I read an article at the weekend about how many international readers interpreted everyday British things featured in the Harry Potter universe as part of the wizardly worldbuilding.
Train trolleys, schools houses and prefects, treacle tarts, Christmas crackers – all things that even Muggles get to experience over here in the UK.
Understandably, when something is unfamiliar to us, it’s very easy to file it under ‘it’s a magical world‘ and get on with the adventure.
House Andrews books have always been especially good at weaving real cultural details, traditions, references and bits of history into their fictional worlds. Their worldbuilding twists and plays with real-life elements, and I am sure most of us have found the boundary blurred at some point or another.
This may not be the clearest example, but it’s one that is always fresh, because people ask about it at least a couple of times a week: why isn’t Andrea Kate’s maid of honour? It’s because Kate is having a Russian wedding, and Andrea is a married woman who would not stand as a ‘maid’ in the same way she would in other parts of the world. It’s not a relationship rift, just a different wedding tradition!
I also remember making an Innkeeper quiz one time and bringing up one of my favourite little jokes from Sweep of the Blade, to great BDH puzzlement:
“Salutations,” Maud said. “Where is the hunting party?”
The Stablemaster didn’t look up. “Gone.”
“Gone where?”
He stopped and gave her a flat look. “Hunting.”
“In which direction?”
“North.”
“I need a mount.”
The Chatty Cathy of the vampire world favored her with another look. “I don’t have any.”
Andrews, Ilona. Sweep of the Blade, The Innkeeper Chronicles 4. NYLA Publishing, 2019. Kindle edition, Chapter 17
Are you ready? I’m not sure you are:
Chatty Cathy was a talking doll first sold in 1959, and her name eventually became shorthand in the US for someone who talks and talks. And incidentally, if I’m sleeping peacefully in my house and I hear “Tell me a story” in the quiet of the night, that’s Chatty Cathy’s house now. I’m outta there.
Now, the Horde is curious!
Please tell us what detail from an Ilona Andrews book made you stop and look it up?
Did you ever assume something was fantasy worldbuilding, until you discovered it was a totally real cultural reference?
First?
First First of the week 🏆
I found my old Chatty Cathy doll when cleaning out my dad’s house a couple of years ago. Obv, he wa a hoarder, but clearly I hadn’t helped…
I had my own Chatty Cathy, and yes, it was a creepy as it looks in the commercials!
This isn’t fantasy but general fiction. I grew up in Australia. I read books and assumed everything was fantasy. It was a revelation to discover that some of those books were set in real places in the UK. I had not recognised place names and assumed they were fictional too.
I’ve been called “Chatty Cathy” by my family for years, and now my young kids say it! Same with “weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!”
I loved my weebles!
So did I!!!!!!
Though the slogan isn’t *totally* true.
Weebles *will* fall down …. if you wobble them on the edge of the table
Weebles Tree House was my favorite toy.
I resemble that Webble without a cane to walk, off our property! That’s what I tell people, and some even know what I’m saying.
I don’t know what weebles are (something to look up), but I recognize the rest of the phrase from an old rap song that I never realized was a reference until now! From “Peter Piper” by Run DMC: “My turntables might wobble, but they don’t fall down!”
A Weeble was an egg shaped toy painted to look like a person. They were weighted on the bottom so that they didn’t tip over.
Hahaha! Thanks for the laugh Audra. Now I’m going to hear that weebles wobble jingle in my head all day!
A talking doll makes me think of that scary “Talky Tina” doll from the Twilight Zone episode. (Which I know was inspired by Chatty Cathy.)
“My name is Talky Tina, and I DON’T LIKE YOU.”
Without a doubt the scariest episode. I still hate dolls because of it.
I had a Chatty Cathy as a child. Loved her! And southerners have their own version of treacle tart: brown sugar pie.
Those are very different desserts 😀
The treacle tart filling is just breadcrumbs and golden syrup, and it’s much, much thinner https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/treacletart_67656. Looks about a quarter of the US pie in cross-section.
Brown sugar pie has a thick layer of filling, rich and custardy, with things like butter and eggs and cream in it.
Never having actually searched out a definition or recipe for treacle tart (first encounter for me was in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a child; and thank you, Mod R, for the recipe link) I had always assumed the closest dessert here in the USA would be shoo-fly pie. Which is mostly molasses, brown sugar and some flour, seasoned with cinnamon and cloves, where the flour settles out to form something like a cakey crust when it bakes–comes out looking like a thicker and gooey-er version of that treacle tart. Not a true tart or pie, as it has no pastry crust, but not exactly a cake, either. Definitely deadly sweet and delicious, though. (And now that I have my grandma’s recipe out, I’m going to have to add a jar of molasses to my shopping list…)
The thing I had to look up was mammoth donkey. I know horses and horse breeds and k ow the difference between a mile and a donkey but had never heard of one! Very cool and learned something new!
Yes, me too
Me too!
+1
Me too
me too
Now that you have looked that up, look up the mule jumping contests in Missouri. It isn’t like jumping competitions with a horse.
I totally looked that one up too!
Wait, they really exist? WOW!
I always assumed they were fictional. xD
Later,in 1964 (?) Mattel made a Chatty Baby. I had two: a Caucasian baby and an African American baby. They both had the same sound track, and my friend and I would sit and pull the strings at the same time to see if they synced up. Sometimes they did. LOL
We had friends who
had a Mammoth jack donkey to breed to Thoroughbred mares to create the “Chamberlain Mules”. Smart, stubborn, HUGE, and rideable. some of the best mules there ever was.
The first reference i searched was mrs o’leary’s cow (i’m from Argentina).
I read about that on Wikipedia after reading the chapter, I remember! (Germany)
Hi Analia Im from Argentina too. Im happy to find a compatriota here
Never gave a thought to either of those examples. I now will give away my age and say my friends and I wanted the doll and none of us had one. Very pricey for the time.
Things I look up are mostly foreign names for things that you can generally figure from context, but I just want a bit more info. Kolovershi for example. Roman’s charmed me into buying the insulated cup 😁
I didn’t realize that the Kentucky Castle was a real place until I passed it on a mundane trip to EKU. I knew that there was a castle in Versailles, KY, but didn’t put the pieces together until we drove past.
lol. I had no idea it was a real place until I read this. 😅
Now I need to look it up!
Wow, I missed that one!
We drove past drive from/to Virginia/Oklahoma!
Just out of curiosity, do you pronounce Versailles, Kentucky as ‘Ver-sigh’ or ‘Ver-sails’? I lived in Ohio for a time, and I was stumped when I had to find Versails on a map! This turned into a game for the family, finding towns named after cities across the world, and pronounced very differently in the US. Not on topic, but your comment caught my eye!
