dangermousie | Books and dramas...

I am reading Eva Ibbotson’s Countess Below Stairs and it’s delightful: a cross between an early Woodhouse, if he wrote romantic instead of purely funny, and Georgette Heyer if she wasn’t a snob. It’s a novel about Anna, an aristocratic Russian emigree after the Revolution, who ends up in England in 1920, and becomes a housemaid in a rural aristocratic house with a bit too much enthusiasm. It’s very very funny, and rather sweet, and has some awesome characters in addition to Anna: such as a hero named Rupert (how could you not like a hero named Rupert?) who is a WWI veteran, the Dowager of the estate who communes with spirts who only tell her most mundane things, a butler with an elderly mother who likes to throw cups out of the window, Anna’s mother who wants to economize by selling vast quantities of milk, and horrid Muriel, believer in eugenics, among others. It’s a lovely book which would have made an awesome 1940s movie or maybe a cute Korean movie of today :P I didn’t even mind her being a Russian aristocrat, which is a big deal for me :P

In news that are less delightful, I read spoilers for ep 11 of Robbers and surprise surprise Oh Joon has a brain tumor. Raise your hands, everyone who is shocked. Yeah, I thought so. And after she forgave him, too! And she was the one who proposed to him. And he cried because he was so shaken and thought she wouldn’t believe him. And then they were so adorable together. All I know is, there better be miracle surgery.

I mean, how could you destroy cuteness like this: