My personal baggage moment with The Duke and I

Look how much I’m posting about The Duke and I!! I want to say right off that even though I’m kicking its tires a bit, I really liked it, engaged with it, and richly looked forward to reading it every night at bedtime, which is my sole measure of a book’s worth these days.

Here’s the thing with it - the book started out feeling like total confection—in a good way. Light, fun, bright, slightly weightless. Like cotton candy. Nom nom nom.

But then it tossed up an issue that totally shocked me.

One background thing about me: I don’t want kids and never have. Even as a young girl, I found baby dolls to be a crashing bore. As far as I was concerned, Barbies—and frankly, even troll dolls—were a whole lot more fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love being an aunt, and actually, I have the cutest, smartest, funnest nieces and nephew ever. But you know, here at home, I’m good with just cats.

SPOILER***
So I'll get to the point--here’s a conflict that arises between the newlyweds:

You told me you couldn’t have children,” she interrupted, her eyes flashing with anger. “There’s a very big difference.”

“Not,” Simon said coldly, “to me. I can’t have children. My soul won’t allow it.”

And later:

Daphne had aroused him in his sleep, taken advantage of him while he was still slightly intoxicated, and held him to her while he poured his seed into her.

His eyes widened and fixed on hers. “How could you?” he whispered.

[later in that scene]…But she had just curled up into a little ball, her knees tucked against her chest, obviously determined not to lose a single drop of him.

And later:

She wasn’t ashamed of her actions. She supposed she should be, but she wasn’t. She hadn’t planned it. She hadn’t looked at him while he was sleeping and thought—he’s probably still drunk. I can make love to him and capture his seed and he’ll never know.

It hadn’t happened that way.

Daphne wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but one moment she was above him and the next she’d realized that he wasn’t going to withdraw in time, and she’d made certain he couldn’t…

Or maybe—She closed her eyes. Tight. Maybe it had happened the other way. Maybe she had taken advantage of more than the moment, maybe she had taken advantage of him.

She just didn’t know. It had all melted together.

So, Simon moves out to another estate and shuns her for months, she turns out not to be pregnant, but then they get back together and the issue is sort of transmuted into something different and resolved in that way.

But I was really hung up on Daphne's attempting to force parenthood on Simon - when she went into the marriage accepting there would be no children. I mean, in Regency England obviously women were forced into parenthood all the time. And I’m not saying this is on par with forced seduction or anything.

I think the point is, I had this sort of outrage on behalf of the hero, and I wanted the heroine punished way more than she was, and I wanted her to feel regret and repentance for the act way more than she did.

I am dimly aware that in the world of the book and the time, and all the sort of rules of this genre, Daphne probably paid sufficiently for these actions. But you know, it was my personal baggage moment.

Have you ever brought personal baggage to a book?

Annnouncement, question and mystery

Midling-to-late-adapter of blogroll

I've converted my blog list at left to blogroll, which shows the titles of posts on the most recent posted-to blogs.  It has occurred to me that blogroll rewards catchy post titles and frequent updates, whereas my old list rewarded alphabetical earliness and fun blog names.  

After a feverish night of soul searching, I decided catchy post titles and frequent updates have more merit. Sorry, cleverly named, alpabetically early blogs. Now I just have to update my TBR list. I can't believe how old it is. 

Twitter: Please advise

I am also thinking about twitter. But will it suck me in?  Will I waste more time? It seems to be popping up everywhere, but once people are in, they don't talk about it, they just do it. Is there a central forum where everyone twitters together and you get constant twitters at you? And then, if you ignore them, are you an ass? Sometimes I think I need to be less connected, rather than more. But I suspect there are secret merits to it. Please advise

The mystery of The Duke & I

Right now I'm reading The Duke and I by Julia Quinn, lent to me by lovely Sarai. it's a fun book that I look forward to reading at night, which has been my book barometer lately. The plot is cute: Simon the somewhat reluctant duke never wants to get married and is tired of society mothers and daughters dogging him at every party.  He makes friends with Daphne Bridgerton, who is a marriagable girl weary of the whole suitor scene, so they pretend to be engaged to get everybody off their backs. 

So here is the thing: every once in a while, I read a book that sort of seizes my imagination, and my subconcious can't stop churning over it, so after I read it at night, I go to sleep and have dreams about the plot, and generally a non-restful, low quality of sleep.  And if it gets bad enough, I have to relegate the book to day reading only.  

Historically, this has happened with books that are horribly dark and/or exciting, or shockingly smutty. But for some reason, it's happening with this book, which is a frothy and light confection. I mean, there isn't even a villain here.  And I know what will happen. SPOILER ALERT for the 2% of people who have read this far and haven't guessed - Daphne and Simon will fall in love. 

Not that I'm not enjoying it, it's just that now there's this mysterious element of it.