“Versails” for the Kentucky town, though language teachers will of course still pronounce the French castle as “Versigh.” Learned this in a funny way: when I was 12, my family moved to Central Kentucky. We drove to the end of the Bluegrass Parkway and didn’t see any signs, so Dad pulled in to a gas station and I volunteered to go in and ask for directions. Of course, I walked in and asked for “Ver-sigh” and the attendants had no clue what I was talking about. (Wasn’t as shocked as I might have been: we were moving from Tennessee, which has its own tradition of mispronounced international names. Years later I lived in a little Tennessee town pronounced “Luh-FAY-it”.
Funny, completely true story. I went to Midway College (now Midway University) in Kentucky. It’s equidistant from Versailles and Lexington, if you think of the three points of a triangle. So my mom and I are on a campus tour, she drops me off, then heads toward Versailles. She wants to make sure she doesn’t get lost (being it was before cell phones) and since she didn’t have a lot of time, stops at a gas station to ask for “ver-sigh” and the attended looks at her like she’s insane and says (in a very heavy regional twang), “You mean ‘ver-sails?” Gobsmacked was a good word to describe my mom’s reaction. And don’t get me wrong: my mom grew up on a little farm in rural Indiana. But she thought that was the funniest thing ever.
I lived in KY for a time and came across this pronunciation curiosity: a town named Subtle. The word subtle, as in something understated or hard to notice, has a silent b. The town name does not: SUB-tel. It was a lesson to me in “people are different.”
We lived in Indiana when we were first married. One street in town was La Fountaine St. (not pronounced the French way, despite having La at the front). Little town nearby was Russiaville (Roo sha ville). The list goes on and on. Sadly, we came to realize it seemed to b related to the lack of importance many ppl put on education. Including some (but not all) of my husband’s colleagues teaching high school.
Illinois has a town named Vienna, pronounced “Vy-enna” or “Vy-Anna” rather than the Ve-enna of Austria, and another named Cairo, pronounced “Cay-ro,” unlike Egypt’s Kai-ro.
MA has a version of the castle. Check out Hammond Castle – bonus points for a queer inventor as the creator
For reference, I’m from
Southern Ontario, Canada (near Toronto). I thought Kudzu vine was a made up thing. Then I saw it mentioned in another post apocalyptic novel by another author also set in the Southern US. Now I Google things I’m not sure about.
Kudzu is scarier than even Chatty Cathy!
I eat kudzu for breakfast!!! Well, kinda. Koreans (and Japanese and Chinese people) do use kudzu in certain dishes, including tea.
I hear people use it to make paper sometimes.
It gets a lot less scary when you sic the goats at it. They love the stuff! Hmm, perhaps we could market kudzu feta?
The vine that ate the south.
I’ve heard several people call it that. I think most of them had spent a few years there, and I know a couple were raised in Louisiana. Another was from Alabama. My entire career was in academia. Students come from all over.
I think Huntsville AL used to have a newspaper where the arts and events section had the subtitle “We cover the South like kudzu.”
Agreed! Cant think why no-one has written an apocalyptic novel about some sort of atmospheric phenomenon that makes kudzu unstoppable. Though a horror movie might work better.
Mammoth donkey was the reference I looked up. On dolls, does anyone remember the Thumbelina doll that moved when you wound it up? One of my classmates had one in the 1960’s. I didn’t have Chatty Cathy but I heard they broke easily,
Thanks a lot, now I’ll have that damn Thumbelina jingle playing in my head all day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3OOx3-r6DM
And my little sister had Skiddle Kiddles.
“Skiddle Kiddles
Little Kiddles that can walk and can run…”
(You started it. Brainwork’s)
BrainWORMS
everything from slavic to middle eastern mythos were always a fun to dive into… spent endless time with my friend google lol…..
that was always the fun with IA books. you get to learn about loads of trivial stuff
happy Monday Mod R & IA
Same here – I spent a significant period of my childhood in Europe and became fascinated with the snippets of Slavic, Ukrainian, Russian, and Moldovan cultures I could glimpse through the Iron Curtain. Then I started seeing some of those snippets in the Kate Daniels novels, and in the blog. So I started to see what I could learn on my own, too. There are too many references to cite just one, but I now have three new cookbooks and a whole different understanding of teas and tisanes.
I had a Chatty Cathy and so did my sister. We thought it was hilarious to make them talk to each other. Then our little brother pulled their strings too hard and turned them into just other doll, and we abandoned them because yes, they were really ugly. My Shirley Temple doll was much more attractive. Good times 😊
I know I’ve looked up things in IA books; it’s one of the great things about reading e-books on a PC; just pop over into the browser and say “what was THAT?!” and maybe get an answer. Off hand, I can’t recall examples from IA, but I know I’ve run into some really strange things in other books by authors who were historians or had other specialized knowledge, and just tweaked things… just enough to adapt from “real world” to “unreal world”. Or not. Making it really hard to know for certain. (The example that really comes to my mind is Barry Hughart, and his tales of Number Ten Ox and Master Li.)
Good grief. I haven’t thought about the Barry Hughart books in years. I must now go forth and reread them! Thank you for the reminder
I’m with you! Bridge of Birds led to me to the van Gulik’s Judge Dee, Honor Raconteur led me to C and K dramas, my son gave me the Hu (which led to the World Nomad Games), and I’ve been down so many rabbit holes . . .
If you want to go down a rabbit hole of folklore and cultural reference you need to become a Terry Pratchett fan, I highly recommend his books
Terry Pratchett is most definitely a must read, as someone that got the new book for Christmas
I miss the Annotated Pratchett File. I think the last book added was Monstrous Regiment.
I love Master Li (and the slight flaw in his character) and Number Ten Ox. I’m so glad others love him too!
I’ve only read the first book; keep meaning to find the subsequent ones. It will happen eventually!
There are, unfortunately, only three of them. They’ve been reprinted in one volume, but I forget the title – something entirely dull.
Loved those books!
It’s usually the monsters….reading about them in a different author fantasy novel and going…..oh! I guess that’s a real [mythological] thing! The spider witch woman thingy was one of those….maybe a Dali novella…..
I mean, I remember Chatty Cathy. General newer references are ones I need to check out I did Google the origins of bringing receipts even though I was familiar with it. I was just curious.
If you’re American, Chatty Cathy is obv not one of the foreign culture references for you 🙂
It’s a generational thing, even for Americans, Mod R. I’m younger enough that I knew a Chatty Cathy was someone who talked endlessly, but had no idea it was an actual Baby Boomer toy.
As a Cathy, I had Chatty Cathy and Baby Chatty Cathy. Obviously, my family appreciated my verbal skills. While, I don’t have a IA unique quote, I find most of what I look up is historical fact. I have learned so much from all the books! Happy Monday!
