The Unknown Ajax (mini-reveiw)

When Lord Darracott's son and heir dies unexpectedly, the family is informed that the new heir is an estranged cousin.  From the wilds of Yorkshire.  His mother was a weaver's daughter (and his father was disowned for marrying her).  He's big and clumsy and he was in the army and he speaks with an awful Yorkshire dialect that no one can understand.

Well, Major Hugo Darracott is actually having them on.  He's been educated as a gentleman, can speak English as well as anyone in the landed gentry, and has decided to teach his priggish, snobbish extended family a lesson.  They're all ridiculous - and they all get their comeuppance.

Except, possibly, for Lady Anthea.  She has a different reason to give Hugh the cold shoulder from the get-go - the family has decided that she will be the one to keep the estate "in the family", so to speak, by marrying the interloper and Anthea has absolutely no intention of being forced to marry someone she doesn't like.  The longer Hugh remains as Darracott Place to "learn" about the estate, the more she finds that his bumbling rural personae is a sham.  When a dangerous smuggling situation arises on the estate Hugh is revealed as The Unknown Ajax the family, and Anthea, has been waiting for all along.

This novel will resonate with Downton Abbey fans - the unfortunate death of an heir, a new one from a different branch of the family, and a match-making scheme with the eldest daughter of the family very closely echo the set-up for the popular television series.  The antics of the valets - forever in competition with each other - provides many opportunities for laughter.  Great fun.

False Colours (mini-review)

Christopher "Kit" Francot is the younger twin.  His "twin-sense" tells him that something has happened to his elder brother, Evelyn, Lord Denville, and so he slips home to see what's the matter.  It turns out Evelyn has disappeared on the eve of his presentation to his nearly-betrothed's grandmother - if Evelyn doesn't appear, granny won't give her consent and Cressida Stavely's much-needed dowry will slip away (neither Evelyn nor Lady Denville have much head for money...at all).  Lady Fancot pursuades Kit to masquerade as his brother for "just one night" setting off a tangled web of mistaken identity - the False Colours.

Very much a comedy-of-manners - one twin masquerading as the other, Lady Denville is a pretty spendthrift, her most ardent suitor and friend is a lovable hedonist, and the boring family relatives drone on about "economizing" and the "precarious" health of their son (who is on a repairing lease).

The slang flies fast and furious in this novel. I consider myself fairly well-versed but even I had to look up a few. So Heyer did her homework.

In previous Heyer novels I complained a bit that the hero and heroine only come together in the last chapter. In this one the couple acknowledges their feelings about halfway through then spends the rest of the novel getting out of the sticky twin masquerade.

Lots of fun.

Lord of Scoundrels

From Goodreads:
They call him many names, but Angelic isn't one of them...
Sebastian Ballister, the notorious Marquess of Dain, is big, bad, and dangerous to know. No respectable woman would have anything to do with the "Bane and Blight of the Ballisters" - and he wants nothing to do with respectable women. He's determined to continue doing what he does best - sin and sin again - and all that's going swimmingly, thank you... until the day a shop door opens and she walks in.
She's too intelligent to fall for the worst man in the world...
Jessica Trent is a determined young woman, and she's going to drag her imbecile brother off the road to ruin, no matter what it takes. If saving him - and with him, her family and future - means taking on the devil himself, she won't back down. The trouble is, the devil in question is so shockingly irresistible, and the person who needs the most saving is - herself!

First Loretta Chase novel - definitely not my last.

Great dialogue. It snaps back and forth between Jessica and Dain. They poke at each other gingerly at first, then throw serious barbs at one another, and at the very end, when they've completely worn down each others' defenses, converse honestly together. The two best conversations are at the cafe near the beginning and at the wresting match about 2/3 or so in.

Having read The Duke And I, The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, and Confessions From an Arranged Marriage, I can see how the "very damaged by his nobleman father" is a subset of hero. But where Simon, Ian, and Blake are quite overtly handsome (which goes a good ways in covering a stutter (Simon), Asperger's (Ian), and dyslexia (Blake) before the heroines set to teaching them about trust and love), Dain is saddled with both outsized Italian features (in pasty Norman/Saxon England with the Italian temper to match) and a mother who ran off to the West Indies with a local (consequently leaving his opinion of her - and women in general - at the mercy of his angry father and bullying classmates). As we would say in modern terms, Dain has trust issues and self-image problems.

