[LMB] QOTD #7: Emotional genre, re: ACC dedication (Sat. Mar. 1st)

[alayne at twobikes.ottawa.on.ca]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008, Amy Sikes wrote:
> Sort of.  I definitely would not have read any Sayers without
> the LMB connection.  I'm not very fond of her non-Lord Peter
> things, though.  

You have to be more of a completist to enjoy them, I agree. If you can 
find them, you might enjoy her essay collection _Unpopular Opinions_,
or _The Mind of the Maker_, which looks at the origins of creativity and 
its links to religion.

> I also tried Heyer because of LMB, but didn't
> like what I read very much.  I think it was _The Toll-Gate_, or
> something like that.  I confess that I only gave it the one go,
> and I probably should try something else.

What didn't appeal to you: the setting, the characters, the style, the 
vocabulary, the assumptions?

The Toll-Gate is what I'd call representative Heyer, and quite good. You 
could try Venetia, or The Grand Sophy, or Frederica, but if you don't like 
those, you're probably not suited to enjoy Georgette Heyer.

> Austen and Bronte...yuck! yuck! a thousand times yuck!  I've
> read several of their things, and I found all of them just
> yucky.  Boring, too.

That's a VERY strong reaction for books that are not inherently bad. I'm 
curious: what turned you off so dramatically? Did you hate the style 
(which is quite different between Austen and Bronte BTW)? Were you bored 
by the milieu? Do you just not like novels set in the 19th century? Did 
the assumption of privilege bother you? Were you traumatized by Dickens in 
school at too young an age? Enquiring minds would love to know.

> Hmmm...the *two* modern sequels??  What am I missing?  I've read
> _Thrones, Dominations_, but I had no clue there was another one
> out there!

The second one is entitled _A Presumption of Death_.

-- 
Alayne McGregor
alayne at twobikes.ottawa.on.ca

"I've noticed that whenever people say you have to be realistic, what they're really saying is:
you have to think the way they think. If Columbus or Magellan, or whoever it was, had been
realistic and accepted things the way they are, they'd have gone on thinking the world was flat,
and you and I wouldn't be sitting here right now in the middle of America arguing."
-- Lavinia Russ, _And Peakie lived happily ever after_