I’ve read more about different pantheons because of the references in the books as they made me curious. Thank you HA for expanding my knowledge!
I’m from the teddy ruxbin generation and didn’t have one but my mom was freaked by them they reminded her of a chatty cathy doll. She was like NOPE not in my house!! I had to look up the animals in romans book and i remember there was a post that explained them at some point too.
I looked up those animals too! I love Roman. As I’m guessing we all do.
I doubt Judwinga’s species was the first thing I looked up, but I remember doing it. And looking up Chinese ferret-badger. So I don’t look up places so much as critters and folklore. I was one of those who didn’t follow the recommendation to NOT look up the story behind one of the creatures in Sanctuary, the melalo, I think.
Yep, Jadwiga’s species is one of the few things I’ve looked up. I occasionally do a deeper dive into folklore as it gets mentioned, but usually recognize it as RL folklore. As it were. Although some of it is manufactured RL folklore. Being American, I didn’t have to look up jackalopes.
I thought Finch was kicking children across the bog that Fred and George Weasley left in a corridor at Hogwarts because he was “punting” them across
That’s where a reasonable familiarity with Dorothy L. Sayers comes in handy.
oh.. that makes more sense. But kicking them seemed much more entertaining than boating them about. (Although I seem to recall wondering at the time how they got back.)
I love that scene with Maud.
It fascinated me that American schools didn’t have the house system, and my grandchildren, all of whom loved Harry Potter books, had no idea why it was important to contribute to your house points.
A couple decades ago there was a small movement to pilot the house system into American high schools, as a way to keep kids from falling through the cracks in a school of well over a thousand, maybe two thousand, students in four grades. Sorting into four houses meant closer relationships between faculty and students. The schools that did it were happy with their results, but I don’t know how far the movement expanded, if at all.
Not all schools have the house system over here, but it isn’t uncommon, I believe. Mine did, but it was an independent (paid for) school–so I can tell you that boarding schools have a LOT more pastoral care than a housemaster/mistress that occasionally comes to the common room, and a single medical staff member.
Wait, what? American here. The house system wasn’t an HP thing? That’s real??
It certainly is. Neither the primary school or secondary school I went to did a house system but at least one of the other secondary schools in my hometown did. My daughter’s primary school has 4 houses and the secondary schools we’ve looked also have houses
my high school house system was named after abandoned Abbey’s. In Northern England there were plenty of them. End of year class trips were to your House Abbey where you did took rubbings of gravestones. Oh, that brings back memories….
The house system is in use at several US universities – though I can only be sure of Rice University in Houston, Texas – though we refer to them as “colleges’ instead of “houses”.
The system was stolen from UK universities and implemented in the 1950’s, I believe.
There are currently 12 colleges there as of this year (only 6 when I was a student 50 years ago). About 300 students are randomly assigned to each college. There is a dormitory building to house a large portion of the undergrads on campus and a dining hall for each, though living in one’s college is not required.
Australian schools (public and private) have the house system, but it mostly applies to sports competitions, for example the school swimming carnival, everyone earns points for their house by participating in races. There are trophies at the end of the year. Some private schools use the house system for pastoral care as well.
The intermediate I attended in New Zealand did houses ( I only remember two of the four names though, Kia Kaha and Aroha) high school and primary didn’t.
My daughter’s junior high school separates each grade in half. We’re outside Chicago, so last year it was Bears and Blackhawks. The bad part is if you’re a bear and your friend is a blackhawk, you never see them.
I always wondered whether House Andrews were coin collecting at some point. Honestly, it’s very rare that people know that the first coins were made of electrum!
Some things are just personal reference, I think. Growing up, I completely missed the “wedding planning” bug. Then (and now) it seemed insane to me to spend lavish amounts of time and money on them. I never paid attention to wedding traditions – in any culture – and why someone would rigorously follow what tradition demanded escapes me. I do read the invitation, buy the appropriate gift, wear what I think are the appropriate clothes, but that is as far as I go.
I couldn’t really see Kate being bound by a tradition that she didn’t really grow up in, either, but it was a minor thing.
Same. As declaring a Maid/Matron of Honor was not on Roman’s list of wedding things Kate”had” to do, I just figured she let everything else slide as she wasn’t interested. We married at the courthouse, so I completely empathized with the desire for simplicity. Never occurred to me that it was a cultural reference. If something is in a foreign language or a specific creature/deity that I am unfamiliar with in any thing I read via ebook, I have gotten spoiled by the right click, look it up online feature. I don’t do it as often for the rare print books because of the added activation energy required to put down the paper book and pick up a mobile device. 🤷♀️
I looked up treacle when I read Alice in Wonderland for the first time. At the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the dormouse tells a story about a “treacle well.”
I had already read the first few Harry Potter books by that point, so I was then able to understand what treacle tart was.
It’s a common misconception that treacle wells up from the earth like water–in the UK we know it comes from the treacle mines!
I actually live in one of the historical towns with deep treacle deposits!
Terry Pratchett will live on as long as we remember him!
OMG! I looked up treacle mining in Great Britain and there are articles and a podcast on it. I thought it was a Disc World reference! How wonderful!
Sir Terry had inspiration 😀
Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably priced Love! And a Hard-Boiled Egg!
It’s the wrong season for lilacs though. Although maybe in the Last Continent?
I don’t think I look up what I’ve never heard of before. When I read the Kate Daniels books, I assume the references are a mix of lore and IA imagination. It’s actually the stuff I know a little about that I research afterwards. Like the Wendigo in book 7. I was already familiar with it from the Witcher games, but IA wrote it a little differently and I wanted to know what the “original” lore actually said.
I think it’s impressive IA uses the lore that’s out there as a base and then weaves their own ideas into it to make it work better for their stories. They are so creative!
Sometimes in Hidden Legacy world I don’t know what’s magic and what’s Texas. Bluebonnets were one thing I looked up, but there’s more subtle things it’s harder to check.
Like for instance Augustine‘s secretary having green hair – is this because it’s magical world and people look more colourful, or is she particularly avant-garde and Augustine is trying to convey a particular message about his business being cutting edge, or are high end secretaries just cooler in Texas for real.
On the other hand, the Edge felt exactly like the poor rural area I grew up in, despite being on the other side of the world and not monster-infested
Curran’s beast form.
I looked up a lot of the animals mentioned in Magic Claims, including Curran’s ancestral form.
Me too!
This is a great topic! So many things I looked up! Not only because I thought they were only in the book’s world, but often because I thought they were real and I wanted to know the history of it.
I’m always so impressed with when they take a ‘real world’ god and twist it to fit their world. THAT is what I fangirl over in the KD books. I love to see what Google says about the gods, then how HA has created them to be.
