What I've Finished Reading

Cotillion by Georgette Heyer - in which Freddy is the best and saves the day on several counts before settling in for a carefree life of buying and wearing his beloved waistcoats and clipping all his sentences off neatly at one end like a collection of the finest cigars ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Sargasso of Space was not bad! As previously noted, it has zero female characters. But the characters are so flat that you could just as easily pretend they were all women and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. I didn't mind that. The plucky Free Traders bid for trading rights to a newly discovered planet; when they ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Behold, Here's Poison by Georgette Heyer. The twist here (which is not really a spoiler) was that it looks like the case is going to be solved by a bland professional, but then an Obnoxious Amateur swoops in and steals the show. Here it's one of the Mitchell family's ultra-arch young cousins, Randall. Competition for ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Brat Farrar was terrific, maybe the best Tey of all? Of course our old friend the Blue-Eyed Nymphomaniac makes an appearance, and Tey manages to shoehorn in a dig at Scottish Independence for no reason whatsoever (except the only necessary and sufficient reason, which is that it's a Tey book and no one has made a dig at ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The Grand Sophy. I guess it was thoughtful of Georgette Heyer to concentrate all her anti-Semitism in a big ugly lump in the middle of the book, instead of just sprinkling it inextricably over everything? A book editor could easily just scoop it out and throw it away, and nothing of value would be lost. The vicious ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

"Will you tell us about the other worlds out among the stars -- the other kinds of men, the other lives?"

The Left Hand of Darkness was even better than I expected. I don't know if I'm completely ready to talk about it yet -- I might make another post next week or a month from now, or I might just answer questions if ( Read more... )