The Vintage Reader

I know it's late in the day for this, but honestly, I've been awake since about 3:30, thanks to my stupid insomnia, so the brain isn't exactly firing on all cylinders. Today we have a foot or so of new snow, and it feels like a snow day. Which to me means curling up with a couple of peanut butter and honey sandwiches on cinnamon bread and reading the literature of my youth: "problem novels" by women who wrote under their initials, like S.E. Hinton and M.E. Kerr. Specifically, I'm really in the mood today to read That Was Then, This Is Now, by S.E. Hinton. Some of the characters overlap from The Outsiders, but the kids in TWTTIN are a little younger; however, they go to the same Tulsa school as the kids in The Outsiders, and I think Ponyboy is mentioned at least a couple of times. It was published in 1971, the same year as Larry Clark's Tulsa, the photo-exposé of teenage drug use in the Heartland, and that's the world this book portrays too. There are drug-addled hippies who pull Bryon's brother M&M into their social circle, call him "Baby Freak," and get him all hopped up on the dope. I would love to talk more about the book, but I'd have to read it again first, and this is supposed to be a Valentine's Day list.

So!

I'm going to recommend some excellent vintage romance reads instead. So with no further ado, I bring you:

THE VINTAGE READER'S FAVORITE ROMANCES

1. Love Story, by Erich Segal. How can you resist a book that starts with "What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me."?
   
   This book is truly a tearjerker, and it's also really, really short (although there are still scenes that aren't in the movie). It brings Harvard (and New England) in the late 60s to life, and read now, it chronicles the end of the era of old money and big business and strict class distinctions. Jenny, the motherless daughter of a working-class man and Oliver, the privileged son of a wealthy New England family, meet, marry over his parents' objections, and have a really great couple of years together. I like Erich Segal anyway, but this one, a third the size of most of his other novels, is his masterpiece.


2. Love's Tender Fury, by Jennifer Wilde. Here's a revelation for you: Jennifer Wilde was a MAN! And actually, s/he wrote a book or two I like better than LTF, but this is the one that made his reputation in the mid-70s and personally, I'm pretty sure was the basis for the coining of the phrase "bodice-ripper" to describe this kind of epic historical romance. Marietta Danvers, a poor but proud English orphan, is raped by the lord of the manor where she works (as a lady's maid, I think) and then shipped off to "the colonies" to be sold at auction. She goes through a lot of adventures (and a lot of men) on her way to becoming a fully self-realized Woman of the Seventies, well before her time. I love Jennifer Wilde's characters because they are ACTUALLY feisty, as opposed to most of the modern historical heroines whose feistiness is more closely akin to spoiled teenage rebellion.


3. The Incredible Year, by Faith Baldwin. Actually, this one probably isn't available in most thrift stores, but it's pretty easy to get a nice copy on eBay for not much money. The only edition I've ever seen is the Dell Mapback, which has a really ugly cover. Still, it was the first Faith Baldwin I ever read, and also my first Mapback. Julie, an innocent young woman from the North Woods (Canada, I think--her housekeeper speaks in a "patois" most of the time), is sent to New York after her father's death to stay with a couple he met on a cruise shortly before he died (no, really!). They introduce her to Society and the social merry-go-round a girl of her Breeding should know something about (according to dear old Dad), and she learns to be brittle and superficial, only to lose her one true love when the transformation is complete. You can probably guess the ending, but it will keep you reading all the way to the end anyway.



4. Yonder, by Margaret Bell Houston. Olive, the daughter of a minister and his wife, goes to live in the Florida Keys with distant relatives after her parents' sudden death (are you spotting a trend here?). There she meets a number of interesting characters, accidentally uncovers a family tragedy, and finds out just why it is that she can never have the man of her dreams... who turns out to be not so much the man of her dreams anyway. Written in 1955, it's set in the '20s, and has a nice timeless feel to it. There's not really as much romance as suspense in this one, but I consider it a romance anyway.

More later, hopefully including pictures. Right now it's time for Vintage Baby to go to sleep.

UPDATE: Miraculously, in less than five minutes I was able to lay my hands on three of the four books listed above! Unfortunately, when I went to take a picture of them, I found that the camera isn't working. I can't use the scanner, because it's not hooked up to the computer with the image software on it, and the network isn't working either, so I can't transfer the files. So no pics. Oh well.