Category: Friday Favorites

Contests & Giveaways, Friday Favorites, Regency

Friday Favorite: Austen in August

Cora Lee

This is summer reading, Regency style!

Roof Beam Reader is hosting the 2nd annual Austen in August event, a celebration of all things Jane Austen. Participants read as many Austen or Austen-related works as they choose (biographies, spin-offs, contemporary re-imaginings, and re-reads count too!), and blog about their adventures. Roof Beam Reader will also be hosting guest posts and giveaways throughout the month.

If you’d like to be a part of Austen in August, you can sign up or find more info here. Some of the giveaways require that you sign up by August 3rd, but others don’t. You can participate in the reading and blogging at any time.

Any posts you make for Austen in August should be linked here.

I’m signed up and ready to go–my Kindle is full, my audible account is stocked. Who’s joining me?

Fashion, Friday Favorites, Society

Friday Favorite: Candice Hern’s Regency World

Cora Lee

quadrille

Our Friday Favorite this week is a treasure trove of information. Regency romance author Candice Hern recently revamped her website, and now it’s bigger and better than ever!

Features include:

The Illustrated Regency Glossary

A Regency Timeline

Collections of Regency fashion prints, accessories, and other household objects

There’s even a section called Bridgerton Couture, featuring Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton heroines and their fashion selections.

This is one of those websites you can visit and quickly become absorbed in–an excellent resource for the Regency reader or writer 😀

Fashion, Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: (Un)Dressing Mr. Darcy

Cora Lee

Our Friday Favorite this week comes to us from Brian Cushing, a Regency period re-enactor who gives workshops and talks about gentlemen’s dress in the early 19th century. This video is taken from his demonstration at Burdett’s Tea Shoppe in Springfield, TN. Mr. Cushing begins with the outermost layer of clothing and works his way inward, explaining the function and development of each piece as he goes–great for those of you who like visual aides!

Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: The 1812 Overture

Cora Lee

Officially titled The Year 1812 Festival Overture in E-flat major, Op. 49, the 1812 Overture was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1880. Tsar Aleksander I had commissioned a church to be built commemorating Russia’s victory over Napoleon in 1812, and the church was nearing completion. Big festivities were planned, but derailed when Tsar Aleksander II was assassinated in March 1882. (The piece was eventually performed, but indoors with a conventional orchestra.)

Written for outdoor performance with pealing bells and live cannon fire, the Overture is a musical war between la Marseillaise (representing Napoleon’s French army) and God Save the Tsar (representing the Russian Empire). The French national anthem is strong in the beginning, but is beaten back as the piece moves, drown out by the cathedral bells, cannon, and the Russian national anthem. (Interestingly enough, neither anthem was in use at the time of the actual battle.)

Have a listen and see if you can pick them out:

Here’s the entire Overture for the musically adventurous among you:

Here in the US, we use the 1812 Overture to celebrate our own Independence Day, which seems strange given the original purpose of the music. This article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette posits a theory as to why.

Books, Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: Slightly Dangerous

Cora Lee

Description (from Amazon):

“All of London is abuzz over the imminent arrival of Wulfric Bedwyn, the reclusive, cold-as-ice Duke of Bewcastle, at the most glittering social event of the season. Some whisper of a tragic love affair. Others say he is so aloof and passionless that not even the greatest beauty could capture his attention. But on this dazzling afternoon, one woman did catch the duke’s eye—and she was the only female in the room who wasn’t even trying. Christine Derrick is intrigued by the handsome duke…all the more so when he invites her to become his mistress.

What red-blooded woman wouldn’t enjoy a tumble in the bedsheets with a consummate lover—with no strings and no questions asked. An infuriating lady with very definite views on men, morals, and marriage, Christine confounds Wulfric at every turn. Yet even as the lone wolf of the Bedwyn clan vows to seduce her any way he can, something strange and wonderful is happening. Now for a man who thought he’d never lose his heart, nothing less than love will do.”

This is one of my favorite books of all time! Like The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, Slightly Dangerous at first appears to be like any other Regency romance. The beauty in this story, though, is its leading man, Wulfric Bedwyn. He is every inch the cold, formidable duke in public (and sometimes with his siblings). But throughout the previous five books, the reader gets tiny peeks at the man under all that ice. You see his loneliness and isolation, the way he adores his family even when he can’t (or won’t) tell them. You discover little pieces of his soul.

I fell in love. And then, so did he 🙂

http://www.amazon.com/Slightly-Dangerous-Balogh-Mary-ebook/dp/B000FC1PBG/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1371758779&sr=8-1

Slightly Dangerous

Books, Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: Richard Armitage Reads Georgette Heyer

Cora Lee

Hold on to your e-readers and mp3 players, ladies! Our Friday Favorite this week is Richard Armitage. He’s best known for his portrayal of John Thornton in North and South, Lucas North in MI-5 (Spooks across the Atlantic), and most recently as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit movies.

Richard Armitage

But in the last few years he’s also gotten into audiobook narration, including three of Georgette Heyer’s novels: The Convenient Marriage, Venetia, and Sylvester.

Audio clips:

Interview for The Convenient Marriage, where Richard talks about the difference between doing audiobooks and screen acting, and his love of music. (June 2010)

Interview for Venetia, where he talks about how he got started with audiobooks, and his reading habits. (March 2010)

Excerpt from Georgette Heyer’s Venetia, complete with separate voices for each character.

You can find these clips and other audio at Richard Armitage Central. But make sure you come up for air once in a while 😉

Art, Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: Sir Joshua Reynolds Art Exhibit

Cora Lee

Okay, all you Art History majors out there–here’s a chance to get your geek on. Our Friday Favorite this week is an interactive art exhibit from 1813:

“On 24 May 1813, Jane Austen visited an art exhibit at the British Institution in Pall Mall, London. The popular show was the first-ever retrospective of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), England’s celebrated portrait painter. Two centuries later, this e-gallery offers the modern visitor a historical reconstruction of that long-lost Regency blockbuster.”

Clicking on a painting opens a new window with a whole host of information: the painting’s title in 1813 and its title now, its current location, some juicy tidbits about the subject of the portrait, and its connections to other paintings in the exhibit. There are also suggestions for further reading.

http://www.whatjanesaw.org/

rowlandson_enlarged 1808

Fashion, Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: Sharp Dressed Period Drama Men

Cora Lee

Do you ever find modern men’s fashion lacking? Like your men in cravats and frock coats, or doublets and hose? Then this week’s Friday Favorite is for you! It’s a fan video with clips from a whole bunch of period dramas featuring all the best in historical menswear, accompanied by Jo Dee Messina’s cover of Sharp Dressed Man.

I tagged a few of the gentlemen in question–can you identify the rest?

Buildings & Architecture, Friday Favorites

Friday Favorite: Jane Austen’s Home

Cora Lee

When Jane Austen was 33 years old, she took possession of a cottage in the village of Chawton, which had been a gift from her brother Edward. Our Friday Favorite this week is not one but two virtual tours of this cottage.

The first deals mainly with the exterior of the house, and comes to us via Jane Austen’s World right here on WordPress: http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/a-pictorial-visit-to-chawton/

The second deals mainly with the interior of the house, courtesy of the Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton: http://www.jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk/about/house_tour.htm

Jane_Austen_(House_in_Chawton)_2