Feet of Clay

Happy Birthday to us, and cheers! to all our friends here on the blog: Eight Ladies Writing celebrated its fourth birthday yesterday, 2 September. Where did the time go?

I thought about selecting my favorite posts of the last four years, but it was just too hard to choose. If you have the time, and you are so inclined, check out our archive. We have a bank of almost 1,400 posts for you to browse and enjoy.

Instead, I decided to hold a traditional birthday celebration today, with champagne, cake, candles, ice cream, and gifts. That is, I picked my favorite fictional moments featuring each of those things 😉 .

If you’d like to join the party by suggesting other festive scenes or books, I’d love that!

Here are my choices:

Champagne
Without question, my favorite champagne-related story is Lord Lovedon’s Duel, a funny, feel-good short story by Loretta Chase. The trouble starts at the heroine’s sister’s wedding, where an excess of champagne leads the eponymous hero to amuse his drunken friends by making cruel and untrue suggestions about the royal groom’s reasons for marrying a wealthy commoner. Unfortunately he is overheard by the bride and her sister, Chloe, the heroine. Chloe is incensed on her sister’s behalf. She’s also more than a little tipsy, so she confronts Lord Lovedon in front of his idiot friends, slaps his face with her glove, dashes a glass of champagne in his face, and challenges him to a duel. Lovedon’s response is as kind and funny as his original remarks were hurtful. There’s a glorious epistolary exchange, culminating in pistols at dusk in Battersea. This story is a clever, perfectly formed hit of happy. I wish I could write something half as good. I love everything about it.

Cake
There’s a spectacular cake-fest Continue reading →

Terry Pratchett’s coat of arms, granted by Letters Patent of Garter and Clarenceux King of Arms dated 28 April 2010. The motto means ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’

Yesterday Michaeline wrote about the death of Sir Terry Pratchett. Like Micki, I’ve been a fan of his books for a very long time (more than thirty years), and I wasn’t ready to change the subject. We took time yesterday to say goodbye to the man, so today I’d like to celebrate his legacy and try to pinpoint why I’ll be reading his books until it’s my turn to type The End.

I saw the sad news last Thursday night. I was at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, stretching my legs during the interval of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Kurt Weill’s political and satirical opera with libretto by Bertolt Brecht. I was playing with my phone because the alternative was to ruminate on the piece’s dispiriting worldview about the ugliness of human nature when let loose in an unbridled capitalist society. Even as I read Sir Terry’s brilliant three-tweet farewell and wiped my eyes, I gave thanks for the seventy-something wonderful books he left us and most of all for the renewed sense of optimism about our stupid, screwed-up world that I feel every time I read one.

In the early days, I enjoyed the intelligence and humor of the Discworld books, but Continue reading →