 |
| Theory: The Canon describes so many lint-fair heroes because La Neels had never seen Abhishek Bachchan in a beard... |
Sister Peters in Amsterdam beat Never Say Goodbye (I'm in tears, Bettys! Tears!)
Once For all Time beat Blow Hot/Blow Cold
Fate is Remarkable cruised to an easy win over Polly (Rota Fortunae!)
I had to cast a tie-breaker for Tulips For Augusta over At the End of the Day
and
Tabitha in Moonlight beat (by a pair of oil-stained shorts!) Never the Time and the Place
 |
| ...Jeremy Northam in a cravat... |
Alright, now on to Round Two, Phase Two where Section 11 (late canon) goes up against Section 5 (Mid canon)--don't think I don't notice how clunky that sentence was...:
Ring in a Teacup vs. A Girl in a Million
The Promise of Happiness vs. Dearest Mary Jane
Winter Wedding vs. A Secret Infatuation
Hannah vs. Fate Takes a Hand
and
Caroline's Waterloo vs. Dearest Love
 |
| ...or Luke Wilson in anything. |
I'll post the results sometime on Friday so vote early and vote often!
A Secret Infatuation.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is all. *sigh*
Oh no! I got Winter Wedding mixed up with A Winter Lover Story(which is a snooze)!!! I vote for Winter Wedding! Not A Secret Infatuation. Sheesh, I had one vote and messed it up.
DeleteA Winter Lover Story - does not sound like a Neels, haha. Love it. Could somebetty please come up with a synopsis or first chapter in true Betty-style for that title?
DeleteBetty Anonymous
Betty Barbara here--
ReplyDeleteOh Betty Keira, You are So Cruel!!! These are really tough.....
Girl in a Million (but I like Ring--except I think the age dif is just too wide...)
Oh Noes!!! I must vote for Becky and the Hot,Hot Baron (aka Promise of Happiness) but I really love Mary Jane and the tea shop, too--no fair making me pick...
Winter Wedding Drugged babies trumps trip to Bosnia..
And the last two pairings--sheesh! Betty Keira!!--what Mormon approved beverage were you drinking??!??!
It SO obviously should be Caroline's Waterloo vs Hannah and Dearest Love vs Fate Takes a Hand, in which case the votes are for Caroline's Waterloo and Dearest Love.
I am throwing a hissy fit here-- I don't like your last pairings, so I'm not playing--Pfffttttt!!!
I agree! The nerve of pairing Caroline's Waterloo against Dearest Love! Tragic, I say, tragic!!!! How can I choose!!!
DeleteWe still have the wildcard round! I'm imagining all the Bettys keeping Post-it Notes of Retribution taped to their computer monitors awaiting The Great and Dreadful Day of Wildcard Justice when they can unleash their picks.
DeleteI know! I agree!!!!
DeleteBetty AnoninTX
Girl in a Million (just can't make myself like the other one)
ReplyDeleteThe promise of Happiness (no competition there)
Winter Wedding
About the last two, I agree with Betty Barbara but minus fits. I will only vote for Caroline's Waterloo.
#1 Easy, Girl in a Million. Just can't get into RIAT
ReplyDelete#2 Easy, but with a twinge of sadness, Promise of Happiness.
#3 Oh no! Things I love and dislike about each! Louisa is awful, and Renier dense for allowing Emily to think he's interested in her so long! Also for even imagining Emily would dose the babies!! But the drama is great, and the retrieved locket very sweet. Bosnia has all the right parts, but just never really sizzles for me. So, Winter Wedding it is.
#4 No Brainer. Hannah. Just never liked FTAH.
#5 Oh the agony!!!! No fair!!!! I'm SO sorry, dear, sweet top ten read Dearest Love! Caroline's Waterloo is one of my top 5 and gets my vote.
Ring in a Teacup (best cover art ever!)
ReplyDeleteBecky and the Baron (the hot, hot baron)aka The Promise of Happiness
Winter Wedding (the Seconal Twins!)
Hannah (but would have preferred it with only one 'h')
Aargh! Well, duh, Caroline's Waterloo...but I also adore Dearest Love (just not as much)
Ring in a Teacup Yes, it has to be Ring in een Theekopje, most definitely.
ReplyDeleteThe Promise of Happiness One of my top ten. '...but I do believe that you're my glass of champagne, Becky.'
Winter Wedding I almost voted for the other. But it hurt too much not to vote for Emily.