I’ve read up on everything from ancient times in Irak/Iran for the Kate Daniels series.
Read up on place names in the US that are described as being warped from magic.
Read about the whole Russian/Slavic pantheon.
and so much more (Greetings from Germany)
Shiva, Rakshasas, lions various knives, fighting styles, Morrigan, black dogs, marids, ifrit, wendigo,
I loved the Chatty Cathy reference. When I was young, my sister had a blonde Chatty Cathy doll and watching the commercial brought me back to playing in our attic listening to the doll saying “Tell me a story”! Good times! HaHa ; )
all the playfull noun/adjective + ‘R’ Us (allusions to Toys ‘R’ Us 🙂
I had to look up to see if North America ever had lions.
Not necessarily a thing but a phrase that I am 99% sure what the reference is but would love to have it confirmed. At the end of Chapter 10 of TKWNKM, Solentine pays Maggie a visit and she says to him “I could you tell you, but I have to charge.” Is that a nod to Kelis’ song “Milkshake” or something else?
I took as being a reference to that song
I think it’s because Maggie’s business is information. Solentine isn’t the boy she’s trying to bring from the yard 😏
I thought it was a rift off the old “I could tell you, but then I’d have to k*ll you” bit.
I love that pirogies are available any time even from street vendors. We used to make huge batches and it was a family project. we even had homemade pirogies at my wedding reception. All the food was cooked by My Mom and Aunts. some frozen in advance to have enough. There was ham, turkey, stuffed cabbage and pirogies with all the sides. My guests from work were amazed
Looking up the Viki streaming app mentioned in Catalina’s trilogy had unexpected time sucking consequences.
I got it from a blog mention I think rather than the books, but the outcome was the same 😂 Though that did turn into a fixed weekly KDrama evening with my neighbour so that’s a definite plus!
I’m old enough to have owned Chatty Cathy
I inherited my older sisters one. But by the time I got her the voice wasn’t as good as it could be.
In Magic Tides when the ferry driver pins his foot to the deck of the boat with the crossbow and Kate calls him Simo Hayha bc Andrea had a rifle named after him. Totally thought Simo was made up, but noooooooope.
He’s also the subject of a Sabaton song called White Death
Oooohh! Really?!
*goes off to google ‘sabaton’ and ‘white death’*
Love the combo of Umaru-chan, judgemental crystal cat, and disassociating china owl as a Monday visual vibe.
They’re Ilona’s desk friends 🙂
This isn’t HA, but I’ve giggled that “Turkish Delight” seems to have become an American eponym for reading about an unfamiliar cultural reference in a book. We all have to read _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ in school, and we all wind up wondering, “What did the Turks make that is so delightful that Edmund betrays his family for the promise of more?”
Fresh lokum can be delicious – and all the more to kids in sugar-ration England, I imagine. But we all know that decision is all Edmund 😀
It’s not called turkish delight, but Liberty Orchards in Oregon makes what they call applets and cotlets which are made with apple or apricot and the apple ones are flavored with rose water. They’ve been in business for over 50 years. They’re really good so if anyone wants to see what all the turkish delight fuss is about you can mail order them
Home Goods frequently has imported Turkish delight in several flavors, especially going into the winter holiday season. I like the rose-flavored ones. One year I got boxes for each of my siblings’ families, and no one had ever had it before, though we had all read TLTWATW.
I am reminded of a young woman I met who had just moved to Oregon from western Texas and was freaked out by the trees. She had seen forests in movies, but just assumed they were CGI…
I grew up in dairy country in VT and in 6th grade these people moved up there from New York city. We were astounded that the children had never seen more than one tree at at time, never seen a meadow, never mind a cow. We couldn’t imagine people who had never seen a cow.
Decades ago I had a friend who worked in a children’s home. She took the teenage girls to a state park to camp. We are in central Illinois but the city kids had never seen cattle before. They thought they were vicious and also believed there were wolves. This may have been encouraged to believe this to discourage them from wandering off.
lol, I used bears for the same purpose with my own kids on a trip to WV, back when they were preschool/primary aged. Amazing how fast they decided to stick closer on the trail. In my defense, it absolutely was bear country, though we weren’t super likely to run into any in that particular location.
it’s mainly the food items that I have to look up. there was a recipe for a sandwich in Innkeeper that had some sort of whip thing in. if I remember it was some sort of canned cheese? you can’t even get that over here!
It was Miracle Whip 🙂 . I went on a whole rabbit hole about it too. It’s more like mayonnaise or salad cream than canned cheese, from what I can gather.
Not to be confused (I constantly confuse them) with Cool Whip, which is like a ready-whipped sweet topping for desserts, adjacent to whipped cream, and it comes in tubs.
Might as well be arcane substances to European readers hehe.
I can’t read those words “cool whip” without hearing Stewie from Family Guy in my head 🙈
Hahaha, “Cool (h)whip!”
Yes, MW is like salad cream, kind of on the vinegary side. Great debates happen in my cooking and recipe groups on which is the better mayo, Hellman’s or Duke’s, and there are a few MW people insisting it’s better in things like coleslaw
Then there’s the cookie vs. biscuits debates, and when the English, Scots and Australians figure out american biscuits are a kind of scone, then there’s a debate about that. There are two types of american biscuits, drop biscuits or rolled and cut with flakey layering, both really basic ingredients with baking powder.
The difference in biscuits confuses me too, as a neither US not UK reader. But even more confusing, not in IA books but elsewhere: breakfast that would include “hash browns”. Apparently something to do with potatoes…? I’m just saying, asking for hash browns here would get you something a little… different… 😅🙈
Yes, hash browns are basically shredded & fried potatoes (so a hash – a collection of cut up vegetables – made of brown – potatoes)
They can be cooked as a pile of fried potato, or as little potato patties.
Cool Whip is non-dairy whipped topping. It’s an alternative to sweetened whipped cream.
Miracle Whip is, in my opinion, a cheap alternative to mayonnaise. To me, it’s gross. 😝
They both are imo. As a kid I couldn’t stand the taste or texture of any kind of any mayo, let alone Miracle Whip. Cool Whip by itself was kinda gross, although I could sort of tolerate it in those weird Jello salads/desserts at the time. My family generally used spray whipped cream like Reddi-Wip on pies and so forth. What were we thinking? Convenience over taste, apparently, and health didn’t even enter into it.
…well now I’ve just realised I’ve been thinking miracle whip & cool whip were the same thing… guess today I learnt! I think I’ve also mixed it up a bit with like the fluff whipped marshmallow too? although I assumed the other whip was a (fake) whipped cream.
