Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

Fairytale job hunting: 1) wait at home, grub in ashes - sometimes sea capt. will show up and make an offer, 2) check with local fairy or wise woman - they're known to hand out quests/jobs willy-nilly.

I love that this (online) version starts with an ad: "WHY ARE THE MADAME MORA'S CORSETS A MARVEL OF COMFORT AND ELEGANCE!" Nope, no ? in that sentence. And they're guaranteed or your money back!

Damn you Amazon and your $2 ebook sales. On the up side I bought one for my mom (and spent some phone time explaining how to get to it, she's a new tablet user) who always wanted to work for the CIA/FBI. Yep, mom the former school teacher, totally wanted to be an agent. What's frightening is that she's great at getting people to tell her things, so yeah, that might have been a good fit. Scary.

One of the rewards for sighting the runaway princess: a little pair of scissors, among other things. Apparently scissors much more valuable at this time.

Wait, they're escaping to "Squirrel Island?" I need to stop trying to watch tv and read at the same time. This just got weirder.

Queen: "Can nothing appease this enemy of ours? What good was it that I sent her more than 50 lbs of sweetmeats, and as much again of the best sugar, not to mention two Westphalia hams?" Again, apparently good presents for fairies.

Note: besides high heeled shoes, needles, and golden scissors, fairies are also fond of beautiful ribbons. In case you're ever gift shopping for fairies.

King: "Alas! now we are ruined indeed, for that was no other than the Fairy Carabosse, who has had a grudge against me ever since I was a boy and put sulphur into her porridge one day for fun." - If she'd turned him into a frog immediately it'd have saved a lot of trouble.

Oops, suddenly random nurses are dying! Wonder who could have motive to cause that, hmmm. (Also one dies via turtle dropping from sky - just like Aeschylus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus )

Queen needs a nurse because all of her children have died except one daughter. Something's really wrong there, more than a nurse will fix. Making a big deal about not hiring the "dark skinned ugly" woman won't help.

Really like Miss Halcombe as a narrator but wow, the whole "Laura, our heroine, is impossibly good" thing gets a tad old. It is possible to be too good. Also it's merging into a "I Shall Suffer Forever for My Love" sort of thing. Victorians far more into the suffering than I am.

Really want to shake heroine by shoulders and tell her to wake up. After all, her dog doesn't like the guy either. By now everyone knows that's A Sign. Why heroines ignore their pets is beyond me. Oh and right, her cousin would agree with this, and her cousin is smarter than everyone in the book so far.

Of the late Philip Fairlie: " In many of his opinions he was an Englishman of the old school, and he hated a foreigner simply and solely because he was a foreigner."

"No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman."

Ah ha! You can always tell who's the real villain by seeing who the dog makes of a show of avoiding. And the villain is of course really put out that the dog does this. (If people could hide under sofas this would probably happen with humans a bit more.)

"I was to weigh the explanation we had just heard, to allow all due force to the high reputation of the gentleman who offered it..." - It's always weird that the word reputation gets bandied about in novels, but often no specifics about what the reputation was. (It's a tricky word, for instance, having a mistress didn't ruin a man's rep in the slightest.)

Vincent Gilmore: "There are three things that none of the young men of the present generation can do. They can't sit over their wine, they can't play at whist, and they can't pay a lady a compliment."

Huzzah, a new narrator. Thank you Collins, I had become tired of Hartright and his "the last time I ever saw X" sighing. (Also my last comment about adding an evil character had everything to do with reading about the Borgias at the same time.)

Every now and then am pausing to wonder what it would be like to drop an insane but wildly intelligent person (who's also a good actor, and who's possibly evil) into this plot because pretty much everyone seems like they might be easy to fool.

I love that there are so many great books out there in public domain that are now ebooks. But I just can't deal with the ones old enough to use the letter f for the letter s. Reading things like "I am pleafed to keep correfpondance with you" - makes my brain hurt.

"He [Sainte-Beuve, in a book review] also disputes the anecdote that Bentley repeats, that General (and soon to be emperor) Napoleon proposed marriage to Mrs. Elliott." - great example of how Bentley seems to have used any and all gossip, from any source.

"The French have always been kinder to Grace Elliott than her own nit-picking and biased countrymen."

Critics of Grace's Journal claimed that there's no proof of her imprisonment - to which can be noted that the prisons had lax record keeping, and Grace may not have always used her real name.

Another mystery, Grace's Journal ends abruptly because the manuscript is torn off at the end. So someone decided to censor it at some point, but of course no idea who.

"It was reported that he [George IV] drank gallons of cherry brandy and had delusions of taking part in - and singlehandedly winning - the Battle of Waterloo."

Working my way on start of next volume. There are 8 volumes in one book - so I'm going to be reading this a loooong time...

I do enjoy a good conversation in a graveyard.

One of my favorite eccentrics mentioned in passing: William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_... (Go, Team Eccentric!)

I keep forgetting how "evil" book podcasts are. Listening to one today and thought "oh I have that book, I must make sure it's on my list" - and it's actually another book about forks. Which I now have to add to the list as well. So many books, so little time...

"In the second decade of the nineteenth century, according to Christopher Hibbert in Queen Victoria, it was reckoned that King George III had at least fifty-six illegitimate grandchildren, or, as they were called, "children of the mist."