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 […]
Dear Fake Character People: An Open Letter to (most of) the Characters in Pride and Prejudice
ETA 4/21/16: I messed up when I marked two reviews in a row as #46, so this review actually isn’t my Cannonball. That honor belongs to my dubious review of Captive Prince. Shame on many fronts. The mistake has now been noted on both reviews. This is the third in my series of reviews wherein I get weird and write them in the form of letters to the characters. I’m re-reading all of Jane Austen’s books in 2016, and it shall be glorious. One every two months […]
Oh, just grow up, Marianne!
4.5 stars After their father dies and leaves pretty much everything to their older half-brother, the three Misses Dashwood and their widowed mother have to find a new place to live, which isn’t exactly easy with the meagre income they have. After some searching, a cousin of Mrs. Dashwood’s offer them lodging in a little cottage on his estate in Devon. The eldest daughter, Elinor, admonishes them to make the best of it, but the middle sister, Marianne, is determined to be miserable. Then she […]
Dear Fake Character People: An Open Letter to (most of) the Characters in Sense and Sensibility
A couple of years ago for CBR6, I re-read Jane Eyre, and because I was overwhelmed with the task of writing a review for such a classic book, I decided to get weird and write the review in the form of letters to the characters. Since then, with an eventual plan to re-read all of Jane Austen’s books, I’ve had it in the back of my mind that I’d do the same with as many future classic books that I could. So. This is me […]
Lizzie and Darcy, Jane and Bingley in audio form
Is there anyone, from barely discovered tribes in the South American rainforests, to nomadic tribes on the Mongolian steppes, who doesn’t actually know the gist of the plot of this book? Just in case there are any people who have lived in a barren cave their entire life, I will attempt to summarise it the major plot beats. Jane and Lizzie are the two eldest, prettiest and most sensible of the five Bennett sisters. Their mother is a silly and easily upset woman who wants […]
Jane Austen meets light fantasy, with some significant flaws.
On the one hand, yes, this was fun because Jane Austen + magic = yes. If you go into the book expecting Jane Austen levels of wit and social satire, you are going to be disappointed. But I didn’t. I went in expecting a fantasy novel set in an Austen-like world with an Austen-like romance plot, and so I was fine. And the magic system was really interesting to me. So basically, this is Regency England if magic were real, and largely considered another art, […]
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