Full name: Molly’s Imaginary Summer Book Club Featuring Classics of Women’s Literature Defined As Books Authored By, About or Widely Read By Women in the 20th Century. This year, the Love Stinks edition.
I’m announcing it early and trimming the titles down to three because we shall open with a massive doorstop…
Sex and social-climbing in Restoration England, and side discussions about book-banning, girls’ names, underappreciated actresses, and misremembered film-flops. (July)
Speaking of revisiting unjustly maligned women… (August)
And just in time for Halloween! (September)
The Imaginary Summer Book Club FAQ can be found here.
This week I’ll be working on answering comments, emails and updating Name That Book! Keep watching this space!
Lost Classics of Teen Lit: 1939-1989 
Minor quibble: Forever Amber is Restoration (not Regency) England. It’s also really good. All these book club choices are great!
Ack! I knew* it was Restoration, but my brain typed Regency. CORRECTED! Thanks for commenting!
*(Because I looked it up LITERALLY moments before typing this post)
I only commented because I love your blog and I hope folks will read it! It’s quite good. So is Rosemary’s Baby!! And I’ll give the Tammy Fay book a try!
Happy reading, everybody! Thanks Mondo Molly!
Julie
Look forward to having you join in the comments this summer! Thanks, Julie!
Oooh, these look good.
And it occurs to me I’ve read some from your past summer book clubs and should go and compare notes! I love how flexible this whole project is.
I’d love to hear what you thought of them! Feel free comment on the older posts, maybe we can get some belated discussions going 😉
I read “Forever Amber” back in high school. I had a limitless appetite for costume dramas and historical romance. One thing I remember about Amber is that the name (while given a good explanation in the story) is just SO IMPLAUSIBLE for that time. Another thing is that the heroine was not a nice person, which was QUITE different than most romance fiction when I was reading (80’s). Heroines might be a bit bratty or stuck-up, but Amber was, if not sociopathic, had some sociopathic tendencies. She and Bruce (those names again!) were made for each other in that kind of way. Though I will say I like Amber better than Frieda Friedman’s Carol, because at least she had verve and moxie and knew how to work with what she had. Carol was just petulant and snobbish.
Gah. Meant to complete the thought with “Heroines might be a bit bratty or stuck up, but they were almost always basically nice people. Not Amber.” Which was quite the change from conventional romance heroines at the time.
Thanks for commenting and sharing your insight on Amber! THe plot is definitely wild, and I didn’t get to it in the review, but it’s interesting that Amber basically treats Almsbury the way Bruce treats her!
I never read the novel, but I seem to remember there was a line in the movie where one character actually commented on how unusual the name “Bruce” was.
I think you’re right! In the context of Bruce Jr., I think the same mention is made in the novel, so I may be getting it mixed up, but one character comments about it being unusual outisde of Scotland, by way of implying that Bruce is OBVIOUSLY Bruce Jr’s real father.
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