Jessica is a great heroine although, IMO, she's a little too perfect. She's presented almost without faults. She supports herself. She isn't missish and demands her own pleasure. She comes to the rescue of her feckless, brainless brother. She loves her unconventional granny.  She has an uncanny knack for unearthing overlooked antiques. She's nannied ten boys (this is frequently mentioned) and so is used to managing recalcitrant males. She can fence and ride and enjoys wresting matches. She's smart. She's also a crack shot, aptly demonstrated in the book. And she's gorgeous. So hoyden, mother, and sexpot rolled into one. It doesn't make her unreadable just...well, a lesser being just wouldn't do for Dain and his past. So too perfect is just right in this instance.

Happy Birthday, Georgette Heyer! (why, yes, Sourcebooks has a sale)

In honor of Georgette Heyer's 110th birthday Sourcebooks is offering fifty-two Heyer ebooks (and the companion volume, Georgette Heyer's Regency World) for $2.99 - 8/14 - 8/20 (Heyer's actual birthday is the16th)!  Heyer is considered the creator of the Regency Romance as we know it today (I recommend the Avon/Taverner series that runs These Old Shades, Devil's Cub, Regency Buck, and ending with the well-researched An Infamous Army).

Historical romance:
April Lady
Arabella
Bath Tangle
Beauvallet
The Black Moth
Black Sheep
Charity Girl
A Civil Contract
Convenient Marriage
The Corinthian
Cotillion
Cousin Kate
Devil's Cub
False Colours
Faro's Daughter
The Foundling
Frederica
Friday's Child
The Grand Sophy
Lady of Quality
The Masqueraders
The Nonesuch
Pistols for Two
Powder and Patch
The Quiet Gentleman
Regency Buck
The Reluctant Widow
Sprig Muslin
Sylvester (or, the Wicked Uncle)
The Talisman Ring
These Old Shades
The Toll-Gate
The Unknown Ajax
Venetia

Historical Fiction:
The Conqueror
An Infamous Army
My Lord John
Royal Escape
Simon the Coldheart
Spanish Bride

Mystery:
Behold, Here's Poison
A Blunt Instrument
Death in the Stocks
Detection Unlimited
Duplicate Death
Envious Casca
Footsteps in the Dark
No Wind of Blame
Penhallow
They Found Him Dead
Unfinished Clue
Why Shoot a Butler?

(Let's just say that I maybe bought too many all at once....)


The Happiness Project

From Goodreads:
Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.

In this lively and compelling account of that year, Rubin carves out her place alongside the authors of bestselling memoirs such as "Julie and Julia," "The Year of Living Biblically," and "Eat, Pray, Love." With humor and insight, she chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier.

Rubin didn't have the option to uproot herself, nor did she really want to; instead she focused on improving her life as it was. Each month she tackled a new set of resolutions: give proofs of love, ask for help, find more fun, keep a gratitude notebook, forget about results. She immersed herself in principles set forth by all manner of experts, from Epicurus to Thoreau to Oprah to Martin Seligman to the Dalai Lama to see what worked for her--and what didn't.

Her conclusions are sometimes surprising--she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that "treating" yourself can make you feel worse; that venting bad feelings doesn't relieve them; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference--and they range from the practical to the profound.

In my quest to manage my time and figure out what to do with my life (because I refuse to either wallow in pity or do something that smacks of "desperate singleton" like speed date) I decided to read The Happiness Project.  It seemed like a good fit - a woman about my age, with some of the same worries as me, who creates a year-long project to determine what makes "us" (and directly, her) happy.  I really liked the thought and commitment put into the project - all the reading and research contrasted well with Rubin's personal experiences.  It was also interesting to see how honest she was when part of her project went awry, like when her husband points out that her enthusiasm with organizing closets is starting to alienate friends. I did find the sections of blog comments a bit boring. I hadn't missed them in the earlier chapters - I know, I know, she didn't have her blog at that point - but they seemed too much like filler so started skimming when they appeared.

I also thought it interesting the number of people who assumed that there was a problem with either Rubin or her marriage since she was embarking on an exploration of being happy. Apparently we aren't supposed to "improve" ourselves unless we're "broken" (because preventitive maintenence is only good for cars not for people).

