3.5 stars I have mentioned more than once my immense fondness and love for the YouTube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I read the companion book about Lizzie, and the sequel of sorts, about Lydia. I was of the opinion that Pride and Prejudice had been modernised pretty successfully already. But as we have seen in the last few years with the many different iterations of Sherlock Holmes, in films, books and TV, a really good thing can inspire a lot of different interpretations. Eligible […]
Nothing will ever live up to Austen’s genius, but this was still a fun read
3.5 stars. I didn’t go into this book expecting Jane Austen levels of genius so my experience reading Eligible was pretty enjoyable. As far as Austen adaptations go, it was pretty great, about on par with something like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Let’s be real, it’s unlikely that any adaptation is ever going to reach the heights of an Austen original, but I was surprised by how closely Sittenfeld’s version hewed to Pride and Prejudice. In Eligible, Liz and Jane are both in their late […]
An Updated Pride and Prejudice (by a kid I used to babysit!)
I grew up in Cincinnati, as did author Curtis Sittenfeld. In fact, the Sittenfelds lived next door to us on Menlo Avenue when I was a teenager, and I babysat Curtis and her older sister when they were quite small. They were only there for a few years and Curtis was young enough that she probably wouldn’t remember me, but I have followed her career from afar over the past decade and have always been thrilled and impressed that a fellow Cincinnatian has become a […]

