Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Long Dark Tea-Time of The Founding Bettys

or...Why We Love our Fellow Bettys.  

That's me in the middle - except for the cigarette.
When Betty Keira and I first embarked on this blog over a year ago, we knew it would be hard work - and it is.  That's fine, Betty Keira and I are no strangers to hard work - it's written into our DNA ... Despite our age difference (which is on the far end of a RDD/Brit Nurse scale) of 17 years, we work extremely well together.  Our productivity is not just doubled by working together...it's on a much greater level of magnitude (think Richter Scale).  Had either of us attempted to do this alone, TUJD would have dribbled off into obscurity after a couple of months.  But it didn't.

Reading and writing one review each week is an incredibly grueling schedule - with attendant good and bad side effects. The good? We will be able to review the entire canon of 134ish books.  All of them - in a timely manner. The bad?  Sometimes it's just hard to do justice to The Venerable Neels awesomeness. 

There's a difference between reading a book for pleasure and reading a book by assignment.  That's part of the reason I don't usually care for book clubs - I really love to read - and I have a very eclectic taste in literature.  In doing this blog, our discretionary reading time/material has been severely limited - which is a great trial to both Betty Keira and myself.  It's like eating the same food that you love, every week.  You have to eat it, even if you're not in the mood.  To take the food analogy a little farther, let's pretend The Canon is actually the menu at a pizza parlor (do they actually still call them that?).  I'm using pizza for this example for two reasons. 
  1. Pizza is one of my favorite foods.
  2. Pizza is incredibly versatile...within the confines of its genre - much like Betty.
As much as I like it, and as varied as the toppings are...I don't want to eat it for every meal.  I also like hearty soups(Dickens, Sayers), desserts (Austen), meat and potatoes (non-fiction), and salads (hmm...too bad I'm not into gardening books).

All this is well and good you're saying, but what does it have to do with loving your fellow Bettys??? I'll tell you. 
It's your shared enthusiasm that makes it worth it.  Sharing your own 'pizza' recipes with us...which makes us cheerfully skip the laundry, procrastinate dinner and ignore the sticky floor in the kitchen.  As long as we have you, we'll still have pizza. 

10 comments:

  1. Betty Barbara here--
    Well, here's one Betty who totally appreciates your efforts! But, I will acknowledge, that the site would not be half as much fun without the Following Bettys(as opposed to the Founding Bettys).
    The Following Bettys are too cool for words; I love them all!! I am so glad this site has attracted a vocal, witty, enthusiastic following. And I am happy to participate.
    Speaking of Following Bettys--what's Betty JoDee up to these days? haven't seen her byline in a bit...

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  2. Betty Barbara -- well said! And, yes, I was wondering as well -- where's Betty JoDee?

    Personally, I think you could have s l o w e d the pace a bit and we all would have been right there with you. But this way, when you're done you're done.

    Speaking of which, I have set myself the goal of finishing all 134 tomes by the time you finish. I've done 58, mostly in the last two months. I should be able to do it no problem...provided I don't get tired of them.

    And that's the rub. They really are the most lovely comfort reads imaginable: the mac & cheese of the romance world. (And I make a wicked good mac & cheese, by the way.) But all the time? On the one hand it makes me appreciate the subtleties, on the other hand, cheese is still cheese...

    I'm lucky. I get to read other things while I'm whipping through The Canon. And, for now at least, I'm still highly motivated to do this. I've even started looking up all the place names in our road atlas of Britain, and I've asked for a road atlas of The Netherlands for my birthday.

    But there are gems in the bunch, and they aren't solely the ones I remember from back in the day. So I'm in (I hope) for the next few months!

    One Betty a day...

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  3. I check this blog every day. Just love you guys, and love Betty, too. After many a trip spent in Holland, to find her books has been a real treasure. Now I just need to find my own Dutch doctor! With thanks for a great job,
    Linda in Atlanta

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  4. As a new Betty, I can't tell you how happy I am to have found you all. I think it was Betty Magdalen on her blog who said that if those of us who read romance novels hide them from our non-romance novel reading friends, those of us who read Betty Neels tend to feel they must hide them from the romance reading friends or get laughed out of the park. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for sharing my weird obsession and making me feel like I can sing from a mountain top instead of crawling under a rock. You cannot know what that has meant. I even made my husband read the review of Tangled Autumn tonight because it was so funny (LOVE the eybrows, especially on the dead crusader guy). Thank you for making me proud to go against the modern romantic tide by preferring Brighton free romances where love is about who you are and not how you preform in... well... Brighton. Thank you for being so witty, and funny and wholesome and lovely. Oh and from one of six who is the mother of six and the wife of an eighth child, thanks for thinking six kids is not crazy (one of my favorite aspects of Neeldom... so many large families). I'm truly a fan. What will we all do when the book reviews stop? Sniff... I for one have lots of books to catch up on, anyway.

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  5. I gotta agree with the rest of the followers. Betty Debbie and Betty Kiera are the Maitre Dees at this here Pizza joint. Of course, it's not much fun without the wait staff. And we do wait with Betty-bated-breath for each Monday and Thursdays and all the days in between.

    I never could take too many Betty's in a row like Betty Ariel. I've followed you pretty close, but I have to insert my regencies, medical romances, Westerns and sundry others to keep from getting my reading arteries plugged with the comfort food of Literature. You can only be so comfortable before you start to stiffen!
    Love you ladies, in toto. (or is that toto, too!)

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  6. I'm happy as a pig in...slop to be in this here pizzeria. You all are like my new best friends - ones who understand and share my Betty obsession, and the need to drop certain of her special phrases into casual conversation. :)

    Thank you, Founding Bettys, and you, Following Bettys, for being here.

    HUGS!

    me<><

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  7. I've been wandering in and out ever since I discovered this blog last Spring. And every so often I feel a twinge of guilty for not commenting and telling you how wonderful this place is.

    So, for the record, "Bettys, You Rock!"

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  8. Have you all read this, btw?

    [url/http://www.wtv-zone.com/lambch51/BNeels/BN_story.html/]

    Maybe I got the code right - if not, here's the url to copy and paste:

    http://www.wtv-zone.com/lambch51/BNeels/BN_story.html

    me<><

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  9. I've read it, but for those who haven't...

    At the top of this blog we have a few static pages...one of them is called Every Neels Thing. If you go there, you can click on a link to Betty's story. It's a delightful peek into Betty Neels life.

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  10. I love your reviews of all things Betty! I haven't been able to keep up with your reading schedule but it's been a joy to follow along!
    Thank you! :-)

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