Category Archives: events

#Bloggiesta: Goodreads Challenge

Posted on by
105

For Bloggiesta, I’m hosting a mini-challenge which is about Goodreads. In my mind the reason why this site is pretty popular is because it has a lot of functionality and it has a social media aspect – you can follow what your friends are reading and comment as they read along. As a book blogger, you want to be able to network with readers. That’s my argument for being on Goodreads. 🙂

(My Goodreads profile)

To make things simple, my challenge has two levels – one for first timers and one for old timers. (If you have any questions – email me or leave a comment below)

* * * * *

FIRST TIMERS – If you don’t have a Goodreads account – create one! This is very straightforward: just go to goodreads.com and create an account with a name, email, and password. I found this youtube video that gives a great overview of signing up and using Goodreads to help you go through the steps, and, if you want to do a little more, it explains how to enter a review (you more likely than not don’t need to watch a video to figure it out, but it’s still nice to have the tutorial if you need it).

When you create your account, comment with a link to your Goodreads page!

* * * * *

OLD TIMERS – Below is a list of some tips and tricks I’ve learned over years from using the site. These aren’t that secret, but I’ve found them useful.

Your challenge:

  • Leave a comment with a tip or trick of your own OR
  • Tell me what you’ve done for Bloggiesta that involves Goodreads (did you put some of your reviews up there, linked your Goodreads account to your blog, or added a Goodreads widget to your sidebar?)

I encourage you to leave a link your Goodreads account too! This way bloggiesta participants can find and add one another if they want. 🙂

GOODREADS TIPS AND TRICKS:
1. Hiding spoilers
This is done by using the <spoiler> OMG, IT WAS THE BUTLER! </spoiler> tags. You can use this in your review, and you can put them in comments to other people’s status updates. Very nice when I’m having a readalong and don’t want to spoil someone that hasn’t read the book. But they don’t work in status updates, so I hide my spoilers in comments now that I discovered that.

Goodreads also allows other formatting (images, strikethroughs, links, etc).

2. General status updates
So above when I talked about status update, I meant when you’ve got a book on your currently reading queue and you click the link to update what page you’re on and what you have to say. Like so:

But did you know you could post a general status update, like say, link to your latest blog post on Goodreads? You just use the “add general status” link which is in the same area! It took me forever to figure this out!


3. Switching from page to percent and back
So along the same lines, it wasn’t obvious that you can switch if you want to record your reading progress in % or number of pages. The word “page” and the “%” character are links.

4. Other thoughts and suggestions

  • Have a link to your blog in your Goodreads profile.
  • Have a link to to your Goodreads in your blog.
  • If you like someone’s review, click “like” next to it in Goodreads. It helps raise it up to the top of the page for that book. That’s the kind of thing that gives someone a skip in their step.
  • Consider going into your account profile and into your email tab and make sure to select or deselect what you want to get emails for. Personally, I removed myself from getting newsletter emails and group updates because I was getting too many emails there, but I asked Goodreads to email me about pretty much everything else.
  • Consider getting the iPhone or Android Goodreads app. I have the Android app on my nook tablet, and I really like it for reading the status updates of my top friends. I don’t love it for adding books though – a little more complicated.
  • As with all social media, it’s about making genuine connections. So keep that in mind when you use the site. And have fun!

I also asked people on twitter about their tips or tricks and I got a couple of responses:

Lunacon report

Posted on by
9


Lunacon is an annual convention held by the New York Science Fiction Society. For the past few years, it’s held literally 15 minutes away from where I live in Rye Brook, NY. Unfortunately, I didn’t know this. It kills me a little, looking at past guests I could have met (Tanya Huff, Mercedes Lackey, Jacqueline Carey), but this year, I was aware, and I bought a weekend pass.

