{"id":25,"date":"2001-08-31T15:54:22","date_gmt":"2001-08-31T19:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=25"},"modified":"2001-08-31T15:54:22","modified_gmt":"2001-08-31T19:54:22","slug":"heyer_georgette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2001\/08\/heyer_georgette\/","title":{"rendered":"Heyer, Georgette: Grand Sophy, The"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

I sometimes say that a willingness to pore over the shelves of used bookstores is the surest sign that one is an optimist. Well, sometimes one’s optimism is rewarded. I visited some of my favorite stores in Boston today, and came away with 10 paperbacks for something around $20—including copies of Mirabile<\/cite><\/a> and Hellspark<\/cite><\/a> (I’m particularly pleased about Mirabile<\/cite>, as it’s already become one of my comfort books), a few hard-to-find things for friends, and the first of Elizabeth Moon’s Serrano series, Hunting Party<\/cite> (I’d read a few of the sequels and enjoyed them, though not enough to buy the first new).<\/p>\n

I also picked up Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy<\/cite><\/strong>, along with another Heyer, and read it on the subway & train on the way back. I’d often heard that this was a favorite of Heyer fans, and I certainly enjoyed it more than some of her others (say, Regency Buck<\/cite>), though not as much as The Unknown Ajax<\/cite>. Sophy puts the lie to the cliché that romance heroines are little weak-willed simpering things. Upon arriving in the Rivenhall family home and discovering that everyone, more or less, is unhappy, she promptly sets about rearranging things; it’s rather like watching a card trick, at the end of which the original relationships have been reshuffled into several different, and much happier, singles and couples. It’s a tribute to the skill of Heyer’s characterization that Sophy doesn’t become incredibly annoying while doing so. There is an unfortunate interlude with a Jewish moneylender; whatever the stereotype in Regency times may have been, Heyer was<\/em> writing in 1950. Other than that, The Grand Sophy<\/cite> is very funny, with vivid characters and a nice, but not overwhelming, eye for period detail.<\/p>\n

(Note to sf fans visiting Boston: if you stop in at Avenue Victor Hugo<\/a>, take a minute to walk down Newbury to Spenser’s Mystery Bookshop<\/a>. It has only a very small sf collection, but I seem to have good luck there; for instance, today I bought for a friend, very cheaply, one of Sheri Tepper’s very hard-to-find Marianne books, and a nice copy of The Face in the Frost<\/cite> to give to someone who’d like it. Also, the proprietor has been extremely helpful whenever I’ve been in.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sometimes say that a willingness to pore over the shelves of used bookstores is the surest sign that one is an optimist. Well, sometimes one’s optimism is rewarded. I visited some of my favorite stores in Boston today, and came away with 10 paperbacks for something around $20—including copies of Mirabile and Hellspark (I’m … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Heyer, Georgette: Grand Sophy, The”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,12],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-romance","tag-heyer-georgette"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}