Hiss, boo

Seriously, I am so disappointed in you, NPR. As part of their obnoxiously condescending "My Guilty Pleasure" series, author Helen Simonson has contributed an essay on her love for Georgette Heyer... despite the fact that she appears to have confused Heyer with someone else, someone whose heroines always "[hold their chins] a little higher than the other simpering misses" until they meet "some brooding gentleman". Um, no. One of the coolest things about Heyer is the way she didn't always match up the lovely, fearless heroine with the great rake, and even when she did, there was usually something about the match that tweaked it, turning what could have been another stale Regency romance into something a little more interesting—and that something was Heyer's sense of humor and gift for creating endearing characters, not her meticulous historical research (although I'm not knocking the meticulous research). She wrote some truly great books, some mediocre ones, and some stinkers, but anyone who considers themselves a fan but limits themselves to "slyly" buying Heyer's books at yard sales can suck it.