Lunacon has a lot of programming – filking, gaming, reading, writing, movies, anything to do with science fiction, you will probably find it (there were even panels on lifestyle and health). There’s enough there that I could pick a “bookish” track for myself. The only complaint I would have is that the programming schedule wasn’t put up until the weekend prior to the event, which made it tougher to plan things ahead of time, but I made do. Here are the highlights:

Saturday
Reading: Sara Beth Durst: This is a YA author I hadn’t read before, but I recall seeing the cover of her book, Enchanted Ivy, and loving it. She read from Drink, Slay, Love, which is out now, and from Vessel, which is to be released in September. Drink, Slay, Love is a teen vampire story about a vampire who is stabbed in the heart by a wereunicorn(!) – love the idea, but I think I am burned out on teen vampire books. On the other hand, I’m very interested in Vessel which his a fantasy centering on a girl who is supposed to be sacrificed to a goddess, but for some reason, her goddess never comes. Also there is an Asian girl on the cover, which gets bonus points from me.

vessel by sarah beth durst

Reading: Tamora Pierce: Tamora Pierce read a big chunk of her work-in-progress, and it was good. This was from Battle Magic and had Evvy, Rosethorn, and Briar in the court of Yangjing, and discovering the consequences of being seen as less than perfect before the Emperor and his guests. There is some cool magic involving plants described and I didn’t want her to stop reading. There was a bigger group (about 20 or so) of fans there and they had a lot of questions about the books and her writing in general. Currently she’s reading a lot of stories set in/after World War I, like Jacqueline Winspear’s books. About separating characters in her books: some of her characters had to go their separate ways and then come back together later. Someone in the audience said they liked that the characters were separated so they could grow, then come back and grow some more together. Pierce said that if you do it right you are always growing. I was very impressed by her answers to questions and her pro-girl stance.

Reading: Barbara Ashford: I read and liked Spellcast last year (my review here), so I was eager to see what she’d be reading this time. I also brought my copy of Spellcast just in case. Barbara is a friendly person and a very engaging reader. She did the voices of different characters (with accents) and spoke with the right emotions (it was great). She read from Spellcast, but the next book, Spellcrossed is coming out in June and there will be a third book after that. The POV will mostly be Maggie’s in the second book, like the first, but the third sounds like it will have more of Rowan’s POV. The plan is currently for it to be a trilogy but it could be continued after the third book. I also found out that she’s in an anthology that somehow didn’t hit my radar, The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity which I went and bought immediately afterward.

spellcrossed by barbara ashford

Crazy thing – only about 2-3 people at the readings (except for the Tamora Pierce one). I think if the book bloggosphere had been aware, there would have been a lot more. Next year I will try to see if I can do something about spreading the word.

Guests of Honor Speeches – John Ringo, Tamora Pierce
After the readings, I caught the tail end of John Ringo’s Guest of Honor speech. Another author I haven’t read but he was telling some funny stories about his Ghost series, and I’m sort of interested in them now even though he was adamant that they’re awful! Ha! It was interesting to hear that they came after writer’s block and he wrote one book and started the next within 5 days. Wow. He had a mostly male audience with a few women in the mix, which is amusing because after his speech was Tamora Pierce’s which had the opposite mix.

Tamora Pierce’s speech was one where she talked about the influences of her writing (her answer to “Where do you get your ideas?”) and that she’s discovered over time that her obsessions throughout her life showed up later in her stories. She told the story of her first series (the Alanna quartet) where a review said that she had depicted medieval life accurately – except she hadn’t done any research when she was writing those books. Then she remembered her obsession with the medieval when she was 8. She also uses a lot of real life in her books – a lot of characters are real people (she mentioned Brendan Fraser, Sigourney Weaver, her best friend’s mother), and pets have turned into fantastic creatures. Plots come from news stories and her life experiences.

Sunday
I got my copy of Trickster’s Choice autographed 🙂

The Alternate Regency (Byron P. Connell, Meredith Schwartz, Susan de Guardiola, Karin Rita Gastreich): this was a panel about the Regency period and stories that are based in this era. I found this to be a very interesting history lesson. They covered general history and dress of the time period, Jane Austen versus Georgette Heyer, common historical mistakes (confusing gentry with nobility, corsets were not very large or tight in this time period, surgeons were considered butchers and gentlemen were physicians, not surgeons), and corresponding periods in the world (Napoleonic in France, Federal period in the U.S). Just a very informative panel all around and it got a lot of discussion going between panelists and the audience (which was maybe 15 people).

