Jane Austen ROCKS!!!
Apr. 17th, 2024 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jajalalaAwhile back I finally downloaded Libby (the library app) and, impatient, ended up checking out the first book I thought of that was in the public domain--Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I like to have physical books, but I think I've hacked my brain into liking ebooks... specifically, I deleted the TikTok app, which I used to watch basically any time I was bored and would unfortunately sometimes get sucked into. After deleting it, I put the Libby app in the location where TikTok used to be, so now when my body automatically goes like "uhghh i'm bored I wanna watch a bunch of low-commitment videos--" I discover Libby there instead and end up reading. I would say it's increased my e-reading quite a bit XD.
Pride & Prejudice was fucking great!!!! I understand why it's held onto public imagination for so long. Reading Mr. Darcy I was like "WOW this man is AWKWARD" in an endearing way and I was swooning in the second half after his letter etc. And that final confrontation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh??? WOW the sass after sass from Elizabeth. I will say everyone is way to mean to Mrs. Bennet, she's the only person truly concerned with their economic situation!!! Of COURSE Mr. Bennet is totally chill about if/when/who his children marry--he will always have an estate to live in to the day he dies, and once he dies it's not his problem anymore!! I noted in the final pages it notes that Mrs. Bennet has become much less silly/anxious with three daughters married off. HMMM I wonder why??
So after that, I ended up grabbing Emma, also by Jane Austen. And I had lots of fun with that one too! Emma had some kinda gay thoughts ngl (her constant swooning about Harriet's charms, plus the "I'm never going to marry" for most of the book)... but ultimately I LOVED her and Mr. Knightly, and I loved the many many twists and turns with her and the other couples as well. I think main characters are often written as someone you want/should root for, but throughout Emma I was often so agitated like "I hope you're wrong Emma!! I hope your scheme fails and Mr. Martin keeps courting Harriet!!!!" which kept me engaged and invested XD. Her whole despair and the revelation with Mr. Knightly was also SO moving: "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more" <-- HELLO who gave him permission to be this romantic??
There was just so much fun relationship and slight economic drama in each book. The language/context was sometimes challenging for me--I suck at history and politics, so I didn't always get the full context of things, but the character vibes and what was explained/implied was enough for me to follow along well enough. A lot of the characters, especially the side ones, were so familiar (like the obnoxious Mr. Collins, or the overly chatty Ms. Bates) I could imagine them vividly even in modern day.
Also there was a scene in Emma where Emma's dear friend Mrs. Weston ends up sending her a letter that was sent to her to help give Emma the context of what happened, and then Emma shared that letter with Mr. Knightly while Mr. Knightly made all sorts of snide comments and Emma kept being like "Well yes but read on!! You'll see" and it made me feel like "THAT STILL HAPPENS TODAY!!! When you send a big text someone sent you to the groupchat to analyze and discuss!!!! 200 years later we are still social creatures discussing social things with each other in such a familiar way!!!!!" Kind of a magical "across time" kind of feeling.
Anyways they are supremely satisfying, but now I'm kind of thinking like... "oooh wouldn't a lesbian regency romance novel be hot??" especially with either some sort of butch noble or a cross-dressing woman, idk... If anyone happens to know something along those lines, I'd be intrigued. Unfortunately my specific tastes are so strong that I've already made a little document outlining a potential Femme Scheming Duke's Daughter (sadist/dom) X Scandalous Butch Marquis's Daughter (masochist/sub) kind of story... but I know so little about regency era politics that I think I may not be the best person to write it XD.
I complained in a previous post about a novel by an author I met at Boskone. However, even though I bought the long novel, she also had a novella published called Sibyl which my roommate bought and was available to me.
It was short, short enough that I was able to read the whole thing in probably less than two hours (Most of it on an hour-long train ride). And I liked it more than her novel for sure! Probably partially because it was so short.
It involved some magical happenings in a town due to an artisan creating and mistreating a bunch of figurines--the structure meant that we were constantly switching to different POVs, and each section was fairly short, no longer than a few pages each.
This masked/covered a lot of the stuff I disliked in the novel--The novel had very simple, one-note characters that didn't feel like they had any depth/complexity. That sucked to read over 300 pages, but if a character is only shown for a few pages then it's not dreadfully boring, just efficient to have them be one-note. And the novella was pretty centralized on the magical going-ons, and the author's creativity with magic and how it manifests was one of the strengths of her novel as well.
The novella wasn't life changing, but it was a decent enough read to entertain me on a long train ride.
Despite my love for the Austen novels, I'm taking a little break so that I don't start talking like I'm from the 1800's. When my older sister told me about the Libby app, she specifically recommended I read Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood. I've been wary of Ali Hazelwood since I saw the very visibly Reylo cover of The Love Hypothesis (the last time I tried repackaged AU fanfic that I'm aware of was 50 Shades of Grey which... yeah I wasn't a fan), but since my sister recommended it and it happened to be available when I checked just now, I'm going to give it a chance. Although I've always loved romance-focused fics, I feel like I haven't given original romance novels a big chance, so I'm excited to dive in.
Pride & Prejudice was fucking great!!!! I understand why it's held onto public imagination for so long. Reading Mr. Darcy I was like "WOW this man is AWKWARD" in an endearing way and I was swooning in the second half after his letter etc. And that final confrontation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh??? WOW the sass after sass from Elizabeth. I will say everyone is way to mean to Mrs. Bennet, she's the only person truly concerned with their economic situation!!! Of COURSE Mr. Bennet is totally chill about if/when/who his children marry--he will always have an estate to live in to the day he dies, and once he dies it's not his problem anymore!! I noted in the final pages it notes that Mrs. Bennet has become much less silly/anxious with three daughters married off. HMMM I wonder why??
