I like the Crusie series books. I think they're better than some of the earlier stand-alones, or at least more tightly plotted; I don't think she knew what to do with the extra word length at first. My favorite Crusie is probably still my first: Anyone But You. Older woman! Neither partner wants kids! Publishing! Mocking of Wonderbras!

Someone mentioned the Palliser books, proving the Buffista Hivemind Is One. I finished Can You Forgive Her? this morning.

Please tell me Trollope stops trying to write about The Perfect Man. He is much better writing about people he doesn't approve of.

Dude, among my adult friends, at least 2 (though probably more) have gotten into a car with someone driving who has been drinking.

Well, by "someone who has been drinking" do you mean someone who is impaired? Or a friend who I've been with for four hours and who had one drink during that time? Cause I'll drive when I've had one drink. Sometimes when I've had two, if it's been over a fair amount of time/with food.

Someone mentioned the Palliser books, proving the Buffista Hivemind Is One. I finished Can You Forgive Her? this morning.

I think that was me. Most of Trollope's people come across as very nice people. Even the cads.

Then there's The Way We Live Now, where even most of the people who are trying to do the right thing have their caddish streaks. Although the Masterpiece Theatre production did a good job of expanding to show some things Trollope could reasonably have expected his characters to do, but would never have gotten away with talking about.

Please tell me Trollope stops trying to write about The Perfect Man. He is much better writing about people he doesn't approve of.

He says in one of his essays that Glencora is the perfect lady. Low standards much? (He also says that Planty Pall is the perfect gentleman, which I suppose he is by prevailing local standards.)

Well, by "someone who has been drinking" do you mean someone who is impaired? Or a friend who I've been with for four hours and who had one drink during that time? Cause I'll drive when I've had one drink. Sometimes when I've had two, if it's been over a fair amount of time/with food.

Yes. This. Though one friend did get in the car with somenoe she was a bit askeered about. She's been harangued since then.

I read about a comic last night in BUST magazine that I want to read -- Scooter Girl. Looks cool-o.

I do have the first issue. Scola has the whole run, however. It's by Chynna Clugston-Major, and she did another very cool comic titled Blue Monday and I have a lot of that. (Including some snazzy pins.) I'm sendnig her a Mod Package which will include the Mad Mod episode of Teen Titans.

And I'd really like some old kinky Wonder Woman comics -- like from the 1940s.

They are collected in hardbound form and in print. Also, they were reprinted in the back of DC annuals in the 70s.

Well, Plantagenet did surprise me, and favorably, about three-quarters of the way through, and I felt quite a soft spot for him before he reverted to norm.

I expect it's just having read fanfiction that made me think Alice and Glencora should abandon their unsatisfactory suitors and spouse and run off to the Welsh hills to set up housekeeping like the Ladies of Llangollen. But really they did seem to see each other more clearly and like each other more honestly than they saw or liked any of the men in the books, or any of the men saw and liked them.

Tell me about the Ladies of Llangollen.

There's a real sense in Trollope that women are, in general, clearer-sighted and more honest with themselves (and sometimes one another) than men.

The Ladies of Llangollen were two Irish gentlewomen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who fled their unhappy home lives for a Welsh cottage in the late eighteenth century. They turned their home into a fairly fashionable retreat, were popular with the local society, and lived together for, IIRC, forty or fifty years. The biography of them by Elizabeth Mavor says they weren't lovers, although it was widely rumored they were.

And I'd really like some old kinky Wonder Woman comics -- like from the 1940s.

They are collected in hardbound form and in print. Also, they were reprinted in the back of DC annuals in the 70s.

Didn't they "reprint" recently? Like, last year or so?