Wednesday Weekly Roundup

[evelyn_b]

What I've Just Finished Reading

I had no intention of reading Persuasion this week, but it happened anyway; I picked it up at the coffeeshop's lending library and couldn't put it down for anything. I know it's not a ground-breaking discovery to announce that Jane Austen is a genius, but jeez. I'd forgotten (or maybe never realized in the first

Comments

[saiditallbefore]

Oh, I love Persuasion. I haven't read it in ages (and I don't have time to re-read it right now, sadly), but it's probably my favorite of Austen's works. Maybe. It's so difficult to choose. It's definitely the one I've read the most times. I really love that it's a more mature love story than P&P or S&S, and that two characters tragically forced apart come together in the end. <3 Austen is a master.

[evelyn_b]

She is breathtakingly good. I feel like I definitely need to pry open my to-read list to make room for some more Austen now -- it makes me wish I hadn't fallen so far behind at work so that I could just carve out a few days and just read a bunch of things. Oh, well!

[lost_spook]

Aw, Persuasion is great! And, yes, so is Jane Austen generally. ♥

I am going on a Library Quest this afternoon to finally get myself the Josephine Tey Bad Detection Angstventures I crave, plus I promised my youngest brother that I would read The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton.

Sounds like a plan!!

[evelyn_b]

I was very unsuccessfully trying to explain the greatness of Persuasion to someone in RL this morning. I just kept describing characters and plot points and adding "it's really, really good." I need to brush up on my lit-crit skills, or acquire some and then brush up on them.

The Singing Sands is already so good! Making up stories about a dead man's face saves Inspector Grant from panicking while he's trapped in an enclosed car! I hope the whole book is just Inspector Grant making up romantic stories about dead people and turning out to be right for no good reason.

[lost_spook]

Well, sometimes enthusiasm works far better than all the most beautiful arguments in the world! :-)

The Singing Sands is already so good! Making up stories about a dead man's face saves Inspector Grant from panicking while he's trapped in an enclosed car! I hope the whole book is just Inspector Grant making up romantic stories about dead people and turning out to be right for no good reason.I think you're enjoying Grant's foibles too much! You're not already wearing brown contacts, are you

[evelyn_b]

Old doesn't worry me, and neither does "politics and religion that are probably the opposite of mine in every way." I'm moderately optimistic about liking Chesterton in story form -- for one thing, there is detection! Amateur detection, my favorite kind! You really have to get up early in the day if you're going to spoil that good beginning (not that it hasn't been done) and for another, the main form I have encountered him is in the form of glibly "iconoclastic" conservo-quipping about how misguided women are for trying to go into politics, and things like that, so I'm assuming I've seen most of the worst of him and very little of the best. No one is well served by being the poster boy for the traditionalist Catholic branch of the American libertarian movement. I'm sure there will be plenty for me to like!

[ramasi]

Mary with her non-malevolent selfishness is one of my favourite Austen characters.