I just read a terrible book

[Orangeis]

Bring me back, B A Paris.

What a load of absolute tosh. A man's partner dissapears, 6 years later he gets with her sister and lives with her. The big twist is.....the new girlfriend is actually the missing sister. He didn't realise this as she had a different hair do.
That's hours of my life I'll never get back. I feel like taking the book in to the back garden and burning the bugger.
What's your worst book and why?

Well of course it's ridiculous, but it's a romantic film, not real life!

B-b-but we were talking about films set in old times that are spoiled by showing incongruous modern attitudes...?

I'll just fetch me coat 😁

it's a popcorn blockbuster

it really ain't that deep.

I'll get mine too (actually I've already got a thick cardigan on, bloody freezing). I'm posting as part of the "Historical accuracy would spoil most fiction" discussion and within the internal logic of Titanic, Rose giving the finger makes sense. Lots of different conversations in this thread

It's ridiculously modern, though. I mean.... the very idea that a woman of any class could "gain freedom" from social conventions, like she wouldn't have to face the music at some point. Her whole life would be ruined.
But it's not even about consequences and what other people would think. She would have self-censored the slightest impulse, if indeed she ever felt any, to behave like that.

TBF I can think of some actual historical young women who played with fire around that time or before - sometimes ending up unmarried mothers, marrying either that man or someone else - but very risky behavior. I think my issue with believing that was the actress Kate Winslet didn't come across as quite young or naïve enough to sell that or as swept up in passion.

I did like Wolf Hall though got in on some sort of kindle deal - style took me back initially but I rapidly got into it and loved it.

I believe myth buster's did finally prove that he couldn't have got on that door with her.

How the drunk chef survived in RL that long in cold water I have no idea though.

@CatJumperTwat
actually I've already got a thick cardigan on

I know it's not a cardigan, but based on your username I can sort of picture it!

I was 15 in 1970 and I can tell you the 70s wasn't like that for me or my friends.

Oh no, I had a feeling I'd be outing myself as a weirdo!

Glad someone had fun 😎

To be honest I would have been better off not doing a lot of it but that's a different story.

In 1986 there was a storyline in Eastenders where Wicks and Sharon somehow spent the night in the same room. He slept in a chair and it was made extremely clear that they didn't have sex, and that this was because it's wrong to have sex before marriage. Around the same time Scott and Charlene in Neighbours were about to get married and I remember a similar conversation making it clear that they were both virgins. In 1989 two engaged friends of mine came to stay with me at uni and found floor spaces in different rooms, they again were both virgins and intended to wait.

Yes of course people grow up in different cultures and communities, and some break certain rules more than others. I was certainly having sex in 1986 aged 17 without a sense of shame, though I did about a year later tell my mum and she was absolutely horrified. But it's things like popular films and telly that indicate a majority culture. I don't like it when films will use historical glamour without taking on any of the attitudes.

But in 1986 Michelle had already got pregnant by Dirty Den.

Well, yes! It wasn't exactly a positive story for her

I mean sex was happening. It wasn't a complete outrage until they found out who the father was.

I don't like it when films will use historical glamour without taking on any of the attitudes.

I do agree it can get annoying in some circumstances.

There a certain type of historical romance that uses Georgian England as a backdrop with little social or historical information and more dukes than ever existed - that doesn't bother me personally as its a fun quick read with no serious intent.

It does bother me when it claims a more realistic situation with actual historical people or situations - and there it can really irritate.

Rates of teenage pregnancy were far higher in the 1980s than they are now. Things being 'socially unacceptable' doesn't mean they weren't happening. A significant number of Victorian brides were pregnant on their wedding day despite the Victorians being notoriously prudish about sex.

I didn't mean to derail the thread by criticising Titanic!

I know people have always done daring things out of wedlock, but... the way she runs squealing with carefree delight around the whole film, like having sex is no big deal. It was a big deal. Even if she knew the ship was going down, I can't see her behaving that way.

In times gone by people were free to start shagging as soon as an engagement or promise of marriage was made, particularly in rural areas. That is why a broken engagement was such as disaster.

If you can ever get hold of a copy, this book offers a fascinating insight into sex in the 1920s. It's a collection of letters received by Marie Stopes when she set up the UK's first "family planning" clinic, and the chapters are divided by social class and profession e.g. lower/middle/upper classes, clergy, military etc.

I'll never forget the desperate letters from a farmer's wife with at least a dozen kids whose doctor had told her another child would be the death of her, but refused to explain how to avoid pregnancy. Her brutal husband insisted on sex whenever he wanted it, anal rape if she refused.

There was a commonly held view that if the common rabble found out how to practice contraception, morality as we knew it would collapse and there would be open fornication in the streets.

Mind you, the Daily Mail would have us believe that's exactly what has happened 😁,

See what I did there, back onto books!

Which is why most Architects can’t stand grand designs
Kevin McClouds inaccurate use of terminology and ‘cutting edge design’ term, when it’s tech that has been used for ages. Just grates too much.
However, I’m very into history and enjoy things such as Downton ( a modern Upstairs Downstairs) because these sort of programmes are an escape.

But to get back to books ....

So many that have been mentioned on here that I agree with:

Hated A Little Life so much. Only finished it because my daughter had insisted I read it and we normally have similar tastes. Thought it was bleak and depressing, and unbelievable.
(Conversely though I found A Fine Balance, which is a similarly bleak tale, gripping and memorable. In some ways it worked better for me because it uses characters as cyphers to reveal the atrocities and misery inflicted upon the people of India during the mid 1970's making the historical facts come to life. Not sure I'll ever read it again though - it's not an easy read.)

Also hated:
The Alchemist - dull and rambling. In this case The Emperor definitely has no clothes.
The Island - Read this on Crete staying opposite the Leper colony island of Spinalonga where it is set, and even this didn't save it! Shame really because the central conceit of using Spinalonga could have led to an outstanding novel, it's just this isn't it!

The Time Travellors Wife can't remember why I hated this - it wasn't the main character lusting over his wife to be when she was a child particularly, I think I just found it tedious.

I did think Birdsong was good though - more the war bits than the French set affair at the beginning.

Never Let Me Go irritated me, because of the narrators voice more than anything.

milkman I persevered with but it never really grabbed me.

Piranesi I quite liked, it was certainly atmospheric, but I was waiting for a clever ending to make sense of what had gone before and it didn't come so I was ultimately disappointed.

One Day in December. People were raving about it, but it made me so angry. She falls in love from making eye contact with a man who drives past on a bus. Obsessed about him for a year like an absolute psycho then used that 30 seconds of time to justify betraying her best friend in the whole wide world. It wasn't romantic at all, just really stalkerish and the audio book characters were smug and annoying. I ended up shouting at them when I listened to it in the car.

Did people frown on teen sex in the 80s? Passed my school by

I found it a very difficult read, so many characters and I was forgetting who they were.

Hahaha your synopsis made me chuckle OP 😂

Shit books I’ve read lately:
Dont Let Him In by Some Bloke
All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover. It wasn’t badly written it was just really, really sad.
Elenaor Oliphant - cannot fathom why this is so popular. It’s awful