It's Dexter's Laboratory!

From way back, meara wondered if this book was interesting: NUNS: A HISTORY OF CONVENT LIFE 1450-1700, by Silvia Evangelisti.

I finally got around to starting to read it today, and I'd say it's a readable scholarly work but not a page-turner. If I didn't have such a huge stack of library books to try to get through or if it was a specific research interest of mine, I'd finish it, but I ended up just skimming.

IOReadingN, I hope I stumble across a good novel soon. I just finished two nonfiction books that were interesting but a bit sloggish--WELLINGTON IN INDIA, by Jac Weller, and AFTER THE ICE, by Stephen Mithen. So I'm ready for a good thinking woman's page-turner. In the past couple of days I've tried a fictional biography of a royal woman, but was thrown out of it by info-dumping and an overly modern voice within a few pages. I think I'm going to stop trying to read fictional royal bios, because I always have those exact problems with them, no matter the author. I guess for fans of the subgenre, the voice and infodumps are a feature rather than a bug. I also tried a very old traditional Regency romance (1977 copyright) that I saw recommended on a website, but the heroine was such an over-the-top Mary Sue that I gave up after two chapters. It was written in omniscient POV, and everywhere the heroine went fellow stagecoach passengers, servants who helped her, etc. were struck by how wonderful she was. She was unusually tall, slim but buxom, with striking eyes. She was an orphan, orphaned by Waterloo, no less, with an adventurous childhood as an army brat. She was a poor relation governess to her cousin's spoiled brat child but made him a model child within days. The hero was a good 15 years older than her, with prematurely steel-gray hair and slate-gray eyes, and he was all crusty and masterly until won over by her spunky good nature.

Hmm. I have a Bernard Cornwell waiting in my towering stack of library books. Maybe I should go for the reliable known quantity...

Did anyone else read Steve Martin's BORN STANDING UP? Really really well done. I can totally hear his voice as I was reading it, and it made me miss his standup routines something fierce. It's sad how he's totally turned into "generic family comedy" guy (for the most part). I had to buy ALL OF ME, ROXANNE and LA STORY to remind me how much I used to like him in movies (and need to also get some of the earlier seriously goofy stuff). There doesn't seem to be anything available of his standup on DVD, tragically; I may need to find his records somewhere (I know a couple got re-released on CD).

OMG. The Sweet Valley High series is coming back. Updated for today's audience, including shrinking the twins from size 6 to size 4: [link]

I gotta say, clothing sizes have changed enough from the 1980s that a perfect size 6 from 1983 probably IS a current perfect size 4, if not a perfect size 2. I am the same size in men's Levis that I wore in high school in the late 1980s, but have gone from a women's 10-sometimes-an-8 to a solid 6.

So help me god, I want to read one or two of those...I never owned SVH as a kid--it was the sort of books we read at a relative's house.

Yeah, I thought those books sucked when I was the target audience -- my best friend read them all, and I tried one or two and went back to my Agatha Christie.

I missed the SVH fad - it was well after my time.

Susan, I thought about you a little while ago - I was watching a telenovela and they introduced an English character going by "Sir John Lancaster" and the people (in what was then Nueva Espana) kept referring to him as "Sir Lancaster" ... I kept thinking of how it would probably drive you crazy.

I "auditioned" to write for one of the SVH lines once, years ago. And then the chick who was my contact quit and moved on, and I got lost in the shuffle. I had never actually read them either.

Susan, I thought about you a little while ago - I was watching a telenovela and they introduced an English character going by "Sir John Lancaster" and the people (in what was then Nueva Espana) kept referring to him as "Sir Lancaster" ... I kept thinking of how it would probably drive you crazy.

Oh, definitely!

Incidentally, I may have finally found a satisfactory page turner--I'm three chapters along in Conn Iggulden's GENGHIS: BIRTH OF AN EMPIRE, and so far it's well-written, albeit testosteroney, even for me. Ah, well. Jo Beverley has a new release coming out, so I know I'll get to read a good romance soon.