You Learn Something New Every Day

If I haven't mentioned it before, one of my most beloved guilty pleasures is the Trashy Audio Book.

Originally, I tried listening to audiobooks at the gym, as an incentive to work out, but I was forever switching over to NPR, or in the evenings, opting for the TV band on my radio/Discman. (This works better in the midwest, where network television starts at 7 p.m. and the really good stuff hits the air around 8, perfect for walking home from work or putting in some time on the elliptical. When you're on the west coast and have to wait until 9, it doesn't work nearly so well.)

Then I became ensnared in a protracted bout of insomnia -- brought on by a combination of too much coffee, not enough exercise, and a ton of anxiety about school and career prospects. One night, I grabbed my iPod and listened to Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Practically Everything, " determined not to care how long it took me to fall asleep. I was out like a light inside of 20 minutes.

So that's how it started. Once I branched out into novels, I discovered that some books would hold my attention so well that I could actually bribe myself into going for a walk if it meant listening to the next installment. But whether I listen to it as I fall asleep or walk around the neighborhood, it has to be a ripping yarn.

I have tried, repeatedly, to go the classy route, with mixed results. Dickens works out pretty well, because he's a master story teller. "The Emperor's Children" by Claire Messud was praised high and low when it came out last year, but it was a dreadful slog. Similarly, I don't think I'll ever get past the second chapter of "The Time Traveler's Wife," although I am cautiously optimistic about my chances with "Bel Canto."

But in the end, the best options are distinctly, hmm, populist. Elmore Leonard is great; Carl Hiassen even better, if that's possible. (Hiassen seems to keep a closer eye on the karmic scale, with the result that fewer people die through misadventure than in Leonard.) I've cut a giant swath through the backlist of Lois McMaster Bujold, a science fiction/fantasy writer of tremendous gifts but absolutely no intellectual cachet. (I wish it were otherwise. If Octavia Butler can score a MacArthur for her work, than Bujold should at least be in the running for her smart, shockingly well-observed fiction.)

In my last visit with Bujold, I realized with some pleasure that she was clearly an enormous fan of Jane Austen and, bestill my heart, Dorothy L. Sayers. The vogue for Austen is seemingly unkillable, and every month bring some new, close-but-no-cigar attempt at continuing her legacy. But Dorothy L. Sayers enjoys no such continual reuse, alas, and once you read through her books, you are at an end, until you forget the plots sufficiently to go back and re-read them. (There are two attempted sequels, based on notes found among her papers, but I cannot recommend them.)

Sayers was a mystery novelist, working through the 1920s and into the 30s, before becoming considerably more theological in her interests and switching over to writing religious dramas for the stage. Her chief protagonist was the younger son of a peer, one Lord Peter Wimsey -- a self-styled upper-class twit, with plenty of money and free time. Her novels have all had their moment in the Masterpiece Theater spotlight, although I don't think the definitive Peter Wimsey has been captured on film. If you could get Hugh Grant to completely immerse himself in the slick-haired, monocle-wearing fashions of 1920, you might be in the neighborhood.

Anyway, it was with great pleasure that I realized Bujold was borrowing subtly from both Austen AND Sayers in her Miles Vorkosigan series. Going back to the start of the book, I noticed that the dedication mentioned Jane, Dorothy and a third name that meant nothing to me: Georgette.

That, it turns out, was a reference to Georgette Heyer, a contemporary of Sayers who seems to have single-handedly invented Regency romance. It's a genre for which I have very little respect, having spent many hours as an Oak Park library aide putting to rights the endless inventory of paperback romances, all with interchangeable titles like "As My Lord Would Have It" and "A Decidedly Awkward Affair," illustrated with girls in empire gowns touching their fans to their chins with an air of elegant bewilderment.

But to begin with, Heyer set the bar very, very high. She was a thorough student of the Regency era, accumulating vast quantities of research materials on everything from slang to snuffboxes, and knew her history cold. Her work, like Bujold's, is not openly derivative of Austen -- it has a tone and a style all its own, and is likewise satisfying on its own terms, whether you get all the references or not.

The best illustration I can give of the inherent differences between Austen and Heyer: I am currently halfway through "A Civil Contract," which follows the struggles of a destitute young lord, attempting to repair his late father's decades of fiscal idiocy. A man, in other words, in much the same predicament as Elizabeth Bennett or the sisters from "Sense and Sensibility," in that he has nothing but his good name and a desire to protect his family from dishonor. Except that Austen could never have written this book. Unmarried to the last, I don't think she was ever able to know a man well enough to write entirely from his point of view.

(Or, alternatively, she thought it was her duty to tell the more-neglected female side of the story, and I can't say she was wrong. Happily, a hundred years later, Heyer was willing to give it a shot. An electrifying thought: What would Margaret Atwood make of a Regency novel?)

Anyway, I am greatly encouraged by this new find. I have no idea what the rest of Heyer's bibliography is like -- and she is reportedly an extraordinarily trite mystery novelist -- but I am really looking forward to investigating her other stuff.

P.S. The excellent Jane Espenson often finds a way to tie a seemingly unrelated tidbit of information back to her governing theme of Writing the Best Spec Script You Possibly Can. I think we all know that if I chose, I could tie this post into my current mania for Advice on Moving to Los Angeles, but we're all adults here, so I'm going to let you make that connection for yourself.