What’s Hot – Alternate History (Alexis Gilliland, Carl Fink, Byron P. Connell): This was another panel about Alternate History, but this time not limited to one time period. I noticed in this panel they tried to give examples of books that were alternate histories that were also clearly science fiction – the story is based on science fact. It was interesting that steampunk and time travel were categorized as fantasy by panelists. I hadn’t seen it that way but they had a convincing argument. Anyway, there was a lot of discussion about Alternate Histories that have been based on a turning point event (in technology, leadership, etc), and how wars and their outcomes are often explored in Alternate Histories. World War II and the Civil War are particularly popular in American (U.S American) literature, but in France the Napoleonic Wars are very popular in Alternate History stories. There was some discussion as to why these wars are so popular as well as a lot of examples of books.

What makes Y.A, Y.A? (Tu/Lee & Willow Books, Esther Friesner, A.L. Davroe, Sarah Beth Durst, Tamora Pierce): This started off with what Y.A. was, which seemed to be basically stories about teens and their experiences, then it just grew into an interesting discussion about YA in general. This feels like a “you had to be there” discussion to report on, but highlights included the idea of taboo topics in YA (there really shouldn’t be any), the belief publishing seems to have that boys won’t read books about girls but girls will read books about boys (much scoffing), Harry Potter and justice – your government can fail you, current politics and women’s issues, and minorities in YA (including recent #racefails). I was interested in the books with minority protagonists, so I came away resolved to look into Esther Friesner’s upcoming Spirit Princess, which is about Japan’s Princess Himiko, and into Tu Books which is a YA imprint with multicultural protagonists.

spirit's princess by esther friesnerSo, I was an idiot and somehow brought my camera without my memory card in it. I took 3 pictures which were saved to the camera’s HD memory, but I can’t get it off my camera without errors. Fail! Next year I’ll do better. I did take pictures of my haul at home though:

  • A Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity (Bought at dealer’s room. Signed by Joshua Palmatier and Barbara Ashford)
  • Trickster’s Choice (my copy, signed by Tamora Pierce)
  • Enchanted Ivy (Bought at dealer’s room. Signed by Sarah Beth Durst)
  • Yesterday’s Dreams by Danielle Ackley-McPhail (Bought from author at dealer’s room. She signed it for me – P.S. has a cooler cover than what’s on Amazon)
  • The Hidden City by Michelle West (Bought from dealer’s room)
  • The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells (Bought from dealer’s room)
  • Finder by Terri-Lynne DeFino (Bought from dealer’s room, signed by author – this looked like an interesting fantasy book. Didn’t get a chance to meet the author, but grabbed the book when I saw it for sale)
  • Not shown – my copy of Spellcast signed by Barbara Ashford

Improving the blog – Bloggiesta is back

Posted on by
20

It’s spring, time for change. I have recently changed my wordpress theme and changed my blog background (and I changed my sidebars) to be a little less busy. I wanted my posts to be easier to read for people. I hope that’s the case. A small part of me wants it to be busier. You don’t know how much. We’ll see how long I can stand holding myself back.

Some readers may have also noticed yesterday that I’ve mapped my domain name to specficromantic.com. This is a domain I have owned for a while now, but I was on the fence on using. I finally decided to use it because if you saw the website link, you’d have an idea what the link was taking you to versus “janicu.com” 🙂 (I really hemmed and hawed over that one. I also own janicu, that’s how much I debated. It’s set to forward here).

No need to update your RSS feed if you were pointed at janicu.wordpress.com/feed, but I have also FINALLY set up a feedburner feed too. Reason for that one is that I think it gives more choices for people to subscribe.

Also I’ve signed up for Bloggiesta in March:

“Bloggiesta is a three day event where participants will spend as much time as they can working on fixing all those pesky blog related tasks…. all those things that you think “some day I’m going to clean that up, or change that around, or add that thing!” Everyone will post a “to do” list, or goals they want to accomplish and then all of us will work together to get our lists done.”

On my list:

  • putting my reviews up on Goodreads
  • updating my review index
  • Perhaps catch up with my reviews and other posts I wanted to post
  • Also hoping to host a challenge this time.

I hope it happens. Time management is tough for me because work is Craaaazy again.