The Happiness Project was a fun summer read.  The entirety of Rubin's project is a bit much for me but she has a lot of food for thought.

The Bourne Legacy

I liked the first three Bournes (maybe the second not as much, since they shot his wife) so a new Bourne movie sounded great.  As a plus, Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz were cast in this movie.  The original release date was listed for my birthday but it didn't arrive until the week later (boo).

I liked it.  Sure, it's an attempt to extend the Bourne franchise without Jason Bourne himself but I think it's good move.  Renner's character, Aaron Cross, has different motivations than Bourne and Weiszs's character, as an insider, gives a different spin on the program Cross is in.  Edward Norton plays a fantastic beaurocrat/govenment bad guy willing to burn everything just to keep it out of the Congressional hearings (the movie seems to start just around the time Bourne 3 gets going and then continues after Pam Landy has started whistleblowing).  The narrative arc of the story gets a bit murky once the action moves to the Philippines but I enjoyed the movie greatly.

(Rumor has it that both Aaron Cross and Jason Bourne will be in the next movie - please, please give me a five-ten minute fight between them before they realise they're on the same side.)

Previews (lots!):
1. Despicable Me 2 - cute teaser trailer, the little yellow dudes are the way to go
2. Silver Linings Playbook - looks really good, Bradley Cooper as a nutjob is sort of appealing (plus Jennifer Lawrence)
3. Life of Pi - haven't read the book yet, but this is Ang Lee and looks gorgeous
4. Flight - well, this doesn't seem as interesting to me
5. Zero Dark Thirty - I'm not sure about this one but I'm sure other people will see this in droves
6. Les Miserables - I love the musical but I really can't figure out why this one is a Christmas release...not very Christmas-y

Beyond Heaving Bosoms

So, I've been following Smart Bitches, Trashy Books on Twitter for some time.  My friend Jess has been trying to get me to read the book Beyond Heaving Bosoms for a while (especially since I've started reading romance novels again).  She gave me a gift card for my birthday so I was like, why not?

Oh, my god, this book is so funny.  While the authors seriously examine romance trends and tropes and muse on why the genre is perennially appealing they confess their darkest romance-plot fantasies (almost, one of them won't confess her most secret, embarassing plot trope).  All with a good dose of snark.

They give silly names to body parts (like the Magic HooHoo) - which seems over the top but somehow equals the overblown descriptive language used in romance novel sex scenes.  They go into detail about romance covers, both how they are created and how snark-tastic the covers can be.  There are Mad Libs and a choose-your-own-romance chapter.  The SBs get serious for a chapter regarding the Cassie Edwards debacle and how they got wrapped up in it (which I hadn't actually known about, so that was interesting even though the tone was a 180 from the rest of the book).

I laughed a lot while reading this book.  And I thought a lot while reading this, mentally sifting through the huge-normous number of romance novels I've read so far this year (I've been in full-on gorge mode).  And I wrote silly updates on Goodreads:

So if you like bawdy humor and romance novels, I think you'll like this one.

Magic Mike

So, having heard Magic Mike was pretty good (and I'm all for hot men wearing not much in the way of clothes) I went to see it with Jessica.  I would have gone earlier but decided that going to see a movie about male strippers by myself smacked of desperation.

It's good.  It makes the most of Channing Tatum's limited range and has really nice cinematography (uses the beachy locales well).  I am absolutely convinced that Matthew McConnaghey's character was a closeted gay man - there was just something off about how he interacted with women and how touchy-feely he got with The Kid during the "dance lesson" plus he's a terrible stripper.

Two points:
- I wouldn't have opened the movie with Dallas's soliloquy.  It was too much a shift from him to Tatum's character heading to his contruction job without explaining much.
- Alex Pettyfer has some really unfortunate tattoos, not attractive at all

1. The Campaign - eh, maybe...sometimes Will Farrell gets on my nerves with these characters
2. Paranormal Activity 4 - please, make it stop!
3. The Words - is it a thriller? or a love story?  I can't tell
4. House at the End of the Street - I've never been a big horror fan, maybe when it's out on DVD?

Stephanie Laurens: the next batch of Cynsters

The first seven Cynsters were overpowering taken together so I waited a bit before tackling another set.

