Mr. Darcy’s Diary by Amanda Grange (Book Review)

Mr. Darcy’s Diary is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy’s point of view. It does not have as much of a “diary” feel to it as Georgiana Darcy’s Diary, as a real diary would not do a very good job of recording dialog, but as a first person novel with dates indicated (and with the narrator unaware of anything past those dates) it works very well.

It is close to Pride and Prejudice as far as those scenes which mirror those Jane Austen wrote. The scenes with both Darcy and Elizabeth mostly retain the Austen dialog, and the additional scenes in the overlapping time period are mostly those strongly hinted at in the original—Lady Catherine’s descent on Darcy after seeing Elizabeth, for instance. It starts slightly earlier than Pride and Prejudice, with Wickham’s attempt to seduce Georgiana, and continues on for about six months after Austen’s novel ends. I found the extra scenes at the end one of the less satisfying parts of the novel, but I have to say that as a whole it is a very enjoyable read.

Next month I think I will have to reread the original Pride and Prejudice, if only to get my head straight on exactly what Jane Austen herself wrote. After that, I think I will reread what has so far been my favorite retelling from Darcy’s point of view, Pamela Aidan’s Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman.

Georgiana Darcy’s Diary by Anna Elliott (Review)

If you are looking for the A to Z post (H), click on the button to the left or scroll down.

This book is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, and one in which the characters and events of that book are followed faithfully. The only point at which I found my eyebrows rising was Wickham’s return. In general I enjoyed the depiction of Georgiana, and the sketches (allegedly hers) with which the book is adorned. She is a character whom we are shown just enough of in Pride and Prejudice that we want to know how life turned out for her, and this book gives her quite a logical partner.

The diary format works much better in this book than in Mr. Darcy’s Diary by Amanda Grange, which I read earlier but did not review. Here we get the feeling we are really reading the writing of a young woman, one who sketches some of the incidents she describes in the pages of her diary. Lady Catherine de Burgh is as determined to marry Georgiana to a husband of her choosing as she was earlier to see her brother married to her own daughter, Anne.

Anne herself reappears, as does Bingley’s sister Caroline and Darcy’s  cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam.  In addition there are new characters, which I will leave to the reader to discover.

I haven’t read a lot of sequels to Pride and Prejudice, but I liked this one.

The Real Jane Austen (Book Review)

I’m not much of a biography reader. But driving home one afternoon last month, with my local NPR station on, I heard Paula Byrne talking about her latest book, a biography of Jane Austin focused on how the stuff of her life made its way into her fiction. That sounds interesting, I thought, and managed to retain enough of the title and author that I was able to look it up when I got home, and soon had a copy on my iPad.

I had not read a biography of Jane Austen before, just her books. I cannot, then, compare this with other biographies. But it struck me that Jane Austin was very much like Elizabeth Bennett. Not so much in the incidents of her life, as in the way she approached life.

She paid attention to people and the minutiae of places, and they were very likely to reappear in her fiction. As part of the NPR interview Ms. Byrne mentioned the crimson cushions Fanny Price noticed on entering the family chapel at Southerton. Jane Austen herself had seen such cushions in the chapel at Stoneleigh Abby in Warwickshire. There is a photograph in the book, but one has to imagine the cushions a couple of centuries younger than those in the photo!

Her interest in the clergy and the Navy probably came from her family. Her father was a clergyman (though much more like Edmund in Mansfield Park or Edward in Sense and Sensibility than Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice!) So was the brother who became the source of much of the information about her. But she had two brothers in the Navy as well, one of whom bought her and her sister Cassandra two topaz crosses which may have inspired the amber cross Fanny Price was given by her sailor brother. There are a variety of naval characters in her books, both heroic and comedic.

While I cannot judge how the book compares with other biographies of Jane Austen, I felt I knew her far better for reading this book.

Review of Pride and Prejudice (DVD)

The first time I watched this, the version with Kiera Knightly, I thought it came off rather poorly compared to the BBC version with Colin Firth. The second time, I liked it better, but while it generally stays close to the original book, there still seemed something a little off. Then I watched the movie with the commentary by the director (Joe Wright), and had an “aha!” moment.

I had always read the book – and I think Jane Austin wrote it – with Elizabeth totally hostile to Darcy at the time of his initial proposal. It seemed to me that the change in her attitude did not even start until the second time she read his letter – and then it took a long time to really sink in.

