Eleanor Butler

See, I knew about the "Betsy Bell and Mary Grey" song version, but that was a much earlier couple, who both died of plague.

But Lady Eleanor Butler - what comes up in my admittedly creaky memory is the name of woman who was the subject of Titulus Regis - the document that made the Two Princes in the Tower illegitimate, because it turned out their hornytoad hounddog daddy had gone through a ceremony of marriage with one Lady Eleanor Butler, who was then shoved in a convent so he could marry someone else.

Another famous Eleanor Butler. How cool is that?

I love to do that. My uptight Catholic relatives bought me "The Joy of Writing Sex" and "How to Write a Dirty Story" last Xmas. And they don't know it, but they used to buy my bus tickets when I fornicated out of town.

a direct link to vintage Wonder Woman (in all her kinky bondage glory)

Neal Pollack on Wonder Woman (so to speak): "[N]othing, and I mean nothing, gets me hotter than when a so-called 'ordinary' woman changes into a superheroine."

Jesus Christ! Shorts over tights?

It was the '70s.

That look was still fashionable in the early 90s. Or rather, since that's what I wore in sixth grade, it was probably desperately unfashionable, but I'm sure I saw it somewhere and loved the look. Ooh, I bet I got it from Blossom, source of many of my middle-school sartorial travesties.

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

I never really mind his perfect people; first, because there aren't really that many perfect people in his novels, and second, because the few there are seem so painfully aware of their niceness and how badly it hampers them. The stalwart and often-spurned noble young man of Can You Forgive Her? is indeed stalwart and patient and virtuous, but also often sadly resigned to being spurned and having to wait for the heroine to get her head out of her ass. He's not flashy or gaudy or dangerous, and he knows it, and he's patient under the burden of his own niceness, but also a little galled and quietly frustrated by it.

And Planty Pall in the last of the Palliser novels unexpectedly and quietly broke my heart.

And now that I think of it--dammit, here I am desperately wanting to reread the Phineas Finn novels, and all my Trollopes are packed up in my dad's closet owing to insufficient space in the San Francisco apartment.

He's not flashy or gaudy or dangerous, and he knows it, and he's patient under the burden of his own niceness, but also a little galled and quietly frustrated by it.

If I shared this perception, I would have liked him much better. But he was just eternally patient, self-sacrificing, and manipulative, and displayed no anger or frustration with Alice whatsoever, and for that matter very little with his rival.

And now that I think of it--dammit, here I am desperately wanting to reread the Phineas Finn novels, and all my Trollopes are packed up in my dad's closet owing to insufficient space in the San Francisco apartment.

Surely San Francisco has this amazing thing called a Library? They let you borrow books! For free!

t /bookworm snark

LITERARY EMERGENCY!!!

My flatmate needs the title of any novel of any genre containing a protagonist named Antonella. It's for a Secret Santa present.

I've assured her that the Buffista hivemind will produce results by the morrow. Don't make a liar of me, people! I'd be very grateful for any leads.

Angus, if you don't care about age of recipient, there's always Antonella and her Santa Claus by Barbara Augustin, or an adult novel you might like to choose is Tim Parks Mimi's Ghost, it's the second in a series about a serial killer, where the killer is the protagonist. Antonella is a secondary character. There's also a novel called Pure Weight of the Heart written by Antonella Gambotto that looks interesting.

Other possibilities: A telenovela by Andrea Del Boca called Antonella; a film called Bueno Fortuna about an Italian woman coming to live in LA written and directed by Cathryn de Prume; a film called The New York Ripper available on video, the heroine of which is named Antonella.

Have you tried using Amazon's "search within the books" feature for "Antonella"?