Our Final Four

Well, well, well. When I had finished totting up the votes this morning, my pencil trailed down the list, putting stars next to the winners from each bracket. In my shock, I am channelling an RDD's grandmama. I am setting eyes on a silver metallic trouser suit draping the fashionably thin form of my youngest grandson's date--and my eyebrows are high and surprised.

(Image)

It wasn't that the old lady was hopelessly out of step (never that). It was that glitter seemed to get everywhere, even though the Vogue model limited herself to eating one celery stick and complaining loudly about girls in chiffon. Wim and Nel would be furious when they had to scrub off her seat.

Highlighted in soft pink (the color worn by that the plain little British nurse that my oldest grandson, the Professor Baron, can't keep his eyes off of) are the winners:

A) The Barfing on His Brogues Bracket:

Dearest Love vs.

Caroline's Waterloo 

B) The Handful of A Levels Bracket:

A Gentle Awakening vs.

Tabitha By Moonlight

C) The Hocked Locket Bracket:

Henrietta's Own Castle vs.

Dearest Mary Jane

D) The Imperiled Poppets Bracket:

Cassandra By Chance vs.

The Promise of Happiness

Look that over and tell me there haven't been a couple of upsets. My own personal tragedy is the loss of Caroline's Waterloo which always makes it into my top two or three. Caro is such a wonderful heroine and I love the set-up enormously. 

None of the votes were lop-sided--each coming down to a couple of votes either way. For that last bracket, I was holding my breath the whole time.

I'd like to do something a little different going into The Final Four.  The last books are sure to have passionate partisans and I'm going to hop on the Facebook page and solicit some Betties for whom individual books are the most favorite to write up a paragraph or two about them. When I've got those all turned in, we'll resume our voting and I'm not going to ask for trouble by mixing it up. The Barfing on His Brogues Bracket will go up against The Handful of A Levels Bracket and so on.

(Image)

Betty Franscisca considered the tin oven and began to write out her impassioned thoughts.
"Baking bread is a chancy business in any circumstance but the plucky Henrietta..."

 

The Great Betty and Dunkirk

The Professor and I don't get out to see a lot of movies since we've entered the phase of life called Why Don't We Just See That On Netflix in Our PJs? (It comes directly after What Is This Spot On My Shirt? Kid Snot? and right before This Pre-Made Costco Dinner Can Feed Us Tonight, Lunch Tomorrow and Left-Overs on Friday.)

But we made an exception the other night by going to see Dunkirk because People With Good Hair Being Pursued By Nazis is his favorite movie genre (hence his love for The Sound of Music). We loved it even though my only quibble was that you never did get the scope of 400,000 people being evacuated off a small stretch of land. It has a really neat construction which I won't spoil but which was so rewarding to watch unfold.

(Image)

Dunkirk rescued French troops disembarking in England (1940).

I went back to The Great Betty's short autobiography and traced the route she describes. (The military nursing begins around page 16.) It sounds like her nursing group missed being trapped in Dunkirk, proper, by the slimmest of margins.

"Of course the war hadn't really started then. Although it seemed exciting enough..."

"...landed a few miles from Doullens..."

"After a week or two, however, the war really began...the war was creeping nearer now, with Holland invaded and Belgium and presently, France..."

"...he decided that the eight of us should go north and join up...near Lille."

"The roads were jammed with refugees, cars, carts, bicycles, people walking, and not all in the same direction..."

"We reached Boulogne after getting behind the enemy lines..."

"Boulogne was expecting an attack at any moment. They added kindly that we might just get the last hospital ship on the point of leaving, if we were very quick..."

If you'll watch this time-lapse progress of the war, I think you'll spot where The Great Betty must have been around the one minute mark.

And here's a close up of the pertinent areas.

The Elite Eight

Here are the results of the last round of voting! I've highlighted, in Bilious Green, the titles that did not make it through the nasty bout of Gastroenteritus sweeping the brackets. The one that makes me the most sorrowful is The Hasty Marriage which is not your jam, Betties. This I know. But I am like Laura. The heart wants what the heart wants. And the heart wants Reilof.

(Image)
I'll go weep in my Alone Cone.

A) The Barfing on His Brogues Bracket:

Dearest Love 

Caroline's Waterloo 

Blow Hot, Blow Cold

B) The Handful of A Levels Bracket:

Wish With the Candles

A Gentle Awakening

Tabitha By Moonlight

C) The Hocked Locket Bracket:

Henrietta's Own Castle

Only By Chance

Dearest Mary Jane

D) The Imperiled Poppets Bracket:

The Hasty Marriage

Cassandra By Chance

The Promise of Happiness

Our next task is to take it from Eight swoony titles, down to Four. We'll do it in all one round. I hope that the Sustaining Chocolate we'll need to fortify ourselves, doesn't make anyone slip into a diabetic coma. Please vote on the following:

(Image) 
Lemonade poured over tinted hair was
duking it out with a pair of oil stained shorts.

A) The Barfing on His Brogues Bracket:

Dearest Love vs.

Caroline's Waterloo 

B) The Handful of A Levels Bracket:

A Gentle Awakening vs.

Tabitha By Moonlight

C) The Hocked Locket Bracket:

Henrietta's Own Castle vs.

Dearest Mary Jane

D) The Imperiled Poppets Bracket:

Cassandra By Chance vs.

The Promise of Happiness

Results and On to Round Five

"It's getting too serious for flippant remarks."--Betty Pam

We're down to so few books now. The results of The Imperiled Poppets Bracket are as follows:
The Hasty Marriage took down The Secret Pool by several votes. Both of these books inspire strong feelings even if they aren't anyone's top two, so I imagine that that vote is going to hurt.  Cassandra By Chance beat Roses Have Thorns by a pretty good margin. And The Promise of Happiness beat Tulips For Augusta. There are some epic books in that bracket (not intentional, I assure you) and some good ones have fallen.

(Image)
"Betty Keira. We, The Noble Faction of Lovers of The Secret Pool will
not be mollified by a picture of Chris Pine, Foremost of the Chrises...
Well, not unless it's a really, really big picture. And swoony too."

Each of the brackets now have three books and we're going to switch up how we do the voting this round to reflect that. I'm going to list the books by each bracket and you will be asked to choose the one book in each bracket you DO NOT want to see continue. To speed up the process, we're going to do it all in one round:

A) The Barfing on His Brogues Bracket:

Dearest Love 

Caroline's Waterloo 

Blow Hot, Blow Cold

B) The Handful of A Levels Bracket:

Wish With the Candles

A Gentle Awakening

Tabitha By Moonlight

C) The Hocked Locket Bracket:

Henrietta's Own Castle

Only By Chance

Dearest Mary Jane

D) The Imperiled Poppets Bracket:

The Hasty Marriage

Cassandra By Chance

The Promise of Happiness

Your vote should look something like this (with my examples drawn entirely at random):

A) Caroline's Waterloo

B)A Gentle Awakening

C)Dearest Mary Jane

D) The Promise of Happiness

And then below your vote, I expect wailing and gnashing of teeth. Don't listen to what the haters tell you, Betties. Running mascara and rage-eyes make us look classy.

(Image)

Classy, you hear?

Again, the novel you vote for should be the one that you deem least worthy of wearing the winning tiara. Best of luck with the voting. Some of those brackets look really difficult. Pretty please don't make me break any ties!