The Promise in a Kiss is a prequel of-sorts, published between books seven and eight, yet jumping back to the Georgian period for the tempestuous courtship of Devil's parents, the bachelor Sebastian and willful Helena.  It starts with Sebastian breaking into a convent to retrieve a desired valuable dagger where he is found by Helena, a student there.  He kisses her into silence and disappears, leaving her to wonder.  They meet again when Helena comes to London on a mission from her guardian to retrive the dagger.  Sparks fly, flirtation is exchanged, and a daring rescue mission to France is undertaken to rescue Helena's sister.  This is a great book for character development, especially that of Charles, who is a small child in this book, but it goes a long way toward explaining the development of his sociopathy.  My only problem - and this is pretty big - is trying to justify the Sebastian and Helena in this book with the fact that Sebastian knocked up Richard's mother while he was in Scotland after he and Helena married.  This Helena doesn't seem so sanguine as to tolerate a philandering husband, she's just as possessive as he is.  It just doesn't square.

Book eight brings us back to the post-Regency period and our first female Cynster, Amanda.  In On a Wild Night, Amanda and her twin Amelia are searching for husbands.  And striking out.  All the gentlemen they're allowed to associate are boring, polite, fortune-hunting, or just plain unsuitable, nothing like the cousins they're used to and all incapable of exhibiting the serious passion and love of family needed by a Cynster.  While Amelia works on a strateigic plan to snare one man (her secret and she's not telling), Amanda decides to go off-script and visit the shadier edges of the ton.  For surely, her hero will be there.  And he is - Martin Fullbridge, the Earl of Dexter, was banished from England by his father following an accusation of rape and murder.  Martin steps in to help Amanda when she gets out of her depth...and in return, Amanda enlists him as her escort-in-crime.  Soon it appears that Martin's past is actively looking to keep him silent and it endangers both of them.  I liked Laurens's take on a female Cynster (not that any of the previous eight women were vapourish misses) who isn't afraid to ask for what she wants.  I found it odd that Martin would assume Amanda would elope to Scotland with Reggie just to spite him - my money is on Reggie being gay - but it did get them into place for the assassin.

Amelia is next up to bat in On a Wicked Dawn.  Having fun through all her options - and returning again and again to the only man she wants to marry - Amelia sets out her argument...to Lucien Ashford, a longtime family friend.  Although he seems prickly and usually tried to hold the twins at a distance, Amelia is certain that Luc will marry her once he hears her reasons: that she knows the family is hard up, they would make a good match, etc., etc.  Once they are married, she can work on bringing him to love her.  She puts all these reasons to Luc scandalously early one morning only to have him pass out at her feet, drunk.  He had been out celebrating the recovery of the family coffers due to yeoman's work by the estate manager, himself, and his mother - they had worked so long to preserve his sisters dowries, the illusion of money, that no one ever caught on.  And now here's Amelia Cynster, the woman he has wanted for years yet felt he couldn't offer for her due to debt, telling him she's guessed his secret and offering herself to him as his wife.  From this misunderstanding, Luc refuses an overly hasty marriage, insisting on publicly wooing Amelia so the ton will not get the wrong idea about their marriage.  Intermixed with the marriage plot is that of a plot carried over from the previous book, a young woman pressured to steal items to help the villain of On a Wild Night financially.  There's some oddness in the "To Catch a Thief" plot but it was still readable.  A highlight of the book was a quiet scene between Devil and Honoria just after Luc and Amelia's wedding.

The last "older" Cynster cousin introduced in Devil's book is Simon, the twins' younger brother.  He goes looking for his heroine in The Perfect Lover.  Now, caveat, this book jumps forward a number of years.  I didn't notice quite at first until Simon mentions that he inherited a house from Great Aunt Clara...who is alive in the Cynster sisters trilogy.  There is little interaction from previous Cynster characters, just Lady Osbaldestone (who is old as crap in this book).  The mystery is nice, with a good twist, but without the other characters I missed how well-seated into the Cynster family these books are.

Another caveat: Now that the books are moving into the younger generation, the sex scenes do get a little icky since we get to read about characters introduced as children.  At least the next set of books concerns brothers and sisters of the Bar Cynster wives.

