Pemberley or Manderley?

Sitting in Palmer and Co., a prohibition-style bar in Sydney’s Merivale area that blares 1920s music in sepia-toned mood lighting, we began discussing Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier as our latest book club read. Around us are shelves filled with strange objects – grey top hats, cage-looking iron implements, and walls covered with black and white photographs and mug shots of convicts. It’s strangely fitting for the book, and while the cocktail ‘Fire and Brimstone’ (which would have been perfect for Manderley, and actually had earl grey in the mix) was sold out, we drank and watched as patrons donned fascinators and crept in and out.

Somewhere in-between updating each other with our lives in the month past and trying to hear each other over the music, the question “Manderley or Pemberley?” came up.

Book Review: The Jane Austen Marriage Manual, Kim Izzo

“Doesn’t every girl wish she could find her Mr Darcy?” – Cover

This 2012 book jumped at me from the New Release shelf at Kinokuniya book shop in Sydney (also spotted in Dymocks, Castle Towers, Castle Hill) and I just couldn’t say no. At (AU)$26.99, it’s not necessarily the cheapest read in the world, but it stacks up fairly nicely when it comes to originality, with a title that stands out from the Austen fanfiction crowd.

Our main character, Kate, a freelance journalist, suddenly finds work is getting very tight (something that journalists in Australia are feeling, with Fairfax and News Limited cutting their numbers). Her Grandmother passes away, she is about to be evicted, and she realises she needs to get her finances under control. In pursuit of an article about how girls in the 21st century can bag a rich man, akin to our Elizabeth Bennet, and with the encouragement of her own grief and desperation, Kate decides to do it herself. ISBN: 978-1-444-74283-1

Pride and Prejudice Tattoos

You love the book, and the remakes and the soundtracks… but does anyone love it enough to have it printed on themselves for life? Apparently, yes.

Teasha Patterson  (who tweets under @TheWriteRussian) has a fantastic quote from Pride and Prejudice on her upper back:

Have you ever wanted to visit Pemberley…

without leaving your house?

And when I say “Pemberley”, the home of Mr. Darcy, I mean Lyme Hall, Cheshire- otherwise known as ‘that place they filmed in the BBC version’.  Well, now there is actually a way!  If you haven’t grown up in the third world, you probably know about ‘Google Earth’, a fantastic piece of software that allows you to see anywhere in the world via satellite images.