So after that, I ended up grabbing Emma, also by Jane Austen. And I had lots of fun with that one too! Emma had some kinda gay thoughts ngl (her constant swooning about Harriet's charms, plus the "I'm never going to marry" for most of the book)... but ultimately I LOVED her and Mr. Knightly, and I loved the many many twists and turns with her and the other couples as well. I think main characters are often written as someone you want/should root for, but throughout Emma I was often so agitated like "I hope you're wrong Emma!! I hope your scheme fails and Mr. Martin keeps courting Harriet!!!!" which kept me engaged and invested XD. Her whole despair and the revelation with Mr. Knightly was also SO moving: "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more" <-- HELLO who gave him permission to be this romantic??
There was just so much fun relationship and slight economic drama in each book. The language/context was sometimes challenging for me--I suck at history and politics, so I didn't always get the full context of things, but the character vibes and what was explained/implied was enough for me to follow along well enough. A lot of the characters, especially the side ones, were so familiar (like the obnoxious Mr. Collins, or the overly chatty Ms. Bates) I could imagine them vividly even in modern day.
Also there was a scene in Emma where Emma's dear friend Mrs. Weston ends up sending her a letter that was sent to her to help give Emma the context of what happened, and then Emma shared that letter with Mr. Knightly while Mr. Knightly made all sorts of snide comments and Emma kept being like "Well yes but read on!! You'll see" and it made me feel like "THAT STILL HAPPENS TODAY!!! When you send a big text someone sent you to the groupchat to analyze and discuss!!!! 200 years later we are still social creatures discussing social things with each other in such a familiar way!!!!!" Kind of a magical "across time" kind of feeling.
Anyways they are supremely satisfying, but now I'm kind of thinking like... "oooh wouldn't a lesbian regency romance novel be hot??" especially with either some sort of butch noble or a cross-dressing woman, idk... If anyone happens to know something along those lines, I'd be intrigued. Unfortunately my specific tastes are so strong that I've already made a little document outlining a potential Femme Scheming Duke's Daughter (sadist/dom) X Scandalous Butch Marquis's Daughter (masochist/sub) kind of story... but I know so little about regency era politics that I think I may not be the best person to write it XD.
I complained in a previous post about a novel by an author I met at Boskone. However, even though I bought the long novel, she also had a novella published called Sibyl which my roommate bought and was available to me.
It was short, short enough that I was able to read the whole thing in probably less than two hours (Most of it on an hour-long train ride). And I liked it more than her novel for sure! Probably partially because it was so short.
It involved some magical happenings in a town due to an artisan creating and mistreating a bunch of figurines--the structure meant that we were constantly switching to different POVs, and each section was fairly short, no longer than a few pages each.
This masked/covered a lot of the stuff I disliked in the novel--The novel had very simple, one-note characters that didn't feel like they had any depth/complexity. That sucked to read over 300 pages, but if a character is only shown for a few pages then it's not dreadfully boring, just efficient to have them be one-note. And the novella was pretty centralized on the magical going-ons, and the author's creativity with magic and how it manifests was one of the strengths of her novel as well.
The novella wasn't life changing, but it was a decent enough read to entertain me on a long train ride.
Despite my love for the Austen novels, I'm taking a little break so that I don't start talking like I'm from the 1800's. When my older sister told me about the Libby app, she specifically recommended I read Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood. I've been wary of Ali Hazelwood since I saw the very visibly Reylo cover of The Love Hypothesis (the last time I tried repackaged AU fanfic that I'm aware of was 50 Shades of Grey which... yeah I wasn't a fan), but since my sister recommended it and it happened to be available when I checked just now, I'm going to give it a chance. Although I've always loved romance-focused fics, I feel like I haven't given original romance novels a big chance, so I'm excited to dive in.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-18 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-19 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-18 08:16 am (UTC)200 years later we are still social creatures discussing social things with each other in such a familiar way!!!!!
Gossip is the foundation upon which civilization was built and it will outlive us all 😔😔
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Date: 2024-04-19 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-18 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-19 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-18 05:25 pm (UTC)It's funny to me that whenever I say I'm not the person the romance genre is looking for some friends remind me of my love for Austen and... no. It's so much more than just romance. Austen's observations/critiques of the society she lived in are spot-on and sharp and revealed through those 'romances.'
There are some excellent film and TV series versions but I have a ridiculous soft spot for one of the worst versions ever made, from 1940. Laurence Olivier and, even more so, Greer Garson are too old for their roles. The adaptation of large parts of the script are way off, the costuming is terrible (several wrong eras none of them right)... I could easily go on... but Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson were such brilliant actors they somehow carry along this awful film anyway. Here, have Darcy's proposal scene - please note the film is in much better condition than this poor quality YT post would suggest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZBTGYRSJ7c
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Date: 2024-04-19 11:59 pm (UTC)Oooh interesting, I've enjoyed some older movies/series (much calmer/nicer/considerate pacing than modern stuff), so I may check that out.
Mr. Darcy's first proposal is such a good scene!!! Thank you for sharing
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Date: 2024-04-20 06:29 pm (UTC)I'm not a fan at all of the work of the other Brontë sisters but if you've never read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre you might give it a go. You need to work a little to get past the first part of the book (really a social commentary about the fate of orphaned children at the time although it too is fascinating in Brontë's condemnation of the 'religious' stance of the time) but then it takes off into what many argue is the origin of Gothic romance. Again, the stunning thing to me is that it's as much about hypocrisy as well as the limited life choices of women at that point in history and how Jane thumbs her nose at it all to assert independence, as anything else.
There are reasons why Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre both have been made into TV shows and films so many times and continue to be.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 11:18 am (UTC)