Cinderella Jane

Cinderella Jane, by Marjorie Benton Cooke, has a lot of things in it that I love. The quiet girl who cleans all the artists’ studios turns out to be awesome! And beautiful! The hero is kind of a dork! The heroine and this girl who was in love with the hero become best friends! He/she fell in love with his/her wife/husband! A wife in a mental institution!

Patricia Brent, Spinster

Here goes possibly the nicest of the reader recommendations from week before last. Thank you Mark; I am exceedingly grateful.

I tend not to deal well with characters who seem to go out of their way to mire themselves in difficulties, but Patricia Brent, Spinster — by Herbert George Jenkins — did it so charmingly that I can’t really bring myself to complain. The title character overhears some of the catty older women at her boarding house gossiping about her — and, incidentally, adding a few years to her age — and tries to get back at them by casually referring to a fiancé over dinner that night. She’s not ready for the questions they throw at her, and she ends up being a lot more specific about the fake fiancé than she intended. Like, to the point of making up a name, rank and regiment for him. This is sort of embarrassingly awkward, obviously, and then it gets worse. Patricia goes out to dinner the following night for a nonexistent date with the fictional Major Brown and some of her fellow boarders follow her, which, a) aren’t you glad you’re not friends with them? and b) things are now acutely, humiliatingly awkward.

About Peggy Saville and More About Peggy

So, this is what happens when I ask for recommendations: I download everything that looks appealing, read maybe half of it, and leave the rest sitting on my kindle indefinitely. Except that I also sometime come back to things. I’ve had Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey’s Peggy Saville books on my kindle since James recommended them more than a year ago. I finally got around to reading them last weekend, and I really enjoyed them. I mean, I thought there were some structural issues, and also when I look back at the two books it seems like nothing ever actually happened, but it was entertaining nothing.

Girl Alone

I started by really liking Anne Austin’s Girl Alone, but as it went on, I found myself getting more and more creeped out, and I didn’t really realize why until I got to the ads at the back of the book. The storyline is a straightforward, predictable one, mostly. It goes like this: Orphan (Sally Ford) is sent to work as a hired girl on a farm for the summer. There she meets a cute boy (David Nash). They end up running away and joining up with a circus for a while. Then the mother Sally’s never known shows up and adopts her. This would be an extremely unsurprising children’s book, right? Only it’s not.

In search of recommendations again

I’m about to go on vacation, and I’m not sure how much reading time I’m going to have, but there will be a couple of pretty long plane trips in there, so…anyone want to suggest things for me to put on my kindle?

ETA: Thanks for all the suggestions! See you in a little over a week!

Sylvia Contest Results

Okay, first of all: thanks to everyone who participated. There were not many of you, which obviously makes you all very special :) Special thanks to Skye for polling extra people, to the Cool Ballot Club (Tasha, Ted, Nell, HJ, Skye, and Lauren D., I think) for using the original coupon to submit their votes, and to Dylan for breaking a couple of ties at the very end.

Scoring the contest required putting together a list with the most popular artist for each numbered place. That looked like this:

Winner Ballot

Gilbert

Gilbert

Herter

Stephens

Christy

Christy

Blenner

Hutt

Hutt

Champney

Elliott

Elliott

As you can see, several artists ended up in multiple places, meaning one could get no more than eight places correct. 

Last call for Sylvia Contest entries, guys

Sorry to keep bugging everyone, but:

Deadline tonight, 12am EDT, which is about four and a half hours from now.

You don’t even have to be interested–I’m interested enough for lots of people. Just vote!