I used to think the peanut butter & jelly sandwiches was peanut butter & jelly like jello not jelly like a jam. We actually have the jam jelly but context means you say apple jelly & think of the jam & somehow the peanut butter thing just bypassed that so I defaulted to Jelly??
it didn’t sound weird but it did sound time consuming which didn’t fit the context of someone throwing the sandwich together. I eventually just assumed like individual jelly pots you get in hospital then you can get jars of it for you p&j sandwich?? 🤷♀️
PB&J in my childhood was peanut butter and grape jelly on white pasty sliced bread. In Illinois, in my childhood jelly was clear and made from juice and jam had actual fruit in it. You bought it in stores in jars or relatives made it by canning it in jars. You can also buy it in jars with peanut butter swirled with bands of jelly. Not a big fan. Cool Whip was more stable than whipped cream and could be made into no bake refrigerated pies and desserts like parfaits. Whipped cream from a can was a treat at holidays. I remember being allowed to shake the can of it and spray it onto my bowl of orange jello!
Cool Whip can be magical on a Chocolate Cream Pie😋
Miracle whip is like salad cream, but we do have canned cheese in a spray can. In the 70s we would each get our own can. It was called Cheese Whiz, had a fancy tip so it came out like the frosting edging on cake. Tastes like bad quality cheddar
Most of what I have had to look has been Katie Daniels or Hidden Legacy- Curran’s beast form, Mammoth Jenny, Simo Häyhä, lamassu, chinese ferret-badger. But one that came from the Inn was Buc-Ees. Oh, Texas!
I had one of those when I was about 5. When I watch reactions to things like Space Balls on youtube the cultural jokes are just flying over people’s heads. Re: the Swartz, just google Swartz is dead. It was a viral joke in the 1960s. My parents had pages and pages of photocopied office jokes. No one does that anymore as far as I can tell. Mom would write them down in shorthand. She’d write the christmas list and other things in shorthand that she didn’t want us to know.
I still use shorthand when didn’t want people to know what was writing, it kept my journals private from brothers. Then it became a habit any time I didn’t want people to know what was writing; back when I learned shorthand nearly everyone knew had some skill at reading it (1960’s) Now? you can write in cursive to keep younger people from understanding you are writing, especially since I learned from grandmother and she taught me to make some letters in ways that were “old fashioned” when I learned to write cursive.
I had to look up (and double check again now) the character Anapa in Gunmetal Magic. It just seems like such a folklorish name.
I always Google unfamiliar gods and monsters, and I went down an online image rabbit-hole looking at Gagra, Georgia for the inspiration for Hugh’s Castle in Magic Rises.
The first time Kate had a conversation with Edovkia, the middle witch who had the house with the chicken feet.
When I was growing up, my mom got me books with tales from the world. I had a book of Russian folklore and Baba Yaga was one of my favorites (blame my mom!!! If I go home, I think the book is still at their house).
After so many years, I needed to get reacquainted so I went down the internet memory lane with Baba Yaga 🥰
I do lookup things occasionally, like how does (or rather did) american lion look, as well as other prehistoric animals. More comically, I often need to look up just how much is a yard, furlong, ounce, fahrenheit, whatever… just to get a sense of scale. I can mostly extrapolate feet and inches, but everything else just makes my head hurt. Give me my metric system any day 😀
Also, that doll is Very Creepy.
Off the top of my head wasn’t actually in one of Ilona’s books (I think I get most of the Americanisms by context in their books) but Patricia Briggs – something about one of the vampires (a teen) lying on the table & the male main character going “[name of vampire] it’s what’s for dinner” then vampire saying I knew he’d get the reference. Then the scene moved on & wasn’t referenced again.
*I* did not get the reference. Years later I googled it during a re-read & despite trying American searches I got a bread and & it didn’t really make sense?
I finally asked on her Facebook page she & her assistant & other fans answered – some usa beef dinner advert from the 90s. 🤷♀️
The vampire’s name is Wulf. A old, scary, insane (even by vampire standards), wizard turned into a vampire.
I enjoyed that scene with Wolf on the table, but it triggered all these other commercials with beef in them. I had earworm of jingles from days when beef was in so many different commercials.
I was thinking about how Baba Yaga in Patricia Brigg’s books runs an MLM!
I understand what’s he’s referencing but I still don’t get it 🤷♀️ so I usually just continue reading & assume it’s Wulfe just being kooky lol
I look what don’t know, habit; father started me the first time I read something and asked him what it meant or was. His comment, “Look it up.” I have to admit that it is much easier than it was back in the 1960’s; now all have to do is either highlight and do a search or type in on “search the web” line.
What I get a chuckle from is things that were once part of everyday life no longer are; how long will Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who be relevant? Some of the sayings from old shows have stuck around while few people know where they came from. Like “Did Timmy fall down a well?”
Nearly every writer incorporates everyday things into their stories; I am not sure they even realize that a phrase may one day be obsolete. What I find funny is reading old authors and realizing that some phrases are still used but they no longer carry the same meaning as they did when written.
One thing when people write about characteristics of a tyrant I end up picturing a certain person because that person is in the news for those actions.
I sat in a courtroom when I was 16, having been given a ticket for reckless driving (I had been driving with a group of friends back from visiting a college. It was night, my alternator died, we drove home on 1-95 without headlights, because I didn’t know what else to do, I was SIXTEEN).
The point is that after I testified, the judge shook his head and said “this sounds like The Perils of Pauline.”
Which my father had to explain to me on the way home (charge reduced to driving with defective equipment). Bonus: he would often say “once out of the well…” referring to that show’s tendency to skip over problems. His example was an episode that ended with Pauline stuck in a well, and the next episode started “once out of the well…”
I am constantly surprised by the amount of trivia that House Andrew’s strews through their books. One of my favorites is the jagdschloss I got to visit during Cyanide’s date.
I can’t remember if I ever had that specific realization, but Urban Fantasy (with the exception of Charles de Lint) didn’t play a big part of my life until I was already in my twenties. I will say that I’ve been on Kindle since 2011, and nowadays I often find myself asking “is that a real thing/person/place?” And immediately seeing if Wikipedia has a listing. (Please do not take this as an endorsement of Kindle. This is just my current experience).
I have actually found that Wikipedia and Google have completely ruined some books for me. Just the fact of their existence. When authors get something radically wrong that I know could have been avoided with a 5 second search on either of those pages, I’m done. I’ve repeatedly said how much I respect House Andrews’ research, and that’s part of why.
I’ve been reading on Kindle for many years as well. That said, I only recently discovered the ability to look up the translation of words in other languages by highlighting the word. I was reading a book with a Puerto Rican main character, and found my very old Spanish skills inadequate. I generally don’t get sidetracked into Wikipedia.