In this version, the director assumed that Elizabeth was actually attracted to Darcy at the time he first proposed to her, and refused him from pride and a bit of temper. I was watching from my understanding of the book, and when that clashed with the way the actors were playing their parts, l had a hard time following. I need to set it aside for a while and perhaps watch it again.

I was a little bothered by Lady Catherine showing up at the Bennett home late at night and the family all meeting her in their sleeping attire. Would this really have happened at this time of history? Would not a servant have opened the door, rather than Mr. Bennett?

All in all, this was an excellent movie, even if it did depart somewhat from the book.

Review of Darcy’s Decision, by Maria Grace

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a prequel should at least lead to the possibility of the original book. At least I thought it was universally acknowledged. Darcy’s Decision, by Maria Grace, had me wondering.

Granted, this book is part of a series and I thought the next book might clear things up. But in Pride and Prejudice Darcy’s change of heart, though not really explained, is brought about in some way by Elizabeth. Here a clergyman causes considerable reformation before Darcy even meets Elizabeth. Wickham is certainly a villain and his conduct in this book, though appalling, is in line with the character sketched out by Jane Austin. But the plot development seemed to make his further flirtations next to impossible.

I went ahead and got the second book in the Given Good Principles series, The Future Mrs. Darcy, simply because I was curious as to how on earth the writer was going to get herself out of the corner she had written herself into in a way that made the Jane Austin plot possible. After I read the second book, I started to realize this was never intended to be a prequel. Rather, Ms. Grace has taken the characters and the initial setup of Pride and Prejudice and written her own story. Not a prequel, not a change in point of view, not a sequel, but a “what if?” What if Darcy had been forced to see his selfishness before he ever met Elizabeth? What if Lydia’s flirtatiousness had been recognized earlier? At this point the series has been written out to the point that Darcy and Elizbeth have just met — and not at a ball.

Still, I have few hopes that this series will be anything like as good as Pamela Aidan’s Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman series.

One of the things this book has forced me to recognize is that there are a number of kinds of books based on Pride and Prejudice. I’ve categorized them (for the moment) as:
1. Non-fiction. This can include scholarly critiques, biographies of Jane Austin, and books about her times, which can be helpful in defining words such as squabs (carriage cushions) or the difference between a curricle and a chaise.
2. Prequel. Books whose main action is before the action of Pride and Prejudice. I haven’t read one, but a book about the marriage of Darcy’s parents, or of Elizabeth’s early life, would certainly qualify.
3. Pride and Prejudice from a different point of view. There are a number from Darcy’s POV, and of course the movie versions are almost of necessity from an omniscient point of view. I haven’t come across versions from other points of view such as Bingley’s, Mary’s, Wickham’s, or those of other characters such as Lady Catherine de Burgh, but they’re certainly possible. Maybe this challenge will help me find some!
4. Same time period, same characters, different story. The Given Good Principles series falls into this category, and so does Lost in Austin.
5. Sequel. This and 3 are the largest categories. Sequels can be straightforward, mysteries (I have several of those), paranormal (sometimes combined with mystery) or for all I know science fiction or any other genre you can think of. Sequels from different points of view exist, too; I’ve just started reading Georgiana Darcy’s Diary, which starts with Darcy and Elizabeth already married and a house party that makes me shudder. (Mrs. Bennett and Lady Catherine are both guests.)

I’m not even going to count romances where the characters start out misunderstanding each other; that’s become a plot element too common to catalog.

Henceforth I’ll try to determine what category a book belongs in before writing a review!

Alone in Paradise: Blog hop.

Today I’m hosting a blog hop for Patrick Stutzman, whose new novel, Alone in Paradise, will be released September 15. His characters are being interviewed under somewhat unusual circumstances. He’ll be giving away an e-version of the book to one lucky commenter, so comment away!

“Anna,” called Kate, a woman with brown hair wearing a white shirt and blue jeans standing on the other side of the inner airlock door. “You have a visitor.” Her voice had a distinct British accent.

“What?!” cried another woman’s voice from somewhere behind the airlock.

As a blonde woman wearing olive-colored cargo pants and a white dress shirt about three sizes too big ran into view, she turned with an eager expression on her face that quickly changed to curiosity.

“A drone? How did it get here?”

“I don’t know,” Kate replied. “But, it’s a messenger drone.”

“Well,” sighed Anna. “Let it in.”

