Monday, June 13, 2016

Lady Susan (At Long Last!)


It is a very shaming thing for me to admit that it has taken me this long, in all my seven years of being a Janeite, to finish reading Lady Susan, the only other story besides the major six novels that Jane Austen completed during her adult life.  Such a fact is so very dreadfully mortifying.

But now I have finished it.  I still did not read the whole thing: I listened to most of it.  Which I used to think didn't exactly "count".  I have since changed my mind, having become a very busy young lady who has little time to read, and when she does have the time, has little energy for anything that requires more thinking than watching a movie or scrolling through Pinterest.  Driving to work, however, takes me 25 minutes each way, and therefore I have almost an hour of spare time right there-- but of course I can't read.  I can listen, however.  And so I have been doing.

It was hard for me to get into Lady Susan to begin with, and I think that's because I wasn't used to reading Jane Austen's epistolary style, even though it's predominantly how she wrote all of her earlier stories.  The characters and character names and complicated relations to each other can also be very confusing.  I found that listening to it (taking advantage of a free recording from Librivox) helped immensely because there was a different person to read each character.

Lady Susan is technically a "novella" and was written by Jane Austen roundabout 1795 (which means she was 19-21ish).  It was during her prolific beginnings of being an author, when she also wrote  First Impressions and Elinor and Marianne.  It's very different from her other stories, however, and more easily compared with her juvenilia.  Unlike our beloved favorites, it's not romantic comedy-- it's just comedy.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Sierra Boggess as Elinor Dashwood

Yes, you read that post title right!  My second-favorite singer has portrayed a beloved Jane Austen heroine!
Sierra Boggess

I knew that this was going on some time ago; rather than a performance it was some kind of 'read-through' of the Sense & Sensibility musical.  But I was very excited at the prospect of getting to listen to it!  I knew this website put recordings you can listen to for free, so would they offer these as well?

I kept checking back for several months, and then gradually forgot all about it.  Then the other day at work I was listening to another recording of the S&S musical on my MP3 player (yep, we're allowed to listen to music while we shelve at my library... gals, my library, and my supervisor, is the BEST) and thought to myself, Oh yeah, I haven't checked that in a while!

So I checked it.

AND THERE IT WAS. You can listen to the entire thing here.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Jan Austen, whoever she may be, is very proud.


The horror.
The atrocity.
The stupidity.
The mistake I have never before seen anyone make.
Let us hope it is a typo.

(Isn't the IMDb page lovely, though?! So refreshing after, you know, zombies and such...)

(Also, prepare yourself for many Lady Susan posts coming up.)

Would you rather hear the story...

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