Review: - Jane Austen Made Me Do It ed. by Laurel Ann Natress

Look how well I'm doing at my reading of Jane Austen related books! I'm very proud of myself. Admittedly I have totally failed at watching any of the films for Advent with Austen, but this is the third Jane - related book I've read in December! I won a copy of it from the 24 hour readathon, but it has been very slow going.

Jane Austen Made Me Do It is a collection of short stories inspired by Jane Austen. Some are about Austen herself, some continuations of her novels, and some completely new stories merely using characters Austen created. I'd read some mixed reviews of this before I started, so I was a little apprehensive going in. Also, while I love Austen, I'm not generally a fan of the Romance genre. The first story, Jane Austen's Nightmare by Syrie James was really good, and so calmed some of my fears, but after that there were a few I enjoyed less and I started to struggle a bit, hence why a collection of short stories has taken me over a week to finish.

Generally the stories I enjoyed the most were either about Jane herself, or modern tales incorporating an Austen character. There were some ghost stories (A Night at Northanger by Lauren Willig, The Ghostwriter by Elizabeth Aston, and Me and Mr. Darcy, Again.. by Alexandra Potter) which I really enjoyed despite them tending towards the slightly ridiculous - although I suppose as a person who doesn't believe in ghosts and such, ghost stories are always going to seem a little bit silly in the best possible way.

Reading Jane Austen Made Me Do It was a positive experience despite the unevenness of the collection. I would say it was probably a 60/40 split and if I'm honest after a while I started giving up on stories if they weren't interesting me after a couple of pages. I'm glad I own this book as it means I can return to the ones I didn't finish at a later date.

I think this will probably be my last Advent with Austen book. I do have Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence sitting on my nightstand, but although I definitely want to get to it in the future, I kind of feel that for the moment I'm all Austened out. I have really enjoyed this event, though, and the fact that (in my eyes at least!) I've been really successful, has set me up in a positive frame of mind for all the challenges and such that I've signed up for in 2012!

Sunday Salon - A few Review type Bits and Bobs...

This weekend has been great. My family have been here since Friday night and have been helping decorate the house and suchlike. We've basically been watching movies, playing board games, and having a giggle, but now they are gone and the house is quiet and I am watching Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which is awesome. The Christmas tree lights are on, we've been eating individually wrapped chocolates out of a tin, and I'm starting to feel a bit festive (and bloated).

In the spirit of Advent with Austen, I've been reading many Jane Austen related things in the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure why, but I've not finished a lot. I started Lady Susan/The Watsons/ Sanditon last week, and I've finished the first two but not the last, and halfway through Sanditon I got distracted by Jane Austen Made Me Do It, a collection of short stories inspired by Austen, which I've been reading for the past week and also have yet to finish.  

I'm still unsure of what I felt about Lady Susan. It was written early on but Austen never submitted it for publication, and it was only after her death that her nephew decided it was an important enough part of her legacy that the general public should have access to it. It is written in letter format, and although it is of course well -written, for me it lacked the empathy and depth of character usually present in Austen's novels.

The ambitious Lady Susan Vernon, notorious flirt, scandalous lady, recently widowed, escapes from an unfortunate liaison with a married man to stay with her brother and disapproving sister in law. Reginald De Courcy, Mrs Vernon's brother also comes to stay, fully prepared to be horrified by Lady Susan, but soon succumbs to her manipulative ways.When Lady Susan's young daughter, Frederica is also brought to the house, relationships become strained and tensions run high.

Because of the letter format, I didn't get any of the sense of immediate action that's usually present in Austen - it was much more removed than that. Everything that happened was only learned about after it had taken place, and so didn't feel as gripping. I also didn't personally connect with any of the characters. In every other one of Austen's novels there have been characters I really loved - Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot, and even despite Austen herself thinking nobody would like her, Emma Woodhouse - but in Lady Susan there was nobody. The title character was a completely scheming and manipulative, and her lack of feeling for her own daughter at times completely disgusted me. There wasn't really a character that I particularly cared about and I can see why Austen didn't think it was good enough for publication. I still enjoyed reading it, but not as much as I did The Watsons, which I was really disappointed about finishing, because it's really only the first fragment of a story.

Anyway, mini- review I know, but pretty much all I have to say about these. Since finishing Persuasion, I've now read all six of Austen's completed novels, and I do want to finish Sanditon, because I think that her unfinished works are really interesting in terms of what more she could have achieved had she lived longer.

Anyway, this post has taken me so long to write that Mr Magorium has finished, and I'm now watching Star Trek with the hubby. Hope your Christmas preparations are all going well and that the week ahead isn't too stressful. Relax, read, and enjoy. Happy Sunday, everybody!

Advent with Austen - A Walk with Jane Austen by Lori Smith

For anyone who doesn't know, there is an event taking place currently to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Sense and Sensibility. In advent, we are reading Austen, and so far it's making me very happy. I fell in love with Austen aged around fourteen after reading Pride and Prejudice and her books have quickly fallen into the category of 'comfort reading' - the highest honour I can give a book. Having said that, the only books I owned prior to last week were Emma and Persuasion, both of which I have already read this year, as I originally started reading Jane in the form of one of those giganto - books with really thin paper and tiny font, containing all six of her novels, so I've been on a quest. While I haven't yet manged to find a either Pride & Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility in any of my local charity shops (a total shocker in a city full of students that contains not one, not two, but three universities!), I have just today managed to get hold of Lady Susan, The Watsons & Sanditon which is what I plan to read next, and a copy of Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence, the book on which the film (that I've still yet to see) was based. Anyway, the only Austen -related reading I managed to get hold of ready for the beginning of advent was Lori Smith's memoir, A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love and Faith.