As a teacher of American children I frequently had to explain references in books I read aloud, Harry Potter and especially the Borrowers. This was tricky since I often had a fairly vague and secondhand idea myself! When I finally got to England I realized I had understated the size of the Borrowers house for years. The kids actually didn’t believe me when I tried to describe real boarding schools! I think the house concept in schools would be hard to sell over here because there is a strong feeling against punishing the whole class for the actions of a few. I was challenged more than once for making the whole class put their heads down for five minutes so I could be heard!
Most of my life I thought “Turkish Delight” was some sort of fantasy candy (from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” only to walk through a Williams & Sanoma one year in my 40s and see a box of it. I said to my friend, “Wait this is a real thing?”
Yes. Alis Rasmussen’s (aka Kate Elliot) first book she references Albany, CA. I thought that this was a reference implying an alternate universe. It was only sometime later that I realized that not only does Albany, CA exist, but that I had driven through it on I-80 over a hundred times.
I’ve lived in Central Texas and Houston while growing up, so love trying to remember the areas described in the books. It’s fun trying to figure out what are actual buildings or places and what are the fictional ones.
What surprised me as a “real thing” was how many streets in Atlanta have “peach” in the name. 40 are “peach tree”. Y’all go something against plums down there?
Also that chocolate was a rarity but they had coffee and tea. While the coffee remains unexplained there actually are tea farms in the south. Not too many left but people expanding them to have their beloved cuppa is possible.
Georgia is known as the Peach State. They really like to name streets, highways, buildings, parks, etc. with peach-related names. Especially the Atlanta area.
remember looking up folk lore and words, in several books, but remember a doing a deeper search on who was Hugh’s dad his name, after a snippet with the innkeeper. After that started paying more attention to details and looked up more stuff on each reread of all the books. It’s why I absolutely love Ilona Andrews, and devour everything I’ve read multiple times.
Ha! I went down the rabbit hole with Saimon…Norse god, Norse Frost giant…Jötun…Norse Mythology, Germanic…and in Beowulf. I learned more than I wanted or needed. Yikes! 😂
I never had a Chatty Kathy…she scared me!
uh creepy….lol
Looked it up and the Hodag is really the mascot of Rhinelander, Wisconsin so strange. Better remember the lemon juice….
Since I was born in 1952, I read “Chatty Cathy” and didn’t even blink. After all, my younger sister had one!
Shinar in the Old Testament.
“Getting Kair Toren off of me took a minute,” from _This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me_, stopped me in my tracks. Context made it clear that it meant it took a long time to clean herself. But I’ve always thought of a minute as being short. But then I was walking with my son a few days later and he used the phrase in the same way as House Andrews. Clearly Maggie is from my son’s generation!
There is also the phrase ‘a hot minute’ which can mean either a long or suprisingly short time depending on the context, lol!
Irony resurfaces in every generation, just in new places, much like Whac-a-Mole.
I think I am familiar with a lot of extant mythology because I have been reading fantasy and science fiction and paranormal romance for over fifty years. So I mostly nod when something familiar is mentioned but then I just pay attention to how the author is using it in this particular story. I don’t really worry about how is differs from the source. I’m too busy being immersed in the story!
Roman concrete. Iron and Magic. Released June 2018. I went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole to see if the Volcanic ash thing was real and realized it was crazy that Roman concrete has lasted thousands of years but roads built a few years ago are terrible. In 2023 research was released about why Roman concrete is so long lasting and how it self-heals. I use that plus the fact that the book was written based on a (failed) April Fool’s joke as an example of why Ilona Andrew’s is an amazing author.
(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-roman-concrete-has-self-healing-capabilities/)
I often think about this.
My favorite thing about House Andrews books is mythology references. I’m very familiar with Greco-Roman, so I love that IA doesn’t reference them much. I loved the Middle Eastern, Russian, Slavic, Irish, Asian, and more references in the KD Universe books. I looked into many. I also realized I hadn’t learned much about Irish Mythology, and since I’m mostly Irish, decided to research that. It’s been an adventure. It’s difficult to find good translations of the really old Irish literature (ex the 4 Cycles). If anyone has any suggestions, that would be incredible!
I mostly look up and am bewildered by American references, more often in the blog than the books, and especially in the comments more than anything. Food and shop names are a particular stickler.
I’m from the UK. When I first heard ‘I’ll take it on advisement’ from Connor Rogan in answer to a suggestion about tyres in White Hot. I had to look it up immediately- I’m still not sure whether it was shady remark!
I’ve used that phrase at work, mostly when i want to move on but i’m not agreeing to anyhing. To me its a respectful way of saying ‘noted’. However, there is ALWAYS the option of a tone which can skew it towards sarcasm.
Mellow Yellow and funyuns
I was pretty sure that mellow yellow was just like lemon fizzy but funyuns i was…..maybe like Cheetos or cheezles
So many things!
The Pictish tattoo in The Iron Covenant!m
A lot of the Russian and Middle Eastern folklore and myths!
One of my favorite features of using an ebook is the ability to look something up as I am reading! 💜😁
Now you all have me looking things up. That donkey is HUGE. I thought it was an apocalyptic thing. I knew there was a wierd castle thing in Kentucky, but, again, HUGE.
What else am I missin?
My sister and I had Chatty Cathy and Chatty Patty dolls. (Yes, there was also a Chatty Patty dolI! I think they were marketed as sisters?) So, we had two of those freaky little dolls in our house, and for years afterwards, my family nickname was Chatty Kathy! 😂
Funnily enough one of the reasons I love the our favorite authors is because rhe fun little Easter egg references 😂 the first time I read On the Edge and recognized my favorite anime InuYasha as the book Jack gets excited about in the comic store I loved it! Then the Lion King comments from Curran, I can never get enough! The witty banter is one of the things that truly bring their series to life and make you fall in love with their characters every single time. I want to be there, with them, be their friend, which is why I reread the books at least once every 6 months or so 😂😂😂
oh that’s right! I actually didn’t know the InuYasha comic before, but I was pretty surprised when I came across it years later and found out it’s a real thing
Sbiten! When I read about it in Sanctuary, I wanted to try it.
I had a Chatty Cathy doll. Because of the voice mechanism it was really heavy. I also had three brothers who were mostly bullies. Chatty Cathy made a great weapon when swung by the leg.
I have looked up a number of things over the years, but only in the second reading of the books. 😄 and I had a Chatty Kathy doll. I was 9 the year it came out. It would talk randomly in the middle of the night. We ended up letting her “sleep in the car” at night! 😳
After much begging my parents, I finally got a Chatty Cathy doll at about the same age, maybe a little earlier. Mine never talked in the middle of the night, but looking at that video, I can see where all the doll horror movies stem from.
