Of Swords and Parasols

WWII-set mystery series about Maggie Hope, a British-born mathematician raised in the US after the deaths of her parents by her lesbian, university professor aunt who decides to stay in England to attempt to aid in the war effort after returning to settle the family estate's affairs. Though initially passed over for important jobs because of her gender, she eventually becomes Winston Churchill's secretary through the intercession of a (gay Jewish playboy) friend, and from there gains the attention of the head of MI-5.

I suspect Susan Elia MacNeal is familiar with certain subsets of fandom.

The books are incredibly well researched, with liberties being taken deliberately instead of from ignorance, and the first book in particular is very good in regards to the positions most women were allowed to hold and how people were chosen for positions, and some scenes when Maggie is churchill's secretary are taken directly (with permission) from the experiences of two of Churchill's secretaries, Elizabeth Layton Nel and Marian Holmes. And while I'm not a mathematician or well-versed in codebreaking 9or creating) those aspects seem to be pretty spot on, too.

I like the first book, with the focus on the wartime mindset and society among the people on the fringes of the war effort, the best, but like the other two, which are a bit more into the realm of "glamorous" spy capers, as well. The end of book two introduces the potential of soap opera-like drama, though the parts with the potential to annoy don't really come into play until near the end of book three.

( spoilers )The books, in order, are:

Mr. Churchill's Secretary
Princess Elizabeth's Spy
His Majesty's Hope

What are you currently reading
Legend of the White-Haired Demoness by Liang Yusheng, ch 7-8: Mostly a couple of fun side adventures in these chapters, but nothing I feel the need to offer much comment on, aside from appreciation for "no, coming back with an apology and a title 20 years later will not make me swoon in your arms, go away" with a couple supporting characters.



What did you recently finish reading?

Call the Widwife; Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth. The last of Worth's 3 memoirs about her time as a midwife (though there's another memoir about when she was a nurse working for the elderly) focuses on women in less conventional situations, and women on the receiving end of sexual abuse and who were victimized by the legal system. The writing style is as straight-forward and easy to read as the other books, but parts are even bleaker than in In the Shadows of the Workhouse, and the sections where she discusses surgical rape (a practice thankfully done away with by Worth's time, but recent enough for her to hear accounts of it) and backalley abortions were particularly harrowing, though it also has its fare share of lighter moments and anecdotes. Overall, I think this may be the tightest of the books and the one where Worth seems most willing to comment of the culture of the times and how things have and haven't changed, but it's certainly not the lightest read of the bunch.

The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long. YA fantasy loosely based on Tam Lin and Thomas Rhymer which also incorporates some bits of fae mythology that doesn't usually make it into the YA books (not sure when the last time was that I read a YA in which the heroine was in danger of having her heart literally eaten). When she was a child, Jenny was almost stolen by a creature made of plants, but her older brother, Tom, was taken instead when he intervened, and Jenny was later dimissed as delusional when she tried to tell people what happened to him. Years later, she returns to the spot where Tom disappeared before leaving for university, and hears him in the woods. Being Our Heroine, she naturally dives right in and soon learns that Tom is the queen's slave, and intended tithe, and sets off to rescue him, having a series of adventures and learning why the plant creature wanted her in the first place. Towards the middle, the book almost branches off and becomes about Jenny's Obligatory Mysterious Cute Fae Boy Love Interest, but remembers that it's Jenny's story before too long. I enjoyed it a lot.

Deep Down by Deborah Coates. Sequel to Wide Open, about a veteran who sees ghosts thanks to being dead for 7 minutes who returns home to solve her sister's murder. In this sequel, Hallie chats with Death, gains an undead dog for a sidekick, and hunts for a rogue grim reaper. I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first-but was happy that the book's blurb, which made it sound like the book would be about Hallie's love interest, boys, was misleading-as it shies away from Hallie's PTSD and the mystery plot is less directly related to her, but I still enjoyed it, even though I can't quite figure out if the series would be considered urban fantasy, or a mystery series with supernatural elements.


What do you think you'll read next?

