Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Digging Romance Wolrd of Barbara Cartland

There is no doubt that I am a huge fan of Dame Barbara Cartland, the writer, the Queen of Romance. So everytime I visit the bookstore - especially secondhand-book shops - I'm always looking for her books.

Lucky that few weeks ago I got some Barbara Cartland's books from Reading Lights, when I visited there with Yuwonosigit and Sassy. I bought 3 books : "Love Under Fire", "The Cruel Count", and "The Slaves of Love".

I personally love the book "The Cruel Count" very much. When I read this book last weekend, I expected the usual damsel-in-distress situation wrapped in a romantic love story.
But what came to my surprise was, I miss-judged the ending! LOL.
This is the first time I read Barbara Cartland's book and I guessed the ending wrong.
The story is about Lady Vesta who travelled to Katona to marry a prince whom she never met, but when the revolution broke down in Katona, she incidentally fell in love with Count Miklos, the handsome royal who was at first told her to go back to England, but finally took her to the Prince Court because she insisted to.
She thought Count Miklos was cruel, but after having series of adventurous journey to the Capital with him, she realized not only the Count's confession of love that dazzled her, but also how to choose between the arranged married to the Prince, or to live happily ever after with her love Count Miklos!
... And so I got wrong in the end :D hahahaha. Still happy ending, though. It's just caught me off-guard when I read the ending. Yeayy Vesta! *I like her, really* :P

The second book I read is "Love Under Fire".
As a Barbara Cartland's fan, I am well aware of the plot which the handsome duke/lord/baron met the angelic-beauty lady kind of story.
But in this book, I got more than i expected. Love Under Fire gave the detail description about the war between the British army with the French during King George III reign. The whole scene were exciting to read, not merely a love story with small incident. I found a lot of interesting action-packed adventure in this book :) Oh, and plus the cameo in this book, is Lord Wellington. You know, the Duke who won the battle in Waterloo against Napoleon :P

I read the last book "The Slaves of Love" just last night. My Plurk friend Winda already read it, and, as we both fangirls of Dame Barbara, she excitedly told me that this book has good plot too. And she was right, I really did enjoy every details written in this story, about a lady named Yamina who had to hide in the Turk's Castle as a Harem, but then she managed to escape by hiding in a trunk sent for Lord Castleford on a yacht to Greece. I practically laughed when I read the description of Lord Castleford's expression when he found Yamina - dressed like an eastern harem with so much revealing - stepped out from the trunk in his cabin. LMAO. That must be quite a shock therapy. XD

What makes me enjoy Dame Barbara's writings is the character she built in every story. Even though the settings are usually set in the 18-19th century (during the reign of King George to Queen Victoria - basically the House of Hanover), but the female characters were usually not the weaklings spoiled-brat kind of girls. On the contrary, Dame Barbara showed the readers how women at that time were struggling for acknowledgement, by learning foreign languages, being independent and showing their pride as a royalty which has courage and determined heart.
And considering the situation at that time, it must be hard for female to be stood out among powerful men.

If I think of the women these days, I think we must be grateful since it is more convenient for women to do almost anything equals to men. And sometimes I feel like women now are more spoilt than in the Victorian era. For instant, I don't even know how to cook while the ladies in Barbara Cartland's books were usually splendid in housechores! XD

Well, nevertheless, I am still trying to improve myself as a woman :) Hopefully someday, like the girls in Dame Barbara's books, I could please the one I love with my skills and personal qualities (although perhaps it's kinda difficult to nail a handsome duke or prince charming nowadays - furthermore in Indonesia) :P There's something I learn from these historical romance books, so I will keep on searching for another enchanting stories :)

{posted by Chibi on 11:33 AM} +

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Lazy-blogging

It is said that today is Hari Blogger Nasional ^^ Well, I don't really know / care about it actually. But I just realized that it is so lazy for me to update my blog lately. Compare to few years ago, I usually posted two or even three entries a day. But now, perhaps once a week - or month!

Oh well. Microblogging seems pretty convenient for me lately ^^;;;
But I promise, I will update this blog and hopefully with some book reviews (because I read some interesting books lately). Yeay!

{posted by Chibi on 4:29 PM} +

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

New Books!

Hello, world :)
It feels like ages ago since my last entry, and now I just want to share some books I got from my favorite secondhand bookshop here in Bandung ^^
It's Plum Sykes' "The Debutante Divorcee" and Philippa Gregory's "The Other Queen".
I love those book sooo much! Yeayy! XD

{posted by Chibi on 4:20 PM} +

Song:'80s-'90s songs; Matt Hires; some rocks
Obsession: Publishing my book
Reading: Horrible Histories
Movie: Clueless
Addiction: Books & Mp3
Project: Reviews and Translations