Georgette Heyer Fans discussion

For the first read, a few members have decided on The Black Moth, Heyer's first.

This is a great first pick because this book is also available for free online. You can download it in one of many formats here.

If your post includes any type of spoiler, please state as such at the beginning of your post.

Happy reading!

Was going to read The Devil's Cub this month but will read this one now instead! Have a couple of other books to finish up first but will definitely join in as soon as I can :-).

TBM will be new to me...haven't read it before.

I haven't read this one yet, but I will try to quickly finish my current reading list and pick this up.

Interesting choice. Sad in some ways to think of it being available free electronically when it is still published in my country.

Laura, is that Myrna Loy in your picture?!

Yes, it's Myrna and William Powell's nose at the edge of the picture.

Love it! It makes me want to go find a copy of the Thin Man and pop some popcorn asap!

I must confess I haven't read much Heyer so I'm excited to get started. My mom is a HUGE Heyer fan and so I grew up hearing about how amazing she is and how amazing her books are! I'm all set to read The Black Moth now!

Camille wrote: "I must confess I haven't read much Heyer so I'm excited to get started. My mom is a HUGE Heyer fan and so I grew up hearing about how amazing she is and how amazing her books are! I'm all set to ..."

What a coincidence, My mom loves Heyer too and it was her who got me hooked onto Heyer novels. Im going to reread Black Moth.

Mothers are the best, aren't they? :) We may think they're silly when we're young, but boy as I grew up did I realize how brilliant my mom is!

Well, of course they're brilliant; they raised us, didn't they?!?

Camille wrote: "Mothers are the best, aren't they? :) We may think they're silly when we're young, but boy as I grew up did I realize how brilliant my mom is!"

That's why i always ask my mom for advice on anything and everything and never regret it, :) how can i when Heyer is really too good to miss!

Well, I just finished this this morning and loved it! It's the sort of fun romp that Heyer does so well. I'm so glad that it was suggested for the group read :-).

Anyone else finished or in mid-read?

I am about to reread this.

Jemidar, what was your favorite part or paragraph or line? I love to compare!

I think my favourite part was when Jack's brother Richard thought his wife wanted to run off with Lovelace and Lady Lavinia thought he was having an affair with Mrs Fanshawe. That pair were absolutely hopeless...lol.

But I think my most fav line has to be the one where after the duel between Andover and Jack over Diana, and everyone has burst in on them, and Richard has made his startling admission, Andover calmly says "Andrew, tell them to lay covers for five in the dining room." Very droll :-D.

I love that line, too, and I think those "startling" lines are what make her books so real and keep them from turning into annoying melodrama. Those unexpected bursts of humor keep everyone on track -- hey! I just thought that that was what Shakespeare did, too. He always threw in comic relief in his odd characters, even in the dramas, and so they are believable. Great minds do think alike!

Yes, I do love Heyer's humour and sense of fun. I think it's what sets her books apart from all the others.

Jemidar wrote: "Well, I just finished this this morning and loved it! It's the sort of fun romp that Heyer does so well. I'm so glad that it was suggested for the group read :-).

Anyone else finished or in mid-..."

I have only just started. I can't remember reading this before but it was on my shelves so I presumably must have done. I've only got to p40 though.

I have already read this book although I'm planning to reread it.

*****SPOILERS*****

I am enjoying it but it won't be one of her favourites of mine. It is interesting to see how her craft developed. As Jemidar said it is very much a romp rather than a book of manners.

It rings a faint bell that she used Andover as a model for Avon and reworked him for her ?next book? "These Old Shades". She clearly enjoys him as the baddie and he isn't one of those 2 dimensional bad guys who is thrown in to make the plot work.

I'm on p134 and there is no sign of any romance yet (which probably shows that I've been reading to many recently written romances recently) I guess that Diana is going to be Jack's love interest but she has had very little stage time so far. Andover really is stealing the show!

I have completed the read. It is a 3 star for me. I did like how neatly the plot was brought together at the end- an excellent denouement with no loose ends. Very typical of Heyer. In temrs of weaknesses- there was quite a large cast of characters and I felt that some of the extra friends could have been dispensed with. I felt that I knew very little of Diana's character at the end and I did sort of wonder how Andover might not have turned out as the husband!

I struggled with the language- I have always disliked reading accents in books- and I found her dialogue slowed me down because of that and made me lose the intensity of the read because I had to stop and think. I think that she found a better balance in her later books as they were lighter on the langauge (and of course they were based in a slightly later time when the use of language was closer to our own). I was also reading the 1967 paperback and the font used lead to very dense print that wasn't the easiest to read.

Can I recommend that our next group read is "These Old Shades" as it is a quasi sequel in that Andover morphs into Avon I am now sure (following some googling to check my memory).

I'd like to re-read "These Old Shades" because I've never read these two in sequence and I'll be curious to see if I enjoy them more this way. I, too, am not a dialect fan, unless it's something that I can skim over quickly; if I'm going to read a foreign language I need to be able to speak it, too!

Yes, These Old Shades followed by The Devil's Cub would be good :-).