Spiderman

So I went with some friends (who are better Spiderman fans than I am) to see the new The Amazing Spider-man.  After the mess of the last three, I was definitely not going in with high hopes.

Well, it was really enjoyable.  Andrew Garfield is really funny and he fits the role of high school misfit/smart kid very well.  Emma Stone is the cutest as Gwen Stacy (except her clothes, who dresses like that in high school?).  Rhys Ifans is quite believable as the bad dude.  Good scriptwriting, too, which was sorely lacking in the previous two films.

I was glad we didn't go to see it in 3D - there were many swooping shots and I'm pretty sure those would have been motion-sickness inducing.

Previews (and you know these are going to be killer):
1. The Dark Knight Rises - longer trailer sequence (finally); it finally looks like a good movie
2. The Bourne Legacy - THIS OPENS ON MY BIRTHDAY!! (at least, the trailer said August 3 - stupid IMDB says August 10, boo)  I'm totally going to see me some Jeremy Renner (also, I heard a rumour that the next Bourne will have both Jason Bourne and Aaron Cross - please be true!)
3. Paranorman - no, no, no, no, no (what are they, desperate??)
4. The Watch - eh, maybe...it does look funny. 
5. Total Recall - I was pretty skeptial about this until I saw the preview.  Not too bad.  I also find Kate Beckinsale more believable as a super-assassin masquerading as Quaid's wife than Sharon Stone (drawback - Beckinsale and Jessica Biel look way too much alike, got them confused at times in the trailer).

StrengthsFinder 2.0

So, the managers at my store are reading this.

And I was like, haha!, I will read this too and see what you are up to.

Yeah, this isn't that kind of book.

I've taken Myers-Briggs Personality-type tests before (I'm an ISTJ) so the evaluation tool you take at the Gallup site is pretty similar. And worth the purchase of the book because that gives you the code to take the test to find your top five strengths (check in the back of the book to make sure no one's stolen the code before you buy it). The majority of the book is the description of the 34 strengths and action goals - which are all available at the StrengthsFinder2.0 site which is a bit repetitive.

My strengths are:
1. Input
2. Learner
3. Consistency
4. Intellection
5. Responsibility

Pretty spot on. But what about the next five or ten strengths? And how do these interact with one another?

Oh, snap. You have to pay for a coaching session (about $550) to get the 6-34 list.

So I read the other 29 strengths and found ten that resonated with me so it's safe to assume they rank as the 6-15 crowd. But there's nothing in the assessment spit out by the website or anywhere in the book about how your strengths interact with one another. No "If you've got these two strong strengths be careful you don't come across as a severe hardass" or "Manage your time so people don't think you're a lazybones" type material.

So I'm not sure what this will get the managers. Because I don't see how this will improve one manager's ability to slack off, take extra breaks, and "pretend" to work when we all know she's dickering around calling her grown children. Or another manager's propensity to treat the booksellers like dirt because of his own issues.

Maybe they'll have to read Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath to figure that out.

Brave

Being at loose ends for the July 4th holiday (wow, a whole day where I don't have to work either job...what will I do with myself?) I decided to take myself to see Pixar's Brave. 

Note to self: please don't go to a children's matinee alone.  On a holiday.  Ever again.  Not worth the ticket discount.

I loved this movie.  It didn't tug on the heartstrings as much as Toy Story or Up but it was snappy and funny like Monsters, Inc.  Kelly MacDonald was such a great choice as Merida (according to IMDB, they'd originally wanted Reese Witherspoon - WTF? bad idea) and then Pixar threw in a whole raft of known Scottish actors (Billy Connolly, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson) plus my very favorite Emma Thompson.

I loved the soundtrack (went out and bought it on the way home).  And, in typical Disney fashion, the comic relief was perfect - Merida's three little, always-hungry brothers. 

(And there was a short ahead of Brave, the lovely La Luna - don't be late!)

Previews:
1. Hotel Transylvania - appears to have a good voice cast but, meh?
2. Paranorman - I've seen this trailer 5 times now, the exact same trailer...now I don't want to see the movie (not that I ever did)
3. Ice Age: Continental Drift - I was cracking up.  Maybe one for DVD veiwing later
4. Finding Nemo 3D - I'll see this with friends.  Dori!!
5. Monsters University - A most excellent teaser trailer.  Totally going to see this.