Happy Birthday Miss Austen!!!

Also read again and for the third time at least Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!
-Sir Walter Scott

Happy Birthday Jane Austen!

According to several blogs that celebrate all things Austen, Sourcebook is making many of their Austen spin-off titles available free in the electronic format in order to celebrate this special day!  Check out the link below for details...

Free Jane Austen books!

I can't say that I have ever read a bad Jane Austen book,  but my favorite would have to be Persuasion.  It is a work that holds such realistic and controlled optimism that  I never fail to be amazed by it.  I find it a bit less cynical, but every bit as humorous as P&P or Sense and Sensibility.  If you haven't read Austen, pick up any of her books and give it a go.  You really don't know what you're missing.  Oh and by all means check out the literary adaptations of her work.  There are several that are spectacular, including the 1995 version of Persuasion starring Amanda Root and the always wonderful Ciaran Hinds...





  

I care not who knows that I am wretched...

Two delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them, where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest, had -- assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet shoes and stockings -- given Marianne a cold so violent, as, though for a day or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing ailments on the concern of everybody, and the notice of herself. Prescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual were all declined. Though heavy and feverish, with a pain in her limbs, a cough, and a sore throat, a good night's rest was to cure her entirely; and it was with difficulty that Elinor prevailed on her, when she went to bed, to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies.

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

Much like Marianne Dashwood, a recent brush with nature left me fighting a beastly cold.  I apologize for the lack of updates, but hope to be restored to life, health, friends, and posting soon.  In the meantime, if you haven't read S&S, you simply must.