Most likely Adaptation by Malinda Lo or Lost in Translation by Margaret Ball, since the library wants them back.

What are you currently reading
Legend of the White-Haired Demoness by Liang Yusheng. I actually read very little of this. Less than a chapter, actually. I feel sad about it.

Tales of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong. Short stories and a couple of novellas set at various times and about various characters in the Women of the Otherworld series. About 1/3 of the book of devoted to the terribly romantic backstory about how Clay decided he'd rather his girlfriend be dead than someone he couldn't have, and so decided to try to turn her into a werewolf even though there were literally no female werewoves because olny a few women over a period of centuries survived transitioning into a werewolf. Unsurprisingly, I skipped that once I realized what it was. Other than that, though, i've been enjoying it a lot, and am almost finished. (Pretty much, I enjoy the stories about the characters I enjoyed in their own books, and didn't care about the werewolf short stories in it. So about my feelings for the rest of the series.)


What did you recently finish reading?

Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth. originally published as Shadows of the Workhouse but repackaged to go with the TV show. Unlike Worth's first memoir, this focuses very little on Worth's personal experiences and instead focuses on several older people she knew while working as a midwife: Frank, Peggy and Jane, who grew up in a workhouse, Sister Monica Joan, and elderly nun who may or may not be somewhat senile, and was born an aristocrat, and Joseph Collett, a former soldier. Almost everything in here was adapted in the last few episodes of the first season (the Sister Monica Joan plot in the series 1 finale is probably the most direct adaptation of events recorded in Worth's memoirs to the show) but unlike the show, Worth focuses primarily on their life stories, based on what they told her and what others related to her, though I'm sure she took more creative license than usual in some parts. (Worth has changed the name of both the church she worked out of and the names of all the people she writes about, and altering details enough so that while people can presumably still recognize themselves and people in events they were around for, their identities wouldn't be obvious to others.) For better or worse, it lacks a lot of the nostalgia of Call the Midwife and Worth has a bleaker worldview in this book, though that's pretty natural given the subject matter. it's very good and very interesting, but also (to no one's surprise) thoroughly depressing in various areas.

I read a lot of the Mistresses book, but then got to the Eva Braun entry where the writer decided to compare Elizabeth Tudor and Hitler. The comparison was in the context of "married to their countries," but nope, you don't compare to Hitler unless there actual attempted genocide involved. Also, it helped click for me what had been bugging me but that I couldn't put my finger on, which was that, while the author liked her subject matter, and didn't seem to like women she interpreted as ambitious and/or seeking personal power.

What do you think you'll read next?

Hopefully more of Legend of the White-Haired Demoness, and I have a couple memiors and YA from the library, along with the latest Miss Fisher book.

I actually wrote this up a couple months ago, then forgot I hadn't posted it yet once I started doing the weekly reading meme.

This is the autobiography of the woman whose life Arthur Golden appropriated for Memoirs of A Geisha, and who received death threats after he revealed her as a source.

I haven't read Memoirs of A Geisha and have no intention to. I watched the movie when it was new-ish, and before I really started to be aware of cultural appropriation. At the time, I thought it was a beautiful movie with fine performers, but a bit hinky and definitely reaking of "exotic Eastern customs are so exotic and mysterious." I rewatched it recently because people I was with wanted to, and still thought it was a beautiful movie with fine performers, but alternated between wanting to bang a head against something and wanting to lecture people.

Iwasaki doesn't mention or directly refer to either Golden or Geisha even once in the book (the closest she gets is a few comments about how many misconceptions about geisha and the conflation of geisha with other kinds of female performers and entertainment workers exist) but I think that, when reading the book, it's important to remember that it exists in part as a reaction to how Iwasaki felt her life and the women in it were twisted and portrayed by Golden. (It's notable, I think, that Iwasaki has many complicated yet generally close and positive relationships with other women throughout her life, and many show up as abusers and rivals in Geisha.)