Impromptu Austen Week Wrap-up

Posted on by
6

Well, it’s been a busy week here, with much more posting than I’m used to. I hope that people got something out of my Impromptu Austen Week. I’m happy I was able to review everything I wanted to. Here’s a rundown of this week’s posts, if you missed any:

Austen Inspired Bollywood films:

Modern Day Austen retellings:

Austen inspired

If you are looking for more, check out my Jane Austen tag! I’ve got a soft spot for books set in the modern day that are Austen inspired. It may be a sickness. To make things easier, here are my favorites (click titles for review):

I Have Found It / Kandukondain Kandukondain (film)

Posted on by
1


I Have Found It (Kandukondain Kandukondain), is an Indian adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. This film is in Tamil, and came out in 2000.

Two sisters
The story is about a wealthy family that live in the village of Poongudi. Their wealth is from their grandfather, who has been confined to his sickbed for many years. In his stead his daughter and granddaughters manage his huge house, temple, farm, and college.


Sowmya, the oldest of the three daughters, is the practical, responsible one, and acts as the Principal of her family’s college and teaches classes on computers. She also takes care of the temple and farm. Her first suitor died, and since then she’s been labeled ‘unlucky’, and new suitors don’t want to take a chance.


Her younger sister Meenakshi (nicknamed Meenu), is the impetuous one, determined to marry for love, not practicality. She wants a pure, strong love, and a man who can quote poetry. She doesn’t hold back from speaking her mind.


Manohar is a young man with dreams of becoming a film director. Sowmya mistakes him as a potential match (sent by the matchmaker), when he goes to her house looking to film there. Seeing her sadness, Manohar starts to fall for her, but wants to wait until he makes a name for himself.


Major Bala is a wounded soldier who has become somewhat bitter after the war. He is wealthy, thanks to his flower business, but drinks and is grouchy. When he meets Meenakshi for the first time, he is taken with her singing. He encourages her talent, even buying her a tambura from Tanjore, and in exchange for her taking lessons, he stops drinking. While he really cares for Meenu, he considers himself too old for her.


Any potiential hope Bala has of winning Meenu is crushed when Meenu meets young financial wizard Srikanth, who helps her when she twists her ankle, can quote her favorite poets, and is just as impulsive as she is.


Then their grandfather dies, leaving the house to his son, who hasn’t visited in 10 years. To add insult to injury, this son then turns his sister and her daughters out of the house, forcing them to move to Madras.


There, without much money, they can barely pay rent for a small place, and the girls struggle to find jobs. In the meantime, Srikanth’s company goes bankrupt, and he disappears for a while.

Slowly their fortunes change through hard work and the help of friends, and Sowmya and Meenu marry the right men.

****

Overall, this is a much more traditional (and conservative, no kissing!), Indian movie than the previous Bollywood Austen adaptions I’ve watched (Bride & Prejudice, Aisha). The style reminded me of the Indian movies of my childhood, where the music has classical Indian instruments and style, actors lip sync with the songs, and where the dance sequences have metaphorical meaning within the story. It wasn’t uncommon for two people to be talking, then transported to Egypt and convey their flirting in a dance with multiple costume changes (P.S. Indian movies play the WHOLE song).  The pageantry in I Have Found It may read as cheesy to some, but made me nostalgic, and with two beautiful leading actresses, there were some gorgeous moments.

In terms of following Jane Austen, I think that this movie does a very good job. With a running time of two and a half hours, it follows the story (adapted to India) as closely as some BBC adaptions I’ve seen. Although the two sisters were very beautiful, I didn’t really think the actors playing their suitors where that good looking, but they won me over, especially Major Bala. He’s played by major Indian film star Mammootty, and I think his acting was the stand out performance. This movie ended up feeling very romantic. I was invested in the stories and I felt like each character had a nice backstory and that their emotions were well conveyed, so I rooted for them to be happy.


The two screenshots above are from my favorite dance sequence of the movie, mostly for how pretty the pops of red looks against that desert backdrop (ETA: but ignore the subtitles on this youtube video, they are SO off and don’t match the subtitles on the DVD, which make much more sense):

The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy by Sara Angelini

Posted on by
3


 

The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy
The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy
Sara Angelini

I was curious about this one, touted as “A thoroughly modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice“, with Darcy as a judge, and Elizabeth Bennet as a trial lawyer. Hmm. Liked the idea, wasn’t sure how it would play out.
 
