Spending time exploring and thinking about Austen challenges, and I came across this: About « Jane Austen Twitter Project. Very interesting idea, and tempting.
Austen
Jane Austen January
For some reason January is always my Jane Austen month. Perhaps it is the post holiday ennui, but I find myself driven to watch DVDs, and challenge myself to read the novels again. Last year was supposed to be my Jane Austen year, but the challenge got off track. This year I am going to try again. And I’m adding a layer.
Austenprose is a Jane Austen blog. (OK, I’ll admit it, I read a couple of Austen blogs and dream of going to Bath.) Since this is the 200th birthday of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, she has posted a S&S Challenge. I’m game,but in exploring the rules, etc. I found that there are several Jane Austen challenges for 2011. The Diary of an Eccentric blog lists several. So, at the end of this first week of January I am going to ponder my options. I will report back this weekend. Perhaps, like the Eccentric, I will chose a couple.
Any suggestions on this front? A SENSE AND SENSIBILITY challenge? The Jane Austen Mystery Challenge (I haven’t read this series, but may try one before I jump in). Or just a general Jane Challenge.
Considering I watched two versions of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and one of EMMA last weekend alone, nevermind the fact that the Colin Firth BluRay PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is on order…perhaps giving a name to my obsession will make it less…obsessive.
The Joy of Jane
A few years (late 1990's) back my sister and I (roommates at the time) watched Sense and Sensibility on almost a daily basis. The Emma Thompson version. That was before I bought the DVD of Pride and Prejudice, which became a yearly viewing occasion. And we saw Persuasion on PBS. And Gweneth's Emma.
Last year PBS showed a more recent version of Sense and Sensibility. And Persuasion. Never mind the movie version of Pride and Prejudice. There was also a version of Mansfield Park, but I missed it. As I had in novel form.
In fact, I'd missed a lot of Jane in novel form. I'd read P&P in high school, but not since. I'd read Persuasion in grad school, and then again just for the joy of it. I'd long considered Persuasion my favorite of her novels, but who was I to say? I hadn't read the rest, just seen them on TV. Which, lovely as some of the adaptations are (and I will write a blog about that at some point), isn't the same.
So a few friends and I decided to make this the year of Jane. We are reading all of her novels. In the order she wrote them (not the order they were published.) We met last weekend, and talked about Northanger Abbey. Not her best, but not Jane's best is still pretty good. And as a writer, reading her first work was really interesting.
PBS has been kind enough to schedule five weeks of Jane Austen movies (3 of Emma, Northanger Abbey and replay of last year's Persuasion). And the book project will continue as well. Reports on both will be forthcoming.