Iwasaki was born in the 50s and adopted as the daughter-and eventual heir- of an ochiyo-geisha house-at the age of five, and worked as a maiko (junior geisha) and geiko (Kyoto geisha) in the 60s and 70s. As the daughter and eventual heir of the house, Iwasaki had a number of privileges that other geisha did not both growing up and as a professional. While she seems aware that she had these privileges, she doesn't seem particularly interested in how they might have made her experiences different from those of others, or how the experiences of geisha of her time may be different from those of even a generation before. This didn't particularly bother me, as she's interested in telling her personal story, not in making herself the representative and voice of all geisha, but it might bug some. (Actually, looking at Amazon reviews, it bugs a lot of people. Most of whom think she should be more humble or something, and have a bit of a "I'm an American who has read what white people have published about geisha, so obviously I know better than this actual geisha.")

Iwasaki spends a lot of time on the training, customs, rules and relationships for and between geisha (And the kimonos!), and if you have an interest in those (hint: I DO) I highly recommend the book. There are a lot of anecdotes and stories, both good and bad, though the ones with England's royal family might be the best. She flirted with Prince Philip because Elizabeth II wouldn't eat the fodd prepared specifically for her and based on what they'd been told were her tastes, and Prince Charles ruined one of her fans by grabbing and signing it without her permission, and she had to get another one for the rest of her engagements that evening. (And was later surprised when a friend asked for it as a keepsake, but it had already been destroyed.)

She also spends a lot of time explaining how little the average geisha knew about money (at the time, Iwasaki had no concept of money. While the women who ran the houses were apparently often great financiers and in control of their own money, the individual women had little control over money, though I imagine those not in Iwasaki's position had at least a somewhat better idea of what their training, costumes and accessories cost) or being self-sufficient (at one point, she decides to try living on her own in an apartment while still working and doesn't know to move rice from the delivery bag to the container, to plug in a vacuum cleaner, to taste her food before serving it to others, etc), and how (at the time) geisha in training were not educated past junior high. Iwasaki was one of the most famous and popular geiko at the time, and when she decided to retire at the age of 29, she did it in a way that she hoped would shock the system into reform. Sadly, she doesn't really follow up on that, or how the people in her life reacted to it, though she does mention that she later heard that 70 geiko retired shortly after she did.

I found the book very interesting and easy to read. Iwasaki didn't go as deeply into some things as I'd hoped, but spent more time than I expected on others. Does anyone know of any other books about geisha NOT by white people?

What are you currently reading

No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong. A "Women of the Otherworld" book focusing of Jaime, the fake celebrity spiritualist and real-life (in the books) necromancer, as she and other fake spiritualists get together to film a TV special in a haunted house that may has acctually been the site of grisly stuff in the past. I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

What did you recently finish reading?
Did not finish:

The Landlord's Black-eyed Daughter by Mary Ellen Dennis. THIS MAKES ME SAD. VERY VERY SAD. It wasn't even bad, really, just so terribly terribly modern in sensibilities. There was the fairly standard "I want you to think I'm being as historically accurate as possible, but will have my heroine be utterly atypical and hot by modern standards of beauty," but also when people were discussing her books and the characters (and the hero and heroine were thinking about the characters), it felt like modern people looking at an 18th century text.

Did finish:

Forbidden by Kelley Armstrong. A werewolf book that I actually liked and have no major complaints about. (And a male werewolf in the series besides Jeremy who I like, though I initially though it was going to be about said werewolf, and not Elena, and considered not reading it because I'm like that.) It's a "Stranded in a small town where weird things are going on" plot, but a pretty decent one.

The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan. Prequel novella to Milan's current series, the heroine is a disgraced governess seeking either justice or revenge against (she's not overly picky about which it is) a nobleman who raped and impregnated her. Hero is said lord's fix-it man whose job it is to get rid of her. The plot has a lot of potential and I liked the heroine, but...well, the hero went to work fixing the problems of a man he knew going in was a reprehensible human being with his eyes wide open, yet somehow spends a lot of the story having deluded himself into not coming to the obvious conclusion because his boss denied the rape possibility. He gets better towards the end once the truth is out, but he made it a bit meh. The only other of Milan's books that I've read is Unveiled, which I did enjoy a lot, despite also having issues with the hero early on. (Though not nearly like this one.)