The Premise: (taken from the back blurb) “Judge Fitzwilliam Darcy is terribly bored — ready to hang up his black robe and return to the life of a country gentleman–until he meets Elizabeth Bennet, a fresh-faced attorney with a hectic schedule and no time for the sexy but haughty judge. Sparks fly as the two match wits and battle their overwhelming attraction”
 
My Thoughts: OK, so the very first page of The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy worried me a little. He’s with Charles Bingley, who is debating whether to buy a Lamborghini Murcielago, and throws out a comment about selling his McLaren to Ralph Lauren a few years back. The in-your-face over-the-top wealth was semi-eye rolly, but Darcy is supposed to be very wealthy. Thankfully, by page two, when Darcy begins what starts off as a typical day at work as a judge, he started to become less like a fantasy and more like a human being. His wealth, thanks to inheritance, and his interest in American law, thanks to an American mother and a barrister father are established, as is why he is a judge at a young age (and why he’s tired of it). Despite his wealth and power as a judge, I thought Darcy was likable, even funny, at least in his head.
 

“Still irked by the sudden transfer of Judge Clayton’s calendar, the Honorable F. Darcy entered the courtroom with an annoyed swirl of black robes. Sometimes he imagined himself as Professor Snape when he wore them. Considering how frequently he wished he could zap some people out of existence, it was fitting.”

Pretty soon, Darcy meets Elizabeth Bennet, but his toughness as a judge does not make him very likable to her on her first day as a trial lawyer.  Since he also slicks down his hair and wears glasses to appear more experienced, Elizabeth mistakes him as older, not thirty-seven. Later, when she overhears him say about her, “Look, she’s not pretty enough to tempt me. Do you have any idea what kind of a headache even the appearance of impropriety could cause?”, she doesn’t focus on his sensible statement, but on his dismissing her as not pretty. Now she really doesn’t like him, but while she nurses her resentment, an oblivious Darcy notes her attractions:

“Having experienced the mortification of being found not tempting, Elizabeth found it very hard to take Judge Darcy seriously. On the contrary, she thought of him as a sort of joke.  She showed her indifference to him by refusing to take the bait when he said something offensive — as he did on a daily basis. While professionally she was without fault, she danced on the edge of disrespect with pert glances and cryptic Yes, Judge Darcys. She dubbed him Clark Kent — without the sparkling personality– and made fun of him on every opportunity. The ember of resentment had taken root and burst into a full-fledge flame of defiance.
Oblivious to her true feelings, Darcy quickly concluded that she was the most capable and intelligent attorneys he had the privilege to work with, crafting creative settlements and persuasive briefs. He was always impressed by her dedication when he ran into her at the elevator after hours or on the weekends.  She met each of his challenges with spirit and never backed down when he ruled against her; he enjoyed sparring with her. If he found himself looking forward to her cases, it was in a purely intellectual sort of way. It had nothing at all to do with her velvety brown eyes.”

 
While Darcy and Elizabeth are misunderstanding each other in the courtroom, Elizabeth’s sister Jane begins her residency at Meryton Hospital, and meets the very affable pediatric surgeon, Dr. Charles Bingley. Pretty soon they’re dating, which causes Elizabeth and Darcy to run into each other even more. On one occasion, a Halloween party, Darcy is in disguise as a racecar driver complete with helmet, and makes an impression on Elizabeth who doesn’t know who he is. Of course, he doesn’t reveal himself, but later, in a proposal-type scene with a law related twist, he finds out Elizabeth can’t stand him, and is horrified.
 
Until they start their relationship, this is a story with a delicious amount of slow burn and great exchanges where their hidden feelings (Darcy’s crush and Elizabeth’s dislike) bubble beneath the surface. I was enjoying the read, but then, things get VERY physical. I was actually surprised by the level of heat in this book because of the amount of slow burn before it. I had expected the story to continue to be demure, or for there to be a sex scene or two, but no, this Elizabeth and Darcy, they are quite sexually compatible. I feel like a prude, but it was a bit much for me, and I think a big part of this was feeling uncomfortable with all the sex and the characters are named Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. If they were named something else, or if this book wasn’t described as a modern Pride and Prejudice, I’d have felt differently about the sex scenes and their frequency. Maybe it just made me uncomfortably aware of the line between homage and fanfiction.
 