The small drone floated to the middle of the room, hesitated for a second, and produced a holographic screen about a quarter of a meter in front of it.

Anna walked up to it and read the text on the display. She furrowed her brow and stated, “It’s a questionnaire of some sort. An interview. Somebody’s curious about us. Let’s see what it has to say.”

1.     How did you get into this mess?

Anna chuckled, “How did I get into this mess?!

“I got into this mess by trying to save my own skin,” she resumed with a more serious tone. “After defending myself against the corporate enforcer my employer sent after me, I discovered that he had set the space station where I had lived for over six years to self-destruct. Since my skiff was destroyed earlier to buy me some time, I had to resort to taking his ship to escape. I barely managed to escape the explosion, but the resulting force propelled me here. I am fortunate that the moon is capable of supporting life and I was able to land the ship in as good of a condition it is in.”

Anna hesitated and asked, “Wait a minute. You’re not from NR Suppliers. Are you?”

The drone’s display changed to one word: No.

“Okay, good,” she breathed. “Continue.”

The drone’s display returned to its list of questions.

2.     How much did you know about this moon before you landed here?

“Actually, not that much. I discovered it completely by accident when I was out flying around the gas giant to test my skiff’s flight systems after finishing some repairs. I did perform a survey scan and picked up some basic information about it, such as its atmospheric content and physical characteristics like mass, radius, and apparent magnitude. I discovered that the moon is very similar to Earth and some colonized worlds like Aldrin and New Athens. I don’t have the details right off the top of my head…”

“If I may,” Kate interrupted. “The moon has a radius of 5823.1 kilometers, a mean density of 5.9134 grams per cubic centimeter, an equatorial surface gravity of 0.979g, an average temperature of 291K, an orbital period of 29.79 Earth days, and a rotational period of -29.79 Earth days.”

“Yeah,” added Anna while waving her hand as if dismissing the information. “What she said. Trust a computer to know that.”

3.     Why did you take this job?

Cocking her eyebrow, Anna asked with a bit of skepticism, “Are you sure you’re not from NR Suppliers? This question sounds like it’s part of an exit interview.”

The drone repeated its answer on the screen.

With a sigh, she continued, “Honestly, I wish I hadn’t. I took it right after finishing my Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering. NR Suppliers promised me a job where I would be working with robots, my degree specialization, on a daily basis. It sounded promising and right up my alley. What they didn’t tell me is that I would be by myself on the station where they placed me. I was young and stupid.”

Kate interjected, “Anna, I think that you are a smart, young woman. You’ve certainly demonstrated it here many times. You don’t need to berate yourself.”

Anna sighed and smiled sadly, “Thanks, Kate. It’s just that if I didn’t take that stupid job, I’d probably be on Earth with my other friends and family. Nothing personal against you.”

“No offense taken.”

After a brief pause, Anna inhaled sharply and said, “Okay, what’s next?”

4.     What kind of information was the space station gathering? Was it in orbit around the primary of this moon?

“It wasn’t gathering any information. The whole goal of the station was to house the mining drones that would fly to the gas giant and mine spyrinium, the gas that was in abundance on g Lupi VI. The station was positioned more in an orbit around the star instead of the planet, so we could follow its orbital path but not be influenced by its gravity well.”

5.     How much survival training have you had?

Anna laughed for a few seconds before answering, “Before coming here, none. I was completely in the dark on how to survive away from civilization. Fortunately, Kate has some files on basic survival skills that helped me sustain myself for a long time to come. Hopefully, it won’t be too long.”

“Just one thing. SEND ME A SHIP, SO I CAN GO HOME!”

Pern

The first time I read a Pern story I was in high school, and I generally grabbed my father’s Analog and read it cover to cover before he even had a chance to see it. In October 1967 there was a short novel, called “Weyr Search,” by Anne McCaffrey. It was followed in December and January by a serial called “Dragonrider.” The following year the two were put together in a book called Dragonflight, and the Pern series was on its way.

I haven’t read everything by Anne McCaffrey, and probably won’t. Some of her collaborations, in particular, just don’t interest me. But the story of Pern fascinates me, and I enjoy keeping track of the characters and their relationships. I wish Ms. McCaffrey were still here, to let us know how the story of Toric and the Abominators came out.

Just for the heck of it, I once worked out how the various Pern books and stories fit into the internal timeline. Here’s what I came up with, with the aid of the timeline in First Fall. The years are approximate; even the Pernese couldn’t quite get them right!