I have to look up the weapons a lot to see what all these swords are. lol
+1
I had a Chatty Cathy doll and in retrospect I can see why all the doll horror movies.
Kate Daniel’s universe definitely had me checking out several historical biblical figures / names and places / creature such as vampires and Assyrian and Sumerian lamassu origins! A fascinating fantasy spin on ancient history!
I had to fact check that there are people who can smell ants! That sounds SO bizarre to me.
Whenever I would be ‘overdramatic’ to any situation as a young girl, my father would compare me to Sarah Bernhardt, an early over emotional actress.
I got that one. And comparisons to Hedy Lamarr, an early silent film actress, mostly from my grandparents.
Thats amazing, she pioneered wifi
Not in the House Andrews world, but … I read “The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams when I was like 10 years old. For years and years, I really thought there were cocktails called “gyann tonyx” as well “Roman coke”, and was obscurely let down when I figured out t was a play on actual Earth-based drinks!
When I was five, I had a Chatty Cathy doll. My older brother(age eight) decided that I needed a boy dol, and so he cut off all of her hair. I was sad… 🙂
Wow, so many of these comments from ladies 😣, there really is a pattern emerging of boys in that generation being entitled to destroy their sisters’ treasured possessions.
I’m sorry this happened to you, Carol.
I have pulled out city and county maps to keep track of Atlanta today vs Kate’s Atlanta to see what changed. I’m also building a Book Bucket List around Wilmington! I have roads highlighted, Ft. Fisher circled and ferry schedules bookmarked.
I know they’re real things but I always wanted to know what Caldenia’s favourite funyuns (I’m not sure if that’s spelt correctly as I usually listen to the audios) and yellow mellow taste like.
Funyuns are a torus-shaped, lightweight, crunchy type of chip (crisp in the UK) with a strong flavor of onion powder (Fun-onions = funyuns). They’re like the chip/crisp form of an onion ring, but taste absolutely fake. It’s SUCH an American thing, I cannot deny! I believe the base of the chip is corn, but not 100% on that.
Mellow Yellow is indeed a fizzy lemon/citrus drink. 🙂
Thank you so much for answering! I’ve wanted to know that for such a long time but never get around to googling it lol.
We have something that I think must be quite similar to funyuns over here in the UK so I have a reasonable idea what they taste like now thanks
Most recently I had to look up Maggie’s comment about looking for a man in armor (which I later learned was changed from finance)6’5” blue eyes. I had missed that song/meme since I have to work harder to hear new music nowadays as the algorithms just want to give you what you already know. Oh well, at least I got the reference to You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.
I didn’t even realize it was a reference. Maybe someday someone will write a thesis about TKWNKM and explain all the references for me?
I still don’t know this one – I thought dating app blurb? -but like you got the closing time reference.
Its a meme song, Im looking for a man in finance, trsut fund, 6.5, blue eyes. Look it up in youtube, it a blond girl singing
I didn’t know Turkish Delight was a real thing when I read the Narnia series. I saw some in a store decades later and bought it just to try this amazing treat that could cause you to betray your family. (Spoiler: it’s disgusting! Like chalky jello. Blech!)
The Buccees gas station reference in The innkeeper series. it made me curious enough. I looked it up and now I want to take a tourist trip to Buccees.
yes, the Sam Houston statue in Hermann Park from Burn For Me. And the tunnels under downtown from the same book. I may have even become a pest to a coworker who lives in Houston, asking for endless details.
Mammoth donkey and all kind of food stuff from either Hidden Legacy or Innkeeper. Pithifier anyone?
not sure if it’s from IA specifically, but I had to look up poison ivy, because I could not figure out what it translates to in my own language, and why everyone was cautious of it. Turns out it’s a plant that’s not native to Europe! No wonder I didn’t know it.
Lucky Europe!!!
If you ever visit North America be careful of it! Touch the leaves and their oils will make the affected skin itch terribly! And if yo happen to be one of those unfortunates wildly allergic to it its ,,,, not good. People have been hospitalised!
I Googled and read a lot about Giant Hourglass Spiders!
I am still totaly lost by this passage in “Sweep of the Blade”:
Maud waited.
“They are sojurn style chairs.”
Sojurn style chairs had a solid back.
I googled it. I looked at pictures – the pictures I find just do not make any sence für me.
It is ok for the story, the most important part is in the line with the solid back (I guess), but it still bothers me, that I am unable to find a picture online that seems to fit.
(Non-native speaker, I guess that sojurn style is easy to understand to native speakers.)
I don’t have a scene from the top of my head but I also don’t remember this scene so time for a reread! Hihi thank u Mod.R for this convenient excuse!🙏❤️
I’m too young to have had a Chatty Cathy doll, but I did have a Mister Ed doll. For anyone wondering, Mister Ed was a TV show in the 1960’s featuring a talking horse. The Mister Ed doll was a puppet, so mostly just a horse head (lol). Like Cathy, there was a string you pulled to hear what Mister Ed had to say.
I didn’t have a problem with the Chatty Cathy reference. We had one when I was a kid. Showing my age, I guess.
I did not realize that talking Tina was based on chatty Cathy, A real doll.
The locations had me looking things up when they described a place. I wanted to see what it actually looks like
I seriously went down the rabbit hole when they were discussing the Minotaur, And I actually got a copy of bulFinch’s mythology Volume 1.
I looked up whether Buc-ees (I originally thought Bucky’s listening to the Audiobooks) was a real service station chain (“everyone loved Buc-ees”) in Innkeeper. I’m British, living in New Zealand and have never been to Texas.
FYI — I HAD a Chatty Cathy … you pulled a string and a little disc inside played one of the pre-recorded phrases (“Tell me a story” being one of them). Seems funny now in the age of electronics, but it was quite cool then … and 2 decades before “Teddy Ruxpin”.
Hah, I’m rereading Wildfire – and living on the edge because I started there this time instead of starting with Burn for Me.
Rogan is explaining that the NPTN gene responsible for coding a protein and is linked to higher intelligence.
According to Google, this is true.
I’m 74% complete with Wildfire. What should I read next. Do I continue in order with Diamond Fire? Skip back to White Hot? Or maybe jump over to Innkeeper?
Or I could continue my out-of-order daring ways and read book 3 of Kate Daniels? Endless enjoyable options…
The answer is allways book 3 of Kate, what a fun treat that one is!