What do you think you'll read next?

Library books, which are mostly the Armstrong books I haven't read yet and romance novels, and hopefully some manga.

What are you currently reading

I'm reading the manhwa The Moment When the Fox Became thea Wolf, in which Eun Song, a poor, meek "wallflower" girl swaps bodies with Yoo Ha, a rich, violent delinquent, when both hide in a wardrobe for different reasons. It's very entertaining but sometimes a bit much. A lot of it so far has been people's reactions to the two suddenly behaving conventionally for their opposite gender, and the two learning about each others problems and trying to fix them in ways the person who actually belongs in the body wouldn't. Yoo Ha's family issues would put a lot of soap operas to shame and thanks to the gender confusion and bodyswapping, you almost need a pie chart to keep track of who likes who in what body (Not to mention "wait, under the circumstances, does this count as slash and/or incest or not?") if you stop to think about it, but is easy to follow when you're actually reading. The end of the 5th volume has a twist that could go a lot of ways, and I have no idea which way it'll go.

And I'm reading Dime Store Magic, the first Paige Winterbourne-centric book in the Kelley Armstrong series. I'm fairly spoiled for the big parts, as both Industrial Magic and Haunted are direct sequels, but itisn't affecting my enjoyment. Though, I have to say, I liked Savannah's father in Haunted, but if he's approving of the things being done to Paige in his name here, I'll have to change that, and Lucas is certainly different here than in the other books, once paige and Savannah have unbent him a fair bit.

What did you recently finish reading?

I finished reading Kelley Armstrong's Haunted, which I enjoyed a lot, even though it went a bit close to slasher territory for my taste at one point. (Err...by "slasher," I am referring to the gory horror subgenre that I don't find tense or scary, just icky, not shipping. In case there was any confusion.) I also read her Broken, which I enjoyed more than the oprevious Elena/werewolf material that I read, but still less than the others. The central romance there is less creepy, but I still think he's borderline abusive (definitely obsessive and controlling) and while I'm neutral about how graphic consentual sex scenes come in my fiction, I'm a bit bitter in that, of the canon pairings in this series, the only one that I don't like it the one that gets the least "fade to black." It's also still very "one special girl in all the world...and there are no other girls in her world," but at least Elena acquired a few female friends who can at least pop inn from time to time.

And then I also read Catherynne M. Valente's Six-Gun Snow White, whivh reimagines "Snow White" as a western in which Snow is the daughter of a Crow woman and a white land baron. The book is very interesting and Valente does a very good job with the oral western narrator approach to the prose, and weaves in other fairy tales very interestingly. That said, while I liked it a lot, something about it felt a bit off to me ,and I can't quite pin down what. I think it's partly that I think Valente may have been a bit more concerned with "not your average Snow White" than with "her" Snow White (if that makes sense), and the stepmother wasn't given as much focus as I expected. I think Valente conveyed her motives and the "abuse begets abuse" element of her background, but the last few versions of "Snow White" that I've encountered have spent more time developing and delving into the stepmother than this did, so I guess I'm expecting a lot more of that now.

What do you think you'll read next?

The rest of the Hwang Mi Ri manhwa, and whatever is due back at the library next.

For the curious, in March I read 6 prose books and 35 graphic novels.

The October Daye series is an urban fantasy series about a half-fae (half-fae are called changelings in this series which I'm still adjusting to, as that isn't what a mythological changeling is, but moving on) knight, October "Toby" Daye. It's not quite like any other urban fantasy series I've read: there's the obligatory triangle with the sexy "others," but they're no more "other" than Toby herself (perhaps less so, actually) and Toby is generally too busy trying not to die to worry about her love life, and six books in, it's playing out in a very non-triangley way (bonus points for the fact that I genuinely like one a lot and don't mind the other, despite finding him considerably less interesting than most other characters in the series), and the supernatural world/real world is blended together in a more interesting (and "convincingly"-as much as the world can be used for an urban fantasy series) way than most series, with the majority of the action taking place on the fae side of things. It's also very much worth noting that the fae aren't all white.

