Here are some of my favorites of 2005:
My favorite Regencies that I read for the first time included Nonnie St George’s Courting Trouble (yes, it came out halfway through 2004, but I’m way behind in my reading!) and Judith Laik’s The Lady is Mine. (By the way, I’m following Amanda’s lead and not listing books by fellow Risky-ers — or we’d all just list each other’s books and, how boring would that be?) 🙂 By the way, yes, I think the woman pictured on this cover is definitely falling out of her dress.
My favorite Regencies that I re-read include Joan Smith’s Sweet and Twenty.
My favorite Regency reference book of 2005 is LETTERS FROM LAMBETH: The Correspondence of the Reynolds family with John Freeman Milward Dovaston 1808-1815, introduced and edited by Joanna Richardson. For such a long, dry title, it’s surprisingly sprightly, and delightfully droll. Two of my favorite quotes from the letters of John Hamilton Reynolds that it includes are:
The arrival of the Shrewsbury Chronicle has spurred up my head & collected the few grains of wisdom that wandered about my spacious Scull into one large grain & from that LARGE GRAIN you are to expect whatever comes upon this Paper.
I am ordered by my Mother and Father to return you their unfeigned thanks for noticeing the Slovenly & noncencical Letters of Jack Reynolds. I always had a confounded bad opinion of his writings and your remark has confirmed it . . .
And, yes, the creative spelling is all Reynolds’s.
My favorite Regency-related movie was the new PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. My favorite Christmas gifts were the dvds of the Ciaran Hinds/Amanda Root PERSUASION, the Gwyneth Paltrow/Jeremy Northam EMMA, and the Jennifer Ehle/Colin Firth PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. (All of them were gifts from my husband. Yep, I picked a good one. Oh, and in exchange I gave him the complete HORATIO HORNBLOWER series starring Ioan Gruffudd, so I guess we’ll be watching a lot of Regency television come 2006!)
What were some of your favorite Regency things this year? Please share!
And for those of you taking the Read-a-Regency challenge: have you made any progress in the past (presumably extremely busy) week? If so, please update us on your reading experiences!
Happy New Year all! And may 2006 bring many Regency delights!
Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — out now from Signet Regency!
I definitely agree that Pride and Prejudice was the best Regency movie of the year! Of course, I can’t really remember any other Regency movies I saw (except for “Byron” on BBC America!), but it would be great even if there had been 100.
Okay, Amanda, I admit, there weren’t a million and one Regency-era movies in theatres this year. 🙂 But I really enjoyed P&P, and wanted to mention it anyway!
It would be great if there were 100…
BTW, I haven’t yet seen CASANOVA, and of course it’s 18th century rather than Regency, but the preview looked really good, and I’m definitely going to see it soon. I think it belongs to a category which, in my mind, I think of as movies that aren’t Regency, but are similar in some way. Oscar Wilde plays (and movies from them) are in that category (I loved “An Ideal Husband” a few years back, notwithstanding Jeremy Northam’s criminally mistaken mustache.) 🙂
Cara
There will definitely be much watching of Horatio Hornblower in this household in the near future. I have heard rumors that Ioan Gruffudd is considered cute or even hot (or possibly essentially hot?) by some, though personally I’ve never noticed it…perhaps Bertie might have a more qualified opinion?
I am making progress, albeit slowly, on the Regency challenge. Unfortunately, I received some books for Christmas (who would have thought it?), which are distracting me from a single-minded pursuit of my goals. I also have a terrible problem with library books. I keep checking them out; but then the library expects me to return them! And by a particular date! So I have to read them before said date, which means that I keep reading library books and not the books that I actually own, which sit in a stack and stare at me accusingly. (Stop staring, damn you! I’ll get to you soon enough!)
But I am determined! I will fulfill the challenge. Call it an early New Year’s Resolution.
Todd-who-is-resolute
So unreasonable of the library, to expect their books back on a certain date!!! I have a similar problem with my own public library (and with the closest university library, too). Don;t they understand I am researching, for heaven’s sake???
And I have to say that Ioan Gruffudd is, indeed, hot. Aside from that tragic goatee choice in KING ARTHUR.
Funny, libraries in my area expect that too! And compound the problem when you have two children who love books, but don’t always keep them in the designated places. Perhaps someday our local library will build a new wing on our late fees…
Elena 🙂