From Goodreads:

At thirty-three, dealing with a difficult job and a creeping depression, Lori Smith embarked on a life-changing journey following the life and lore of Jane Austen through England.
With humor and spirit, Lori leads readers through landscapes Jane knew and loved–from Bath and Lyme, to London and the Hampshire countryside–and through emotional landscapes in which grace and hope take the place of stagnation and despair. Along the way, Lori explores the small things, both meanness and goodness in relationships, to discover what Austen herself knew: the worth of an ordinary life.

This book reminded me quite a lot of Eat, Pray, Love, which I read and enjoyed earlier this year. Lori Smith, like Elizabeth Gilbert, is coming from a major life event - in her case a bout of depression and four months of recovering from a mysterious 'virus'. Wanting to be a writer, she saves up and takes a year off to see if she can do it. A dedicated Janeite, she goes to England for a month with the aim of visiting the places which were important in Jane's life and writing, and the sense of adventure she brings to the exploit makes the book a really engaging read.

Starting off in Oxford (where I have never been), A Walk with Jane Austen had a lot of personal interest for me as it travelled through London (where I lived for 23 years), and Canterbury (where I have worked for the past six months). Although I hugely objected to Ms Smith's description of Canterbury Cathedral as "oppressive and lifeless", that is purely down to difference of opinion, for which I suppose I will have to forgive her. The bit about Canterbury was the only bit of the book which made me angry, though - the rest of the book I loved and couldn't wait to get back to reading it.

The journey with Jane is tied in closely with Lori Smith's personal journey, and she uses the trip to explore her faith in great depth, which was another thing that put me in mind of Eat, Pray, Love. Again for me with my own religious beliefs and queries, I actually found that this made the book more enjoyable for me rather than less, as it raised questions for me not just about literature (which is always awesome), but also about the kind of person I want to be and the way that I live my life, which I think I often forget that I need to think about. Despite there probably being more Lori than Jane in the book, she did manage to slip the autobiographical information in with the landscape brilliantly. Austen is so much part of the landscape of the English countryside anyway, but it was nice to read about the real life places which influenced the novels.

With the exception of the Canterbury chapter, and the bit about Lyme, where Ms Smith stayed in an incredibly vivdly described filthy hotel room, all of the places she visited are places that I would love to visit. Box Hill is a place I used to visit a lot as a child, both with my family and on school trips, so I was as excited reading about her visit there as I was reading about the picnic in Emma, and Bath is a beautiful city which I have only fleetingly visited once and would love to return to. A Walk with Jane Austen inspired me to read and re-read all of Jane's novels, and everything I can get my hands on about her life and works, but it also filled me with wanderlust. I want to go roaming aroud the countryside in my hiking boots!
Bring it on!!



The Sunday Salon - Advent with Austen and the Readathon!

Hello everyone! It's finally starting to feel wintery by the sea, and I have to admit that I totally love it, although I did *somehow* manage to leave our big umbrella in the pub last night... no idea how that happened...*shifty eyes*. Anyway, I've been disgustingly rubbish at posting lately, and I really am planning to be better. The internet isn't behaving itself lately, and we still have a lot going on so it's been difficult to find the time. However, it's getting scarily close to the end of the year, and so in desperate hopes of motivating myself, I've signed up for a couple of exciting events!

The first is coming up in a couple of weeks. Back in April, I jealously watched as the blogosphere went absolutely MENTAL for 24 hours with posts about the readathon. I hadn't quite geared myself up to that sort of level of reading back then, though, but when I heard it was coming up again, I had to sign up!

The readathon runs from 1pm London Time on Saturday October 22nd, and runs for (shockingly) 24 hours from then :-) I'm working that day, but I finish work at 5.30, so from then on I will be alllll in, and I'm really excited! I will post a proposed reading list closer to the time, and will just have to keep my fingers crossed that my internet behaves itself that day! It sounds like it will be amazing, with all kinds of mini challenges and events going on. If you want to join in (and you should!), go here and sign up! You can also sign up to host a mini challenge or to be a cheerleader.

The other thing I've signed up for and am hugely excited about its this:

This event is hosted by Teadevotee, The Sleepless Reader, Iris on Books, Things Mean a Lot, and Reading Fuelled by Tea. Starting on the first Sunday of Advent, 27th November, and ending on Christmas Eve, the event celebrates the 200th anniversary of the publication of Sense and Sensibility. There will be lots of events and different levels of participation, but basically all you have to do is read Austen and related books, and/or watch Austen inspired, adapted or related TV shows and films. It sounds brilliant, and I'm going to be reading A Walk with Jane Austen by Lori Smith, as well as attempting a possible re-read of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and possibly watching the Pride and Prejudice TV series starring Colin Firth for the first time ever! (Yes, I know it's shocking).

If you want to join in the festivities, go and sign up here, and wait with growing anticipation for December!