But there are two main things that set it apart for me.

The first is that this is one of the few series that makes me genuinely fear for the main character's survival. I mean, it's written in first person past tense and I read five of the books knowing that there was at least one more after it, but still worrying about Toby's chances of survival. Part of it is that Toby has something of a death wish (and not one that isn't noticed or is treated lightly, but one that's consistently met with "OMG Toby STOP ALMOST DYING AND MAKING US HAVE TO PUT YOU BACK TOGETHER. No, we aren't exaggerating or just tired of you doing dangerous things, STOP TRYING TO DIE ON US!", but also because the very first thing that happens to Toby in the series is that an enemy turns her into a fish and leaves her to die on dry land, and she's only saved by a tourist tossing her into a koi pond. Where she proceeded to stay for 14 years, coming back to learn that her life is gone and her fiance and now-teenaged daughter (understandably) think she ran out on them and wants them to welcome her back. I mean, when the writer kicks things off by doing that to the main character, it can be safely assumed that the writer can and will do anything short of permanent death to the character. (Some might remember McGuire's post that was circling around a while back about a reader asking when Toby-and her other female leads-was going to get raped, because it was unrealistic for them to not get raped, and how McGuire said she never was going to have her female characters get raped, and why. Well, McGuire is doing a good job in these books of showing how very many ways you can traumatize for female characters and make them afraid without ever even hinting at sexual assault, and I admit to loving every minute of it despite it being terrible for my nerves.)

Another part of that is that the plots of the book tend to be much more intimately connected to Toby and the people she cares about than I remember most UF plots being back when I read more about it. Instead of Toby being pulled into cases that end up being Big Things, the case tend to start by being directly connected to Toby and her loved ones, and even "the world might end!" tends to be overshadowed by Toby's personal connection to whatever's going on. Even Toby's "epic destiny" type plot that all urban fantasy heroines get isn't so much about the epic destiny, but about the mystery of Toby's mother (who I find utterly fascinating despite the fact that she's had exactly one scene in six books and otherwise is mentioned by others or remembered by Toby) and the impact it has on the people around her.

The other thing is that Toby has TONS of important, emotionally fraught relationships with other women, many of whom, in other series, would be put forth as antagonists or rivals. (There's actually a plotline where someone is targeting people who would normally be assumed to be Toby's enemies in an attempt to frame her, but they aren't and so things don't go as planned.) Instead, Toby is consistently a mixture of frenemy, BFF and ally to most of the women she encounters, and these relationships are given as much, if not more, attention (depending on the book and circumstance) as her relationships with men. My favorite of these is with The Luidaeg, an ancient sea witch with whom Toby has a very Dread Pirate Roberts/Wesley type of relationship, and I freely admit that that was my OTP of the series until something happened (something good, storywise!) that just made that too terribly awkward. (Then I switch to what appears to be the endgame, and I'm ok with that.) I'm also extremely fond of her relationship with May, who can't really be easily explained without reading the books, and of course Toby's mother, Amandine, a mysterious but very important figure who apparently went mad while Toby was a fish, missing and presumed dead, and has since almost becomes a legendary figure, only briefly spotted wandering around the Summerlands. Out of probably a dozen or so important female characters, there are only 3 who are straightup antagonists to Toby, and only one of whom can simply be labeled "the bad guy" (and I'm actually just assuming this character will end up being important based on her role in the sixth book).

Toby also has a couple of adorable teenaged fae boy sidekicks, and possibly acquired a female changeling sidekick in the latest book. (We'll see. I can hope.) There are lots of politics that I, at least, find interesting, and I'm not sure there's an important character who I actually dislike except for a couple of the villains (both of whom may never be seen again at this point), and I find the mythology very interesting. The naming system is a bit odd-women are often gicen nature and date-related names (October, Lily, May, Luna, January, Acacia, April, etc.) and men's names often seem to be lifted from romance novels (Sylvester, Tybalt, Etienne, Quentin, Raj, Connor, etc.) but I got used to it after a couple books, and there's an explanation-of-sorts given at one point. The series seems to be a bit hit and miss-some people seem to dislike the series for some of the reasons I'm drawn to it-but I'll definitely be reading more.

