“[T]he mainstreaming of Jane Eyre as a vanilla romance, or even as an exploration of a woman’s pure, uncompromising, and uncomplicated (and religious! and feminist!) integrity, says all kinds of things about our inability to speak honestly about violence and sex.” More on Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, consent, sex and submission, here. (via K.A. Laity)
Jane Austen responds to Michael Chwe naming her a master of Game Theory.
The first thing you have to understand is this: I hate zombies. Truly, completely HATE them. Mine is a complex hatred, operating on more than one level. At the core I am, as previously stated, a huge chicken. Zombies, for their part, are one of horror’s basic building blocks. They’re practically terror ground zero. [...]
One can receive reliable advice on introductions, cuts and other questions of Victorian etiquette and manners from Etiquette & Espionage authoress, Gail Carriger. “I would urge caution not to rely on characters from Austen as, in her very subtle way, she is often breaking the rules of courtship, in order to comment on society as [...]
Sherwood Smith over at Book View Cafe has a great piece about why Austen is not romance (comparing her books to Heyer).
Some great analysis of a lurid Gothic novel, feminism, the nature of the novel, etc, by way of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey…
Did you ever bounce off a book when you first picked it up only to discover later that you loved it? Back in high school that happened to me with To Kill A Mockingbird. Really. I’d picked it up during the summer to get a jump on the next semester, but it took until the [...]
In the year 2001 I discovered a magical world. Not Harry Potter (that was a few years later) and not the Internet (although it was responsible), but a world that captured my attention and hasn’t let go ten years later. It has to do with fanfiction; unpaid fiction that is written by fans of a [...]
“The first rule of Fight Club is that one never mentions Fight Club.” Jane Austen’s Fight Club.
Linda Holmes brings all her expertise in movies with kissing and banter in them to list ten things that that are more creepy than romantic in romantic comedy.
There are lots of great modern romance novels out there. And there are plenty of wonderfully romantic movies. Oddly enough, the latter aren’t usually based on the former (modern romance novels; in this one instance, Jane Austen doesn’t count). Which is not to say there aren’t any at all, but Twilight aside, most of them [...]
Every now and again, I like to pause in my appreciation of the romance genre and take the opportunity to bitch about it instead. I know it’s not perfect. As the largest genre in the world, it also contains the largest collection of bad books. I don’t review books I think are terrible – mostly [...]
Jane Austen, co-author of the popular, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has a new novel that details more than love or manners in the Regency Era. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters reveals shocking and tentacled attacks on respectable society. Click through to the book trailer.
Oh, to live in the era of the Regency Romance or the epic medieval adventure! Oh, except that life would suck: “No painless dentistry, eccentric provision for sewage, no penicillin and no concept of asepsis, and the condition of most women was not one that I aspire to.”
If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard that writing is a lonely profession I would (to misquote Stephen Colbert) have a hell of a lot of hypothetical money. But phrases don’t become cliches without reason, and the truth is that many writers spend a great deal of their time inside their own [...]
There’s a scene at the end of the film of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (the Ciaran Hines version, natch) that I love. In it, the hero holds out his hand, and the heroine takes it. That’s it, just two people holding hands. What makes it so powerful is what led up to that quiet moment – [...]
I always enjoy the ‘Best Of’ lists that come out this time of year. Seems to me that kind of potted commentary, however limited, offers a great starting place. So in the spirit of year-end helpfulness, here’s a list of ten romances worth reading. Historical and modern; sexy and mild: they run the gamut. I’m [...]
I know of many fantasy readers (myself sometimes included) who pick what book to read next based on how long it is – for epic fantasies, the longer the better. Books like this are a huge commitment though, and so for a lot of people, the fact that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is over [...]
I’ve always known that my reading habits are a bit odd. That was confirmed by the way I came across The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. Most people heard of it by word of mouth or because it was on bestseller lists — the book had a lot of buzz. I found [...]