“The Survey: P.E.R.N.”, in First Fall. ~200 years before colonization.

Dragonsdawn. First 10 years of the colony; Thread; breeding of dragons from fire-lizards.

“The Dolphins’ Bell,” in First Fall. Overlaps end of Dragonsdawn.

“The Ford of Red Hanrahan,” in First Fall. Year 19, founding of Ruatha, whose bloodline produced many dragonriders.

“The Second Weyr,” in First Fall. Year 28, founding of Benden Weyr.

“Rescue Run,” in First Fall. Year 49, the result of Ted Tubberman’s emergency beacon.

Dragonseye. Year 258, beginning of second pass, the star stones.

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern. Year about 1505, near the end of the 6th pass. The plague.

Nerilka’s Story. Overlaps Moreta, from a different point of view.

The Masterharper of Pern. Robinton was born about 50 years before the end of the second long interval; this book goes through the beginning of Dragonflight.

Dragonflight. Covers Lessa’s Searching and Impression of Ramoth through the end of the long interval 3 years later. Book ends about 2408.

Dragonquest. Year 2415, 9 years into ninth pass. Problem of oldtimers.

Dragonsong. Overlaps Dragonquest; starts Harper Hall emphasis. The Masterharper of Pern was actually written considerably later., though it is set in an earlier time.

Dragonsinger. Overlaps Dragonquest.

Dragondrums. Overlaps The White Dragon.

The White Dragon. 2420 through 2425; 12^th through 17^th years of ninth pass. Includes discovery of Aivas.

The Renegades of Pern. 1^st through 17^th years of ninth pass.

“The Girl Who Heard Dragons,” in The Girl who Heard Dragons. This short novel was reworked and modified into The Renegades of Pern.

All the Weyrs of Pern. Ninth pass, 17^th through 21^st years. First appearance of the Abominators.

The Dolphins of Pern. Overlaps All the Weyrs of Pern.

“The Smallest Dragonboy,” in Get Off the Unicorn. This was first published in 1973, but the names of dragon and rider make it clear that this was the Impression of the same K’van and Heth that appear in The Dolphins of Pern, though the story is somewhat changed there.

The Skies of Pern. Ninth pass, 31^st year. More about the Abominators, and the threat of planetary impacts. What will dragons do when there is no more Thread?

I have not included the books with Todd McAffrey; sadly, I have found it a chore to finish those I’ve bought. If anyone knows of books or stories I’ve missed, please let me know.

Invitation to the Dance (DVD review)

I don’t know how many times I’ve checked Amazon looking for this on DVD. I’ve wanted it ever since I saw the brief episode of Gene Kelly dancing with the cartoon harem guards on That’s Entertainment Vol. 2, and I’d almost given up. Then this spring I found it, finally put on DVD in 2011.

It wasn’t remastered, there is no menu (though it is possible to jump through the film with the buttons) and there are no extras on the DVD. Given the number of VHS reviews on Amazon that effectively said “where’s the DVD?” I suspect Warner simply put it from the vaults straight to DVD, and according to some reviews effectively made the DVDs to order. Too bad, as the movie is worth more than this cursory treatment – but it’s not the usual musical, and MGM apparently shelved it for four years before releasing it.

It’s really a dance and music performance, starring Gene Kelly and a number of other excellent dancers, with not a word spoken. Even the crooner (a takeoff of Frank Sinatra) has an instrumental voice – I think a trumpet, though I could be mistaken on that.

The performance is made up of three dances, only one of which I had seen at all before.

The first is a tragedy, told in mime and dance, set in a small circus. Gene Kelly is hopelessly in love with a girl who sees him only as a clown. The ballet sequences are beautiful, and I particularly liked the one danced on a fishnet hung vertically.

The second, with both ballet and tap dancing sequences, follows a bracelet from wrist to wrist. My favorites were the crooner and the stage door Johnnies.

The third was the tale of Sinbad the sailor. The meat of this one was a marriage of live action and animation, with Kelly dancing in cartoons representing book illustrations. This sequence had pieces that reminded me very much of Cyd Charisse’s dream dance in Singin’ In The Rain, a movie that came out 4 years after Invitation, but was actually being made the same year, also with Kelly as choreographer. Another part of that sequence might have helped inspire the Disney artists of Mary Poppins, which came out almost a decade later. Certainly it had very much the feel of Mary and Bert being carried across water by turtles.

