lemons --> lemonade

[jlh]

So I had this recent online experience that I found exasperating in a very specific way, whatever, ali_wildgoose had to talk me out of it, and I'm thankful to her and also sorry that she had to do that, etc. And I thought, well, instead of bitching about it, I could do something useful, y/y? And who doesn't love a poll?

[Poll #1375823]

I say no shame because damn, them books is trashy but I gobbled them up over the course of ten years (as the newer ones came out).

Discuss! I looked up the minis on imdb, and I knew that Barry Bostwick was in a lot of them, but I didn't realize he was in that many of them. Gosh.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I have not read a single one--and now feel like there's a little hole in the cultural center of my brain where they should be!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Did you see any of the miniseries? I think the books are better, though, because there are piles of sex scenes. Sadly while some of the minis are available on DVD (though mysteriously not the first two) they are not at netflix.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever saw any of them, sad to say. I probably remember the commercials, though. I think I saw the beginning of I'll Take Manhattan, if that was with Valerie Bertinelli. I remember taking over a magazine of her father's empire and when asked which one she was going to try to save she said, "Buttons and Bows. The one that started it all."

[meezergal.livejournal.com]

Great, fun trash! I love to read some utterly mindless trash sometimes as a vacation for my brain. I want to go to lunch with Judith Krantz sometime and talk about all kinds of totally superficial stuff with her, then English lit. I was surprised to find out she actually got a degree from Wellsley!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

They are always to be found in beach houses, along with M*A*S*H and Jaws and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and a lot of Readers Digest Condensed Books.

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

ha, jaws. i reread that a LOT. the dinner party scene, for some reason, it's very class-fraught. also there's the whole business where the wife gets dressed for her assignation and goes nuts with the talcum powder. that scarred me. i still do that.

my parents did a lot of visiting- relatives, old friends. not all of them had any books at all but when they did it was like that. they used to have roots, remember? usually next to gwtw, which is funny. and rich man, poor man- that was educational. james herriot, whom i loved. certain romances- the flame and the flower. sidney sheldon. jacqueline susann. taylor caldwell- i was nuts for taylor caldwell, who is kind of like a catholic ayn rand. oh, wow.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Did they have Thorn Birds? Sacajawea? I remember my mother reading those books.

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

omg, how could i leave off thorn birds? i don't remember sacajawea, but there was a romance about a girl captured by the indians that stuck in my head.

[dana-kujan.livejournal.com]

Was there one where Stephanie Powers was twins? One was a suburban mom, the other a rich jet-setter. One may have been married to Barry Bostwick, the other employed Jeremy Brett as a secretary/man servant/gay bff. One died, the other took her place. Is that a spoiler?

Any of them that starred my first love Lindsay Wagner. Extra points if she got to have sex with Anthony Hopkins.

Nope, I've never read the books. The writing was too god awful to enjoy the trash.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Deceptions wasn't Judith Krantz, though looking at it, it certainly could have been! Stefanie Powers was in Mistral's Daughter as the mother of said daughter, and the model for Stacy Keach's crazy Picassoesque painter.

omg the Lindsay Wagner/Anthony Hopkins one was some sequel to A Woman of Substance. I'm shocked that Hopkins was in a Barbara Taylor Bradford mini!

You know, I jumped off at Lovers because it was about the ad industry, and suddenly the trashy fun couldn't overcome both the general sillyness of the plot and my inability to suspend disbelief—I worked in advertising, it wasn't that glamorous, and female copywriters were definitely not adored lust objects. Spring Collection still seems kind of lame, but I might root up The Jewels of Tessa Kent just to see what it was doing.

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

spring collection IS lame except when she's dwelling on the clothes, though the subplot about the model who discovers she's a lesbian is rather charming (a bit like a certain wide-green-eyed southern fic character we've shared). tessa kent was disappointing- too much time spent on cardboard characters and too little on the jewels! still, there are a few old-schoolfun bits.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

She's got a whole thing about models and actresses who are secret lesbians—remember Scruples? God, and that fashion editor was played by Gene Tierney! She was so perfectly predatory.

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

i'd forgotten that casting. she WAS perfectly predatory but it was cognitively dissonant because the editor in the book was described as so spectacularly ugly and gene tierney was surely one of the five or ten most beautiful women ever.

[aome.livejournal.com]

*coughs* I still own Princess Daisy and Scruples Two, for those times I need brain candy. Had to replace my copy of PD - it fell apart. (To be fair, it fell apart after first reading and only got worse from there. :P) For Princess Daisy, I'm actually drawn to the plot - for whatever it's worth - and the characters. For Scruples Two, it's more about people being reckless (plus, the sex). I read Scruples Two before the original - can't tell you the number of series I've unintentionally read in the wrong order.

I actually cannot remember if I've read Dazzle and Til We Meet Again. They sound vaguely familiar but I don't remember anything else.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Dazzle is the one about the photographer, and Til We Meet Again is about the woman who's in the sort of USO thing in WWI and her two daughters, one of whom learns to fly before WWII and they live in LA, and the other one is in occupied Paris.

[aome.livejournal.com]

*checks Amazon* Ok, Dazzle, I've read. It mostly failed to really grab me, but I do recall a rather striking lesbian scene. :P TWMA still not ringing any bells, but I still couldn't swear one way or the other.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

TWMA also had a mini starring Courtney Cox and Hugh Grant as the requisite slimy bad guy. But yeah, they definitely all do run together. I'd just say that TWMA is the only one, iirc, that never makes it to present day. I think Mistral's Daughter eventually does, and the rest are all mostly in the present, but TWMA ends in the 60s someplace, or something.

[tiffanynichelle.livejournal.com]

Just passing through and OMG Judith Krantz was my crack when I was a kid. Now I want to reread Mistral's Daughter and 'Till We Meet Again. I know we have them in hardcover somewhere around here.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

TWMA is definitely my favorite. I'm writing this 40s AU right now and I know it was influenced by that book. After all, is there much difference between certain kinds of fun trashy fiction and certain kinds of fic? I think not!

I also loved Mistral's Daughter, esp the mini which had Stacy Keach running around being crazy. I'm surprised by the Princess Daisy love I'm seeing from folks, I admit.

I'm glad you stopped by on a fun topic!

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

as a trashy writer, she's a very good trashy writer in that she actually WRITES, unlike far too many bestseller machines out there. i really do think there are a lot of people who only like books that tell rather than show. danielle steel is the apotheosis of the problem- i never made it past the first few chapters of any of that bizarre woman's works. they're not books, they're very long synopses.

that said, the oldest are the best, though she usually comes through with the clothes and the decor. she's also good with food, and for me with my little house/alcott obsession there can never be enough food in comfort reading.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hate Steel. I think there's something to be said that Steel wrote tons more books than Krantz. You can read all of Krantz's books in a summer.

I hopped off with Lovers because the "glam" industry was advertising, and I was like, bitch please. Also, female copywriters are not lust objects. I didn't think Dazzle and Scruples Two were all that great, because Dazzle didn't have a compelling heroine, and Scruples Two felt like a fixit book, like there were fans who always thought that Billie should be with Spider so Krantz just wrote it. I think that was because of the mini, myself, because the actress who played Valentine was both unknown and boring, while in the book she was a lot of fun. Also Vito was less tiresome in the book than in the mini.

I find all the Princess Daisy love interesting, as it isn't a favorite of mine. I found the villainy of the villain to be a bit too serious, and the heroine too remote for me, not that it doesn't have a lot of great moments and I would never skip it in a reread. You won't be surprised that Till We Meet Again is my fave!

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

daisy is my favorite, though the original scruples is a very close second. hmm, why? in part it's the settings. european aristocracy and their chateaux, and above all circa-1980 new york, that new york magazine new york that meant everything to me. there's that bit at the end where they're assigning the guests to the carriages, governor carey with anne ford uzielli...i knew all about anne ford uzielli. los angeles had its intrigue, but could not compete.

then, to me personally billy was more remote than daisy. she was intimidating and assertive. also, and this did not strike me until many years later, i think i was negatively influenced by her diet saga. she is described at the outset as unspeakably fat, grotesque, "a baby hippo." and iirc she is five ten or eleven and about 210 pounds. over an ideal weight, certainly, but wtf. and iirc further the weight she achieves and maintains is in the 120s, which is of course necessary for the haute couture thing, but krantz fudges this, as it were, with all the stuff about the magnificent womanly figure she's hiding under there. better tom wolfe and the social x-rays. this was not the only book that perniciously influenced me- someday i'll bore you about a really rather weird 80s teen romance called dreams can come true- but suffice it to say i could never get 100% on board with billy for a number of reasons. also, the guy daisy ends up with struck me in the book as a dead ringer for the freshman i was madly in love with at the time (who did in fact, if i can trust the last picture somebody showed me, grow up to somewhat resemble robert urich),

it's been a long time since i read twma but i remember liking the plot and characters even though it didn't have the detail level i prefer. conversely i do like the clothing, food, and decor porn in both scruples sequels but they fall short otherwise.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Billy's weight loss was insane, and was basically "always be hungry all the time." No wonder she was so obsessed with spending money and fucking people. I was more about Valentine and Spider. I adored Valentine—remember that whole weird thing about her boss at the knock-off label getting fucked in the office by the bitchy designer? It was the first gay sex scene I'd ever read, and in retrospect, even better because you'd think the closet case businessman would maintain his top-ness and the bitchy designer would be a queeny bottom, BUT NO.

I'd forgotten that whole NY section of Princess Daisy. It definitely deserves a re-read!

*ironic use of icon*

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

best icon ever.

valentine and spider were absolutely my favorites. as for that sex scene, i am now thinking about both our idol fic, and i am giggling. influence is a strange and wondrous thing.