Reading is good....especially for sickies like me.
Lately I've been prone to becoming ill, what with my working with children who are little germ vectors. Because of this I have been spending much of my weekends as of late resting and minding my health, especially now considering things are coming to a head with my lessons and I need to be there to guide my students so they create great works which I can photograph for my portfolio. Of course resting and minding one's health is rather boring without a diversion, so I have been watching more television as of late, and I have also taken up reading Georgette Heyer novels.
I discovered Georgette Heyer when I came across some book reviews of hers on the Jane Austen's World blog. The reviews were good of course and the story summaries interesting, not to mention they are all romances set in the Regency period in England. Well I shouldn't say all of them, because whereas she wrote mostly Regency romance, she also wrote a handful of historical fiction as well as suspense/mystery novels. Anyway I just finished reading her "Reluctant Widow", which while a Regency romance, is also very much a mystery novel as well. A bit of intrigue unfolds involving French spies, and the selling of Duke Wellington's secrets to Bonaparte. Last weekend I read Frederica, which involved no intrigue, but certainly had its misadventures of Frederica's two younger brothers who were always getting into the wildest of scrapes. In short Georgette Heyer's novels will have things you would never find in a Jane Austen novel, such as heroines like Elizabeth Bennet on steroids, strange mysteries, little brothers who steal away on a hot air balloon, or episodes involving Marley-esque family dogs. I would say though that after exhausting all of Austen, her novels prove to be a good read, and certainly satisfy the want for more Regency romance! Of course there is also Fanny Burney and Anne Radcliffe to look up too who were contemporaries of Austen. I am glad for the fact though that Georgette Heyer was quite a prolific writer and wrote nearly 40 romances. I shouldn't exhaust all of those any time soon, and most thankfully a lot of her novels are now being reprinted what with the surge of the Jane Austen fandom in recent years.
The only things that bothers me a little about Heyer's novels is that so far from what I have read there just isn't enough courtship for my tastes, and the hero and the heroine usually come together at the very end. For example with Pride and Prejudice we are made quite aware of Mr. Darcy's growing regard for Elizabeth all throughout the novel, and although Elizabeth has been soured against him in the beginning, you can tell that she enjoyed some of their witty exchanges. In any case it felt as if the relationship had been slowly cultivated throughout the novel, but of the two Heyer books I read there is less so much of this relationship building....at least from my point of view. Either way it is nothing that would put me off from reading her books, and I have heard that some of her other titles are more romantic so we shall see.
I discovered Georgette Heyer when I came across some book reviews of hers on the Jane Austen's World blog. The reviews were good of course and the story summaries interesting, not to mention they are all romances set in the Regency period in England. Well I shouldn't say all of them, because whereas she wrote mostly Regency romance, she also wrote a handful of historical fiction as well as suspense/mystery novels. Anyway I just finished reading her "Reluctant Widow", which while a Regency romance, is also very much a mystery novel as well. A bit of intrigue unfolds involving French spies, and the selling of Duke Wellington's secrets to Bonaparte. Last weekend I read Frederica, which involved no intrigue, but certainly had its misadventures of Frederica's two younger brothers who were always getting into the wildest of scrapes. In short Georgette Heyer's novels will have things you would never find in a Jane Austen novel, such as heroines like Elizabeth Bennet on steroids, strange mysteries, little brothers who steal away on a hot air balloon, or episodes involving Marley-esque family dogs. I would say though that after exhausting all of Austen, her novels prove to be a good read, and certainly satisfy the want for more Regency romance! Of course there is also Fanny Burney and Anne Radcliffe to look up too who were contemporaries of Austen. I am glad for the fact though that Georgette Heyer was quite a prolific writer and wrote nearly 40 romances. I shouldn't exhaust all of those any time soon, and most thankfully a lot of her novels are now being reprinted what with the surge of the Jane Austen fandom in recent years.
The only things that bothers me a little about Heyer's novels is that so far from what I have read there just isn't enough courtship for my tastes, and the hero and the heroine usually come together at the very end. For example with Pride and Prejudice we are made quite aware of Mr. Darcy's growing regard for Elizabeth all throughout the novel, and although Elizabeth has been soured against him in the beginning, you can tell that she enjoyed some of their witty exchanges. In any case it felt as if the relationship had been slowly cultivated throughout the novel, but of the two Heyer books I read there is less so much of this relationship building....at least from my point of view. Either way it is nothing that would put me off from reading her books, and I have heard that some of her other titles are more romantic so we shall see.