It's hot. School is re-starting. Your to-be-read pile is huge and deep. What to do? Skip the pile and read Jane Austen in Boca or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or watch Clueless or Bridgett Jones's Diary and join us for the Austen (Light) in August* discussion.
There is no formal STIR selection for August (which is probably good, as I am still trying to coordinate discussions of Secret Eleanor and The Heart of the Matter with Jennifer and Janet). I have found myself reading a great deal of "chick lit" of late (including Jane Austen in Boca, Jane Austen in Scarsdale [both by Paula Marantz Cohen], Cotillion [Georgette Heyer], Second Thyme Around [Katie Fforde] and Persuasion [Jane Austen]) and have loved it.
So, find yourself something that was inspired by Jane Austen and read it. Very highly recommended are the Paula Marantz Cohen's retellings of P+P and Persuasion (Jane Austen in Boca and Jane Austen in Scarsdale, respectively). Both are hilarious in their own right (dealing with Jewish widows looking for husbands and the sad times of a high school guidance counselor) and as clever re-makes of Austen's plots (an accident in Lyme is replaced with Lyme disease, for instance). Amateur Reader, not normally big into chick lit, says good things about them here . Highly recommended are the regency romances of Georgette Heyer (not directly retellings of Austen, but some of the best representatives of a whole genre inspired by Austen, raych reviews one here), I Capture the Castle (by Dodie Smith, which directly references both Jane Austen and Jane Eyre), and Bridget Jones's Diary (movie and book version reference P+P quite differently). I haven't read P+P and Zombies or any of the Elizabeth and Darcy mysteries, but if they might be your thing, read away. Of course, if you're not up for reading a whole book (after all this is Austen Light) watch Clueless or the A+E version of Emma or the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma or Bridget Jones or any of the (some fantastic, some less so) movie versions of P+P (the six hour BBC version with Colin Firth is by far the best, and makes the casting of Bridget Jones make sense).
If, perchance, you are contemplating joining the Austen (Light) in August discussions but have not read Pride and Prejudice, by all means, read it. (Nobody is stopping you from reading Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park or Emma, either). Remember, as you do so, that Austen is not taking all her characters seriously, you do not need to either.
*Nothing intended about Faulkner's Light in August. If you read it, I'll find someone for you to discuss it with, but it won't be me.
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8 comments:
Bollywood version of P&P is fun! And I really thought it was called P&P til I googled it for you all - Bride & Prejudice. When offered a choice between this and Amazing Grace (about slave trade) & picked AG thinking B&P would be silly chick/teen flick (and would have really been turned off if I knew it was BRIDE & P). AG turned out to be too intense for the kids of the house (in Haiti, also culturally awkward about slave trade). So we switched to B&P and it was fun!
I've read some Austen in the relatively recent past, and could happily watch the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma again. This might also be the perfect excuse to read P&P&Z.
I would like to read Persuasion, but I don't think I can pull it off in August. I haven't watched Clueless...so maybe I should do that!
Salsis- Thanks for the suggestion. I had heard (surprisingly) good things about B+P when it came out, but forgot all about it.
Irene- By all means a great opportunity for P+P+Z. The Gwyneth version came out the same year as the A+E (BBC?) version, and just after Clueless, so they make a very interesting comparison.
Janet- Since I just read Persuasion last week, I'll happily discuss it whenever you read it. In the meantime, Clueless is lots of fun, if silly and dated, and a very modern retelling of Emma.
Oh, there are also some other options I'd forgotten: Becoming Jane and a recent movie Prada to Nada which looks absolutely atrocious, but is a modern Latina retelling of Sense and Sensibility.
Okey dokey, I have come up with some not-reading-Austen Austen options. We'll see.
Those Paula Marantz Cohen books are fun, and in places truly funny. The Shakespeare book - Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan - is at least as funny, although it loses the amusing Austen parallelism. I have not yet read her implausible Henry & Alice James mystery.
AR- I look forward to learning what non-Austen-Austen you've discovered-- your thoughts prompted my reading of the Paula Marantz Cohen books, which were great.
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