Comments on: Etiquette and Facebook part 2 – WWJ(A)D?

By: sonal

sonal — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 05:02:56 +0000

Oh Nora … I can respect your affection for Mansfield Park and Jane Austen – fair enough, to each their own …

But don’t say things against ‘modern novelists’ to me … you’re comparing apples with orchids.

Also, waving a red flag in the face of this bull (and I’m sorry all lovers of Austen novels out there, I still do not like her books) will force me to bring the whole of 20th and 21st Century novelists against your argument: Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Hanif Kureshi, Kiran Desai, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Maurice Gee, Witi Ihimaera, Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Gao Xingjian, Simon Armitage, Suketu Mehta, Chuck Palahniuk, Robert Harris … this list goes on forever, you’re just lucky I’m thousands of miles away from the groaning shelves of my bookcases …

Anyway – for a more informed opinion about Austen related Facebook things, head along to Lou’s blog and read this post.

By: Nora

Nora — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:52:26 +0000

I LOVE Mansfield Park. (My favorite comfort reading…)
Just wanted that out there.
even her more flawed books say more on one page than a lot of modern novelists say over entire books.

By: sonal

sonal — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:19:49 +0000

You’re really going to hate me now … out of my own shame, I finally picked up Pride and Prejudice … I was bored out of my brain.

Will try Persuasion and see if that changes my mind about literature from that era.

By: Lou

Lou — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:10:44 +0000

PS NEVER – NNNEEEEEEVVVVVVEEEEERRRR – read Norhanger Abbey or Mansfield Park. They’re what I was referring to when I corrected Becoming Jane’s final (and oh so patronising) credit as saying Austen went on to write six of English Literature’s finest novels.

By: Lou

Lou — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:09:27 +0000

Um, you just mentioned Dawson’s Creek and Tom Cruise in a post about Jane Austen.

Jane Austen would HATE Dawson’s Creek and Tom Cruise (though she’d probably have a secret soft-spot for Pacey).

I’ll forgive you though.

Okay, so the shocking thing isn’t that you’re missing out on the canon of Austen and Bronte but that… well… they’re some of only very few female writers published in ye olde times and worth reading just for that. I would recommend that you skip Bronte, skip the populist Austen (P&P, S&S and Emma) and read Persuasion. It’s one of the shorter ones, probably the best one, and one of my favourite ever books. You’ll undoubtedly want to hit Anne Elliot, but at the same time I think you’ll empathise all the same. It’s a book about yearning and loneliness, and I believe to be the one that provides more insight into Jane Austen than the others – despite the fact that Becoming Jane would have us believe that her life singularly paralleled P&P.