BOOK REVIEW: A Jane Austen Miscellany edited by Kristen Maree Cleary & Robin Langley Sommer

“The strength of the relationships between some of the sisters in Jane Austen’s works mirrors the close relationship Austen enjoys with her own sister.” – Page 8

This little hardback book of Jane Austen quotes is a quaint collection of her words around “Sisters, Suitors, Families and Friends” that does itself the disservice of looking unattractive. I found the 1999 Grange Books, DoveTail imprint, published A Jane Austen Miscellany at City Basement Books in Melbourne for the cheap price of $5, and snapped it up happily. I also bought a couple of poetry books (Keats) and a children’s book – all very well priced.

Jane Austen in my Christmas and New Year’s celebrations

It’s a brand new year, and Christmas was especially kind to me – with gifts coming from my girlfriend in the shape of a number of Jane Austen goodies. But the real treat was coming home for two weeks to Sydney, where my family, friends and partner live, and spending time with them. If there’s anything Jane Austen would want us to take from Pride and Prejudice (and you may have heard me harp on about it enough) it’s that family you have, and the family you also choose to make for yourself, is incredibly important.

I got a number of gifts for Christmas from the Jane Austen Centre in Bath and I’m very much in love with them. The one I want to talk about now is the 365 days of Jane diary, seen in the picture below. Before we go any further… let me SQUEE over this wrapping – how beautiful is it! The whole thing was in the blue Jane Austen Centre bag, but it was carefully wrapped in ‘Jane Austen’ wrapping paper (you can just see it peeking out there from underneath the beautiful matching silk ribbon – with her handwriting name and the floral pattern and cameo). And then I opened it to reveal a number of beautiful gifts.

Pride and Prejudice discussions at Book Group

If you’re a regular reader of The Bennet Sisters, you’ll know that once a month I go to a Jane Austen Book Group with four other girls from all over Sydney (to a backdrop of my slightly younger brother calling me a ‘nerd’.  Nice).  We have met three times and covered two books (Sense and Sensibility and now Pride and Prejudice), attempting to read them in order of publication.  On Friday, it was the Pride and Prejudice meet up- and so, armed with my Vintage Austen copy of P&P, I spent the entire month re-reading and re-analysing the book.  It has been quite an experience.  Also, luckily, this book meet just about coincided with Austenprose’s ‘Pride and Prejudice without Zombies- Reclaiming the Classic’ event (a re-reading of the original novel), which I have been following with a lot of interest (and has some excellent giveaways you should keep your eyes peeled for on the Austenprose site!).

If only the Pride and Prejudice characters were on Facebook…

And other P&P related boredom busters on Facebook.

In a Facebook-addicted world, it’s hard to imagine life without a profile, a list of friends and tagged photos.  This leads for a lot of social issues, but it’s quite interesting to speculate about what Mr. Darcy and Lizzy’s profiles would be like.  Well, as strange as it sounds, they’re already on facebook.