I read IL books with a tablet nearby so I can look things up as I read them. Use it continually for all kinds of things – Russian & Wiccan mythology, pictures of Glass Beach, mammoth mules,
…
😃
Wow, so many I can’t pick one out. Really, HA is a fount of so much knowledge ( I’m not being factious. I’m being serious ) that I look up items frequently. I often wonder how one couple can be so knowledgeable about so many subjects in such a broad scope. I can’t answer that. And I used to think that I was well rounded. Kudos
I never wondered about that expression. I hate how this reveals my age. Chatty Cathy dolls were sold for many years. I had a chatty Cathy doll when growing up. I am astounded that some of the BDH were wondering about the reference, but now I get it.
You never wondered about it because you are from the US 🙂
I love reading all of Ilona Andrews books/series in ebook format because it makes it easier for me to look things up (highlight a word or phrase and choose “look up”/“define”). It’s been fun learning that a detail or event is a real world cultural reference!
For me the things I look up are usually the unusual animal breeds. I looked up Grendel since I wanted to know what a phantom poodle was. And I looked up the horse in the beginning of TKWNKM. sometimes I look up cultural fantasy things. I’m not very familiar with slavic folklore beyond Baba Yaga.
Chatty Cathy was still being sold when I was 5
I had one that also rollerskated, it was as creepy as h*ll. I only played with it when my grandparents were over, since they gave it to me.
i look up all sorts of things while reading! i’m a very visual person, so if i can’t picture something i’ll do an image search because i need to SEE it while i’m reading. i looked up mammoth donkey, lots of folklore and gods, and i did a deep dive on roman’s menagerie. i look up clothing and weapons. i probably look up at LEAST 2-3 things in every book i read.
i love my e-reader where i can touch the word or phrase and get an instant definition, description, or even image. i love it so much so that when reading paper books i find myself touching the word on the page, only, nothing happens. and then i realize what i’ve done, *palmface*. aaaaand then i do it again a little while later.
My cousin had Chatty Cathy. That doll ruined me for all others. She was creepy and annoying and just… possessed. To this day, I do not trust any dolls.
Oh! Also, while I understand that the horses (and mules and donkeys) are part of the world building in several of the series, I also appreciate the realism with which they are portrayed. Their “real-equine” behavior only makes them more believable, and adds to the solidity of the environment of the stories. Somebody in House Andrews knows horses! And as a fellow horsewoman, I appreciate the accuracy.
PS…. I’ve spent many a day on Figure Eight Island! So excited to see it in your stories!
The Sidr honey reference from the Innkeeper Chronicles. I had to buy some and it’s delicious!
This Kingdom will not kill me: “isekai”??? Isekai led me to ask for a list of all time favorite isekai stories…. I had never read any Japanese light novels.
Which lead to a 4 month craziness mostly because of my library limit of 5/month to get through 33 light novels for Ascendance of a Bookworm. I cheated and used my husband’s library card but still took over 4 months.
Then since I am not familiar with Japanese web novel authors, I went through a period of “what!….that’s the end????” Nooooooo….
As I researched, the first 33 novels were written over a period of ten years mixed with anime and manga. She slowed down as it took off in the anime and manga world. I realized that the next spin off would give more a bit more about the initial couple, but given their usual time frame, forecast was NOT good! It’s about 1 light novel every 4 years??? And currently that couple that I want more info are actually side characters are now involved in their own time travel disappearance with nothing else written about them. argh!
BDH take note, Ilona is moving at lightening speed compared to them!
Then I spent last two months reading fanfic (also my first time reading) on Archive of Our Own who were all trying to create their own “happily ever after” after the 33 novels and one spin off which left us hanging….the main novels left us at “the end” but not complete to our satisfaction. This was all intermixed, of course, with re-reading Innkeepers, The inheritance and This Kingdom from library as well as other Ilona Andrews series I haven’t read.
It’s been a hectic last half year of incompleteness. or if I look at it another way, a year of anticipation and appreciation! and all this was written for Ilona Andrews…I do appreciate all your hard work! I am so glad I don’t have to wait three to four years for your next novel. Thank you!
I had a Chatty Cathy and a Pattaburp doll until my older brother took them apart to see how they worked. I was the only granddaughter so my grandmother gave me lots of dolls until she discovered I preferred books
Andrea could be Kate’s “Matron of Honor.”
That’s what we would do in my part of the US.
Not a role that existed in Russian weddings at the time the book was written 🙂
Oh, how I wanted a Chatty Cathy doll! I never got one, despite Christmas lists and desperate begging. However, one of my neighbors did and after about 3 weeks the pull ring wore out and she was as mute as any other doll. I confess I felt a bit of schadenfreude.
I don’t know where else to ask this. Is there a short story where Hugh and Elara celebrate a holiday. They dress like king and queen of the holiday and a little girl brings a snake as an offering. Does this really exist or did I dream it?
It’s the harvest festival snippet from chapter 5(? the last snippet, anyway) of the next Hugh book, back before HA realised this book is best written not in a serial format. Likely archived now.
Hugh was disgruntled at having to wear the Harvest King flower/plant crown but does so for Elara (and their people). A nice chicken dinner was involved in that negotiation 🙂
A girl brings a ‘friendly’ snake as part of the fall offerings tradition, and it’s quickly confiscated and released outside.
I had a school friend ( blonde , blue eyes) in secondary school( U.K.) & when invited home the first time she didn’t shut up. That earned her the nick name from my mother- Chatty Cathy, forever known as such to the point that years later at a school reunion I couldn’t remember her real name & was looking around for ‘Cathy’🙄🙄🙄🙄😉
I Googled “What do you call a group of shoppers” after I encountered “a crocodile of shoppers” 🤣
I had to google As you wish and Psych (still dont get tht last one) from Kate and Curran interactions.
Princess bride in my own mother language has other puns.
Anything related to Russian/Slavic culture that I don’t understand leads me to ask my sister-in-law. Although since she is from the more Southern regions she was not familiar with the warm winter drink(with some fruit preserves in it), for which every family has their own recipe. Asking about Vasalisa folklore pulled my nephew into explaining as there seem to b many videos. Apparently Americans also pronounce Baba Yaga incorrectly, as the emphasis is really different. It’s been a fun source of some good conversations. She keeps saying she’s going to try reading HA, but it’s now been a couple years. I do want to report to the Horde that my husband is currently in the midst of his second read of Maggie -and my vellums arrived recently so I’m thinking of posting the map on our wall. So I’m slowly converting him, but progress is being made. For the Horde!
I had a Chatty Cathy doll when I was little. Haven’t thought of it in a very long time.
Pirogi 😇
I looked up what honey badger was. To be honest, I thought Dolittle would belong to clan heavy and honey badgers were some sort of bears (because you know – bear like honey 😂).
I rarely stop to Google things while reading, but whenever a song is mentioned in a story, I have to stop, look it up, and play the song while reading. Like “Walking in My Shoes” for Hugh and Elara’s wedding. I discover a lot of new music while reading.