Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?

[BeaAndBen]

I’ve been enjoying P&P yet again, and reached the absolute delight of Chapter 56.

Lady Catherine’s visit to Longbourn is something I look forward to each time. She’s so utterly ghastly, and Elizabeth so resolute and devastating in her replies, that I grin through the entire section.

Are there bits of favourite books that particularly stand out to people?

Miss Pettigrew getting her makeover -“England expects….” makes me laugh every time - or maybe Anne Elliot reading Captain Wentworth’s letter?
The concept of Angels as explained to Moist von Lipwig?

Jeeves and Wooster with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are on YouTube. Still so good .

I've never read any Heyer so this must be remedied. I also have MMA unread on a shelf.

Mine are the most unenthusiastic elopement ever in Crompton Hodnet by Barbara Pym, when both parties long for a nice cup of tea and to go home. And uncovering the wall painting in A Month in the Country b J L Carr.

I've just read A Month in the Country (binged it in a single session). It's a wonderful book. I loved how the narrator felt he was getting to know the artist, across all that span of time.

Ah yessss the whole of A Month in the Country is amazing isn't it. When he realises what happened to the artist! I love the understated way the whole book is written. Ah @Phineyj also a fan! sorry missed your post initially.

Oh, I love encountering other A Month in the Country fans. I think it’s a perfect novel. My former publisher published it originally in 1980, and was full of stories about what a curmudgeon JL Carr was. I used to tell him to stop, as I’ve made a point of never reading anything else by JLC, or know much about him, as I like thinking of the novel as something magic and contextless.

I'm sure a lot of great artists were, and are, curmudgeons. Goes with the territory!

That is a wonderful book.

I've read a couple of other books by J L Carr, but they're quite different. Nothing matches that sense of elegy and the feeling that life is wonderful and tragic and funny, all at the same time.

I know a lot of novelists, and write fiction for a living myself, and we’re generally perfectly ordinary, but according to my publisher JLC was spectacularly cantankerous. (So was my publisher, so I’m delighted if JLC got across him!)

I did enjoy Byron Rogers biography of J L Carr, in case anyone is tempted.

I’ve often thought about reading it, but I know JLC burned a lifetime’s diaries, so wondered how insightful it was. Was it good?

Who was it who said that JLC’s funeral was crammed, but hardly anyone there had ever set eyes on anyone else, because all his many friendships were completely separate from one another?

Can't remember the details, Crichel, as it's a few years ago, but Byron Rogers is good at taking apart the myths that build up around an author (which aren't necessarily the author's fault).

The only thing that stops me recommending A Civil Campaign to everyone is that it is the perfect culmination of amazingly drawn character development across about 10 books (at a pinch you could start one before with Komarr) and is so much richer for them. It has a dinner party which is both hilarious and heartbreaking, the best love letter (I wanted to posess the power of your eyes, the way they see beauty that isn't there and draw it up into breathing reality) and a fantastic table-turning proposal. Only Lois McMaster Bujold could dedicate a piece of science fiction "To Jane, Charlotte, Georgette and Dorothy. Long may they rule."

Love love love these books.

I first read The Warrior's Apprentice many years ago, and always reread that first when I'm having a comfort binge, although of course it is chronologically second. WA was published first and discovering LMB as a new to me author was a wonderful experience.

I also remember as a teenager, reluctantly on a seaside holiday and bored senseless, finding some GH paperbacks in the camp shop. Oh what bliss! I got out of going to church that Sunday claiming a bad period, and sat on my bed reading.

I'm sure you're delightful @Crichel 😂

I was thinking of artists generally, particularly some of the celebrated classical composers.

My specialist field is Economics and some of the famous economists were pretty cantankerous by all accounts.

Young Cathy in Wuthering Heights hearing Hareton read.

'1066 and all that' - 'Honi sois qui mal y pense' is translated as 'Honey, your silk stocking is hanging down.'

Thinking back to Georgette Heyer. there's one with plain Mr. Dash from nowhere. He has a cousin called Gideon Ware, who is a cavalry man. I loved the description of his living quarters. I rather fancied Gideon, too.

Gilly, I think? Also known as Adolphus? He wishes he was plain Mr Dash and not suffocatingly coddled by his staff.

Expected to marry his painfully shy, but also dutiful and obedient cousin Harriet, and then, on his adventure, meeting the beautiful Belinda.

I love that book. But also the Reluctant Widow, with Bouncer, the best of Heyer's appalling dogs.

Yes, sweet wee Gilly who gets his shit together remarkably. The Foundling, I think?
Is Belinda the girl who’d go with anyone who offered her a purple dress?

Actually, thinking of purple dresses, didn’t the good hearted but very non-tonnish Mrs Floore that Serena became friends with in Bath Tangle have a rather magnificent purple dress?

The Reluctant Widow was a mad adventure story. Bloody Bouncer, less help that stupid Flurry, even naughtier than Chien.
Are the only non-useless animals in Heyer horses?

Not to mention Lufra!

A Baluchistan Hound NOT a Barcelona Collie 😁

Ahhh what a lovely thread. I think Mrs Floore had a tobine dress with ruby stripes. But she might have had both.

I will just say that there is a lot of fanfic out there with Gilly and Gideon as the lovers...

Another huge MMA fan for the office scenes. As with many Sayers books she essentially loses interest in the whodunit for the fun stuff. The fact that the unmasking of the murderer is overshadowed by the enormous office row about what to buy for a wedding present for the engaged couple is one of my favourite moments to read.

And got to admit I adore reading about all Linda's new outfits when Fabrice is bankrolling her in The Pursuit of Love.

the enormous office row about what to buy for a wedding present for the engaged couple

Ah yes @PermanentTemporary "oh of course if you really are Lord Peter Wimsey, you’re probably frightfully rich?" "Fair to middling, It might run to a cake for tea" :)

Incidentally just rereading The Secret History (after reading the pretty good but WHAT a pastiche If We Were Villains for a book club) and I just got to the bit I LOVE where he is talking about writing in Greek (rather than translating) and how it opens up so much - not the language of bodkins and Mrs Gamp, but you can talk about the Pur and the action of the Greek armies... the six of them looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes – Donna Tartt must have studied Ancient Greek at one time.