The books, in order, are:

Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Light
Late Eclipses
One Salt Sea
Ashes of Honor

I know a number of people are going to tell me to red McGuire's zombie apocalypse books written as Mira Grant, and I will but has anyone read her Incrypid books? (Or at least the first. I'm not sure the second is out yet.)

With Fate Conspire by Marie Brennan: The final book in the Onyx Court series, I think I liked it more as a conclusion to the series than as a book in and of itself. Lune's absence for a lot of the book affected my interest, especially since so much of the Fae aspect was focused on Dead Rick, who I was dinisterested in until his plot converged with Eliza's. I liked Eliza's plot a lot, but would have liked it more as its own story than as part of a larger one, depsite her role in the climax. But a good conclusion to a good series, if not my favorite book in the series.

The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths Vol 1 by Brian Froud, Brian Holguin, Alex Sheikman and Lizzy John: Not the AmeriManga that was published by Tokyopop, but the first of a GN trilogy being published by Archaia. The trilogy is, as the title indicates, about the early history of the Dark Crystal world, alternating between short illustrated stories mostly about Aughra and her son and focusing on the creation of the world and it's early years (and probably eventually ending with the light beings separating into the Skeksis and Mystics) and 2 page prose stories that serve as myths and fables. I preferred the prose parts to the main plot, but found it to be pretty enjoyable in general, and will read the other two if the library gets them in.

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm: An interesting biography of Vera Atkins, focusing largely on her efforts to learn the fates of SOE agents who went missing and filling in the chunks of Atkins's life that little is known about. That said, Helm sometimes seems more interested in talking about her investigations than about Atkins herself, and was a bit fixated at times in finding proof of a Doomed Love Affair in Atkins's life. I mean, I'm sure someone tol her that'd be a good hook, but I doubt anyone picking up a book about Vera Atkins is overly interested in her love life when there are missing spies, government coverups, secret investigations and shoddy management during wartime to read about instead. Recommended for anyone with an interest in the SOE, Vera Atkins, ladyspies, and wartime secrets, but if you're like me, there might be some foottapping going on at times, too.

Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France by Rita Kramer: Centered around four women executed in a concentration camp but only partly about them, Flames in the Field is about SOE agents who went missing, problems with how operations were run and agents mislead, and surviving agents and allies with a bone to pick. Which actually sounds rather negative, it's more sadly critical. It's meticulously researched, written when Kramer could still have access to surviving agents and correspond extensively with Vera Atkins, and very good and fascinating (aside for a few times when Kramer was talking about female spies and agents but seemed more interested in some of the men in their lives). It's also thoroughly depressing in many ways, and often aggravating when discussing home office operations, and so I had to read it in bits and pieces over a couple months,

Illuminated by Erica Orloff: YA about a young woman named Calliope, the niece of an historian, helping her uncle investigate a palimpsest, leading them to work with an agorophobic historian and his son, August. Lots of basic yet enthusiastic medievalistic geekery tuned to 14 year old girls. It's mostly notable for centering the plot around the story of Heloise and Abelard, which isn't the "epic forbidden love" that YA tends to go for. Probably the castration bit.

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: Autobiography in graphic novel form, beginning with the author's childhood in Iran just before the revolution, and ending with the dissolution of her marriage in the mid-90s. Easy to read and very interesting, though sometimes uncomfortable. When I read Reading Lolita in Tehran, I found it interesting but sometimes thought Nafisi was writing more to the expectations of the audience than anything else, but I didn't feel the same here.

I'd initially given this a pass because I'd heard that it was largely a "tell all" filled with sex scandals, but was later recced it on the basis of the focus of image and Hollywood's sexual politics.