Parts of all three sequences were obviously shot either speeded up or in slow motion, emphasizing the frenetic activity of a cocktail party or Gene trying to dance the guards into exhaustion,  or the floating motion of a dream.

Fans of Gene Kelly will want to watch this, as will those interested in the history of the combination of cartoon and real life characters. But I do wish the film had been remastered and color-corrected. As an example of the problems, the segment from Sinbad the Sailor on That’s Entertainment showed harem guards whose clothing varied from green to blue, and I believe that when the trousers are blue, the background is a much more bluish shade of red, suggesting that the yellow pigment has faded. In the Invitation to the Dance DVD the harem guards are consistently in green trousers, though some other colors look faded. Sometimes the skin tones are totally unrealistic.

In short, the film is wonderful. The DVD leaves a great deal to be desired, but for right now it is all we have.

The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey: Review

The Fire Rose is not considered to be an official member of the Elemental Masters series, I suspect mostly because it has a different publisher. (The first “official” book of the series is The Serpent’s Shadow.) It is also set in Chicago and the San Francisco area rather than England, and the relationships among the Elemental Masters is somewhat different—the inability of two fire masters to co-exist in the same city is certainly out of line with the White Circle of the later books.  But the basic structure—magicians of the classical Greek elements, historical setting sometime between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a strong female protagonist before women had the vote, and a plot based on a popular fairy tale—is similar. I suspect The Fire Rose was Lackey’s first experiment using this form, later refined into the Elemental Masters series.

The plot is a variation of “Beauty and the Beast,” the two major characters are a Master of fire (the Beast) and an apprentice of air (Beauty), and the setting is the West Coast near the time of the San Francisco Earthquake. If you like werewolves, part of the book is the tragedy of a man caught between the wolf and the human forms by his hubris in trying to apply an incompletely learned spell, and the mental and physical pain he must endure as a result.

I read this book long before publication of The Serpent’s Shadow, and thought enough of it then to replace it when my original copy was lost in a fire. An enjoyable book, and one I’ve read several times.

(I was going to review the fair today, but I suspect you’ve had more than enough of that. I will have something to say about the horse shows Thursday, when I’ve had time to go over all of the pictures I took.)

The Great Race (DVD Review)

This is one of the three 60’s comedies I play when I want a good laugh. Unlike Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines or Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies it does not really have an international cast, and is clearly a satire of movie stereotypes. It was based (very loosely) on a real event, an auto race from New York to Paris via Alaska.

In the real race, the first car to Alaska made it to Alaska via steamboat and was stopped by mud, not drifting sea ice. (Having driven the south end of the Richardson highway even after its paving, and knowing that there is still no summer overland access to Nome, where the cars were supposed to cross the sea ice to Siberia, I find it incredible that cars actually finished. The race was rerouted after the first car found the Alaskan “roads” impassible to allow steamship passage to Asia.) The geography of the movie makes no sense at all, especially drifting across the Pacific on an ice floe.

The movie version features three principal characters, all extreme stereotypes. Tony Curtis plays the Hero, the Great Leslie (cheers!) always in spotless white, with sparkling eyes and teeth, always succeeding in his daredevil stunts. Jack Lemmon is the mustachioed villain Professor Fate (boos and hisses), always wearing black, always failing in his daredevil stunts, and hating The Great Leslie. Natalie Wood is the suffragette newspaper reporter Maggie DuBois (wolf whistles) determined to cover the race start to finish, even if it means planting herself on one or the other (she switches off) of the contestants.

The hero and villain have sidekicks, of course. The Great Leslie’s is Horatio, a strong, silent, mechanical genius who is very much not impressed by Maggie. Professor Fate’s is Max, whose loyalty is somewhat surprising under the circumstances and whose obedience all too often leads to disaster.

The movie is full of things that, like cartoons, seem reasonable but are not — like the rocket-propelled railway carriage that goes so fast it starts flying. Or the “iceberg” that stays comfortably horizontal. I still wonder how the director managed to have the polar bear climb into Professor’s Fate’s car.

I think my favorite scene (though it’s difficult to choose just one) is the great and carefully choreographed pie fight. Choreographed? How else can you explain how The Great Leslie’s clothing stays spotlessly white in the midst of cream pies flying in all directions?

This is by no means a serious film, but it’s still wonderful satire.