Mind-numbing behaviors

My daughter's blog had a classic entry today about that one thing you do when all else fails. This is the activity you turn to when you are too tired, upset, blotto, drained, emotional or (fill in the blank) to do anything else. For me it is Georgette Heyer (pronounced "hair") novels. Although the books in our house are in utter chaos right now, the Georgette Heyer shelf is doing fine thank you, although not in its usual alphabetical order. Many of these novels are out of print and so some of my copies are old secondhand paperbacks which are held together with rubber bands. I do have a complete set of both the regency romances and the mysteries and I (or someone who loves me very much) replace my worn out copies when better ones come along.

I remember first reading these novels when I was still in junior high school. Then a friend in graduate school who suffered from insomnia recommended them as reading for those moments when all else fails (see above paragraph.) Although my daughter might be the only person in the world who falls back on infomercials, many besides myself rely on Georgette Heyer. The website www.georgette-heyer.com will pretty much clue you in on the addiction. I did notice going through the site just now that I own a fair amount of first American paperback editions (mostly worthless because they are in such bad shape) and even own a shoddy copy of a British first edition. Who knew? I also noticed that the shelf of copies in my local Back Mountain library are American hardback first editions. So if you know that Georgette Heyer particularly hated the color "puce" (which is a dark purplish black and not green at all) and always dressed an unsavory character in that color, then you, like me, are a true Heyerite.