It's pretty much both. Shepherd spends a lot of time of her love life, presumably because she knows it's what most people are getting this type of book for. Some parts of that are interesting, other parts seem to be there because she knows people want to know if this rumor or that rumor are true, others seem to be there specifically as a commentary on Hollywood's sexual culture. I admit, I skimmed some of the parts about her various lovers u less there was something interesting going on with it. (Judging by Amazon reviews, a number of people seem to have read it just to have an excuse to indulge in slutshaming. Moving on.)

There's definitely a narcissistic bent to it, though I suspect a fair share of that has to do with a lot of the book addressing her reputation for being "difficult." I'm sure she is difficult in many ways (if the majority of people who work with you and have commented about the experience say something about your personality, there's probably some basis for it) but (based not only on the book, but also other things I've read about her over the years) I get the feeling that a lot of that reputation comes form a propensity to speak her mind (rather like how Kristen Stewart is often criticized for what amounts to not performing the way people think a star should in interviews and public appearances, and instead just being her normal self and not wanting to share her private life) and to argue in favor of things others will let slide.

While I have no doubts that her portrayal of various professional dynamics and events is definitely skewed in her favor, I tend to believe that the actual details (wanting to be able to refer to female genitalia and body cycles on screen, objecting to blackface and "female genitalia=extreme circumcision" as jokes, not wanting her character to marry a man she's known for 5 minutes or to throw a tantrum and be horrible to everyone over a "dull" date, etc.) are probably accurate. When I rewatched the first few seasons of Moonlighting a while back, I could actually see the extreme shift in focus and sympathies away from Maddie, whose POV by the third season only really got to show up when she had to learn to be nicer and more understanding and appreciate people more. (Mostly appreciate ever-so-poor, unappreciated David, of course, who never had to learn not to be chauvinistic or that it was OK that she didn't always share his values and POV.) It also made me wish I'd seen more than a handful of episodes of Cybill. (I'd also be interested in reading Christine Baranski's version of events. The impression I get is that they were a pair of talented comediennes, both with diva tendencies, working in an environment that encouraged them to view each other as rivals and with multiple third parties trying to push them into those roles.)

I would have happily traded a lot of the stories about her various lovers for more information about her personal politics and activism, but appreciated her views on Hollywood and the media's beauty standards and expectations, and attitudes towards women in general, but particularly actresses largely viewed as a pretty face. For a closing note on that, I also find it very interesting that while Shepherd makes a number of references to what people have said about her looks-both to her and about her-she never actually refers to herself directly as attractive or calls herself beautiful. (Of course, by the time she wrote this she was probably a few decades past accepting that if she had it she should use if if it was what people were looking for anyway. There's both bitterness there and acknowledgement that her looks were pretty useful in her career.)

A memoir by Nancy Astor's lady's maid, who served her for 35 years. Harrison spends little time discussing Astor's politics (as she points out, she was privy to Astor's personal life, not her professional one, and what she knew of Astor's political life was heard second hand) and instead focuses on the household and family dynamics. The review I read that first alerted me to this book's existence (can't remember where I read it now) emphasized the amount of travelling Harrison did with Astor, but despite a desire to travel being one of the reasons Harrison strove to become a lady's maid (because the only servants that always travelled with their employers were personal maids and valets) it's only mentioned early on as Harrison's motivation and has a single late chapter devoted to a discussion of travels. This doesn't make the book any less interesting or enjoyable, but I feel I should mention it in case anyone else stumbles across it.

Harrison speaks very fondly and sometimes defensively of Astor even when criticizing her or discussing her more negative traits. While no doubt influenced by nostalgia (the memoir was published around 10 years after Astor's death) the near-symbiotic relationship she portrays is very interesting and entertaining, and Harrison incorporates stories other servants told her about the Astors from before she joined the household. While Margaret Powell's memoirs (which I have not read yet) are, I believe, considered the "official" inspiration for Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey, I suspect this memoir influenced Downton, Gosford Park and the newer incarnation of UpDown, as there were various times reading it that I suspected a scenes or plotthread from those shows grew from something in this book.

Harrison's prose is rather rough, but very readable, and the book overall is very interesting.