Hannah
Caroline's Waterloo Another one of my top ten. '...you must be a mi—mi...' 'Misogynist.' - Give me a needle and thread and I'll do it myself. - Hiding behind the door.
Betty Anonymous
Really? Luke Wilson? He looks normal, he looks calm, he looks like he'd be a really nice person to know. But for me, he is a long way from the swoony-ness of your usual picks, or my own personal favorite TD&H.
ReplyDeleteMy trouble with Daniel Day-Lewis is that he always looks capable of murdering you in a pinch.
Deletewith just his left foot...
Delete(I know that was wrong)
(Sorry)
Ring in a Teacup
ReplyDeleteThe Promise of Happiness
A Secret Infatuation-she calls his girlfriend old AND a tramp, HA!
In yo face!
Fate Takes a Hand
Dearest Love
I'm sorry Betty Debbie, but I will never understand why anyone likes Caroline's Waterloo, Radinck is a rude jerk. Insinuating that he stayed all night with another woman, uh uh, noooo. Unforgivable. Ditto for Renier in WW, I wanted to scream everytime he slobbered all over her Seconal stealing slattern of a sister. That little plot device went on WAAYY too long, in my humble opinion.
Betty von Susie
Yes, Radink insinuated it, but he was trying to make her jealous after all, which meant that he's admitted to himself that he's fallen for her. He's paid for his bad behavior with all the worry, fear, and regret in the last chapter. I liked the book more for loving Caroline than hating Radink.
DeleteBetty von Susie, I loved Caroline more than I disliked some things about Radink. He uttered the second (or third) worst line in all of Neelsdom, but he did apologize right away. The hint of another woman is a low, but measured shot at arousing jealousy. And i just love Caroline. "Give me a needle and thread..." Brilliant.
DeleteSo what's the first worst line in all of Neelsdom if it isn't The Donkey Comment? Oh, I know, ANYTHING out of the mouth of Nasty Reilof....
DeleteNo, the worst is that one where the hero says something like, '(Awful, fake villianess-Diana?) is worth a dozen of you.'
DeleteBetty Barbara here--
DeleteWell, I've always thought "Diana(the Veronica)is worth a dozen of you",from The Right Kind Of Girl to be worse than the Donkey Comment. Especially as he never apologizes.....
Well, as you know, nothing is as bad (for me personally, and I know everyone else's mileage does vary!!) as The End of the Rainbow, and what Waldo *doesn't* say to Olympia in the WEEKS he's believing that she's been torturing his daughter.
DeleteSins of omission, and all that. Or, to put it another way, I can patch it up with someone who dares to speak the unspeakable (and recently have) but not with someone who thinks the unthinkable and never gets it out in the open (that's also happened recently and it's pretty much abysmally sad).
I'm with Betty Barbara, the "Diana is worth a dozen of you"(what was our dear Betty thinking!) is the worst, made more vile by no apology. Waldo is pretty bad, and some things our of Reilof's mouth are bad, but somehow I like both books.
Delete'Diana is worth a dozen of you.'
Delete'Sir Paul, Miss Pearson phoned several times, and said it was most urgent that she should see you as soon as you got back.' He frowned. 'Why didn't she speak to my registrar?' 'I don't know, sir; she sounded upset.' 'I'll call in on my way home.' He was tired; he wanted to go home and see Emma, watch her face light up when she saw him. She might not love him but she was always happy to be with him. He smiled as he got out of the car and went along to Diana's office. ...
lies, vicious lies
... To go racing off on to the moor in bad weather, sending dramatic messages, spending the night in a Godforsaken camp. Ignoring Diana's pleading to wait and give her time to phone for help. No, you must race away like a heroine in a novel, bent on self-glory.' Emma said in a shaky voice, 'But Diana — ' 'Diana is worth a dozen of you.' It was a remark which stopped her from uttering another word. 'We'll talk later,' said Sir Paul, and went away to his study and sat down behind his desk, ...
While that was a low-down thing to say, you have to remember that Sir Paul had been away from home. He came back looking forward to seeing Emma only to hear Diana’s vicious lies. He had known Diana-the-Veronica for years, she was 'an old friend of' his, he knew her as the professionally competent full-time manager of a nursery for unwanted babies and toddlers. And his wife - for how many months? He had no reason to believe that Diana would lie to him.
I do believe that he must have been terribly upset.
