TV show starring Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic, as well as fans of darn good comic books."

Finally! Derek Storm is brought to life, why does Nikki Heat get all the love? Storm made Castle who he is! (Yes, I know he's fictional, but let me have my delusions, you're welcome to join me).

Hark a Vagrant by Kate Beaton
Published by: Drawn and Quarterly
Publication Date: September 27th, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 160 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:"A NEW COLLECTION BY THE WEB SENSATION AND NEW YORKER CARTOONIST. Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—with dignity for few and cookies for all—with comic strips about famous authors, their characters, and political and historical figures, all drawn in Kate Beaton’s pared-down, excitable style. This collection features favorite stories as well as new, previously unpublished content. Whether she’s writing about Nikola Tesla, Napoleon, or Nancy Drew, Beaton brings a refined sense of the absurd to every situation.

In just four years, Beaton has taken the comics world by storm with her non sequiturs, cheeky comebacks, and irreverent punch lines. With 1.2 million monthly hits on her site—500,000 of them unique—and comics appearing in Harper’s Magazine, the National Post, and The New Yorker, her caricatures of historical and fictional figures filtered through a contemporary lens display a sharp, quick wit that knows no bounds."

Ok, if you're a fan of my blog, then surely you love Historical Romances and therefore making fun of people like Napoleon. So I'm sure you've heard of this wonderful web comic. If not, now's you chance!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cherie Priest, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Derek Storm, Ganymede, George Mann, Hark a Vagrant, I Shall Wear Midnight, Laini Taylor, Patrick Rothfuss, Richard Castle, Terry Pratchett