Betty Anonymous
He'd been too hard on her; he tried not to think of her white, puzzled face with its pink nose, but he had been full of rage, thinking of all those things which could have happened to her. The little idiot,' he told the dogs. 'I could wring her darling neck.'
DeleteYes, terribly upset.
Betty Anonymous
On a happier note, am I the only one who did not know there was a DUTCH DISNEYLAND?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.efteling.com/
Betty von Susie
Ring in a Teacup (love the cover)
ReplyDeleteThe Promise of Happiness by the hair of a mangy dog
Winter Wedding (this one was TOUGH; unlike some Bettys, I never took it that Renier had any interest in Louisa--never saw her as anything other than a teenager)
I like FTAH, but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE back-chatting, big-fat-hairy-deal-why-should-I-be-intimidated-by-famous-handsome-baby-doctor-uncle-who-can-park-private-plane-on-a-tarmac "Trust you" "I heard that" Hannah
I really like Dearest Love, and as much as I understand many Bettys' fondness for Caroline, I just can't get past The Donkey Comment.
Last note: BIG, BIG THANKS for Jeremy Northam
Ring in a Teacup
ReplyDeleteDearest Mary Jane
Winter Wedding; I don't *like* it, but it's memorable, and the other one--what's it called again?--just isn't.
Contest #4 is my Waterloo. I love Hannah, but I have to give it to Fate Takes a Hand, one of my favorite in The Late Canon
And finally, Dearest Love. I don't actually *hate* CW, but I don't love it, and I do love the "making a home for myself" heroines.
OK. After days of pondering, here are my votes:
ReplyDelete*Ring in a Teacup - I just love Lucy. Being a rather plain, plump person myself, I understand her reactions to the witch's remarks.
*Promise of Happiness - Love Becky. Love the Baron. But I sincerely apologize to my dearest Mary Jane, whom I love almost at much.
*Hannah - I just love the "What?" at the end. Tit for tat Hannah.
*Dearest Love- Permanently #4 on my top ten Betty books list. Love love love this one. Love at first read. That being said, I apologize, Caro, because you know I love you too.
Betty AnoninTX
Well, duh. I left out:
Delete*Secret Infatuation - Moors, mist, Bosnia.
Why do I hit publish instead of preview every time!!
Betty AnoninTX
Have any of you noticed that Caroline's name changes to Fanny a few times in Caroline's Waterloo?
ReplyDeleteNo. Not in my copy. Which edition do you have? Mine is the red Mills & Boon Collector's Edition.
DeleteBetty Anonymous
I have that copy as well, has been corrected in that edition. The original hard cover Mills and Boon, published in London in 1980 has Fanny several times. My aunt had the hard copy and she underlined them all. My aunt was a real fan too.
DeleteI believe "Fanny" -- which means the buttocks in the US -- means the other naughty bits on a female in the UK.
DeleteThere's also a beyond-racy novel titled Fanny Hill first published, per the interweb, in England in 1784. Purportedly the memoir of a prostitute, it occasionally attracts popular-culture attention in the modern era. Apparently someone tried to ban it in Boston in the 20th century. I believe it's still in print.
DeleteAnyway, I'd love to see a hard-cover Betty! Mine are all paperbacks. I wonder if Caroline was originally to have been named Francesca? Jane Austen wrote Mansfield Park, with its heroine named Fanny, two or three decades after the dirty book was published. Given the prevalence of 'fanny' as a near-obscenity in England today, I doubt anyone's called that as a name anymore.
DeleteI've a friend who loves to use a 'fanny pack' in the US; in the UK, she tries really, really hard not to use the term. It's worse than asking if the queen ever wears pants in public. (English 'pants' being specifically underpants; US 'pants' being trousers/slacks.) Same language -- yea, right.
Betty Barbara here--
DeleteShowing my age--but now we can all understand the giggles and snorts of laughter over the BeeGee's song that had the classic line "Fanny, be tender with my love". (Fans herself and wonders if that is entirely too racy for TUJD?)
In NZ we used to get hard -covered Mills and Boon books in the libraries, I have several ex-library copies of earlier Betty Neels. They wear better with the re-readings!
DeleteI have at least one hardcover Betty Neels. Years Happy Ending. Bought it as a backup in case my paperback falls apart. Large print, actually. Tried finding hardcover copies on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk just now. Nearly impossible. Did I do something wrong or did the person who did their program mess up?But on amazon.de plenty of hardcovers. Large print though.
DeleteBetty Anonymous