Of course, the characters don’t change just because they had sex. Elizabeth and Darcy continue to be likable, and I enjoyed the banter between them. However, once their relationship changed, so did the story. After they took that step into intimacy, their problem is that it is wrong for a judge to be involved with a lawyer to appears before him in court. This is where the story is most unlike the original — their feelings in the face of their responsibilities. I thought this was a great moral dilemma that they had to wrestle with and I was interested in how it was played out, at least half the book involves this issue and I wished it wasn’t so drawn out! It felt like they were going around in circles and rehashing the problem for a long time until a decision was finally made. It felt a bit like forced drama.
 
I would also say this is pretty loosely based on Pride and Prejudice. Darcy’s aloofness and Elizabeth’s initial dislike, followed by a sort of proposal and rejection, while her sister Jane and Bingley fall in love — these are there, but there are so many differences. Bingley doesn’t need Darcy’s permission to do anything, and is a much less codependent friend. Caroline Bingley is Darcy’s friend with benefits. Charlotte Lucus is a lawyer friend of Elizabeth’s, she’s a lesbian, and Bill Collins has a bit part as a habitual offender. Georgina and Darcy are both close, but Wickham is in Georgina’s past and is practically a non-entity in the story. I wouldn’t read this book expecting the same story as that of Pride and Prejudice, because you would be disappointed. I feel like the characters could have been renamed and the Jane Austen association taken away, and this could be perfectly fine if packaged as a contemporary romance.
 
Overall:  The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy is the one I would recommend for fans of the Romance genre, but not for those looking for something that exactly follows the Pride and Prejudice formula. This one falls squarely under the contemporary romance label, but it also contains a lot of sexual situations. The sex surprised me – It’s several months into the story before things get physical, but when they do, they really do! A part of me wished the characters were named something other than Elizabeth and Darcy because of this. I also felt the story could be tighter; I wouldn’t have missed some sex scenes or minded if the moral dilemma of a judge dating a lawyer weren’t so drawn out. Other than that, I enjoyed the way Darcy and Elizabeth were re-imagined as a judge and a lawyer, and the author wrote with authority on the judicial system. I also liked the easy humor in the characters and the great natural dialogue.
 
Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository
 
Other reviews:
I didn’t find any in my blogging social circle, let me know if I missed yours!

A Weekend with Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly

Posted on by
5


 

A Weekend with Mr. Darcy
A Weekend with Mr. Darcy
Victoria Connelly

The Premise: Katherine Roberts is a university lecturer going to an annual Jane Austen weekend at Purley Hall, Hampshire. For the past three years she’s been invited to talk, but this year, she’ll also be meeting romance novelist Lorna Warwick for the first time. Lorna and Katherine have been exchanging letters for a while and have developed a close friendship through their mail. What Katherine doesn’t know is that Lorna Warwick is really a man named Warwick Lawton. Warwick never expected a fan letter from Katherine to turn into such a great friendship, and from his side, love. He’s panicked that when Katherine finds out he’s Lorna, all that they share will be destroyed. The Jane Austen weekend is Warwick’s chance to meet Katherine and tell her the truth, but when he sees her, he may not be able to go through with it.
 
Going to the same conference is Robyn Love, a Austen fan whose boyfriend Jace is completely insensitive to her and her interests. Her hope for a nice weekend by herself is thwarted when Jace invites himself to her trip at the last minute, and then expects her to rearrange her plans to spend time with him. When Robyn meets Dan at Purley Hall, it brings her incompatibility with Jace into sharp contrast. While Jace has completely different interests and can’t stand Jane Austen, Dan shares her love of animals and the country, and he’s willing to read Jane Austen. On the other hand, Jace wants to take their relationship to the next level and has been with her through a bad time. It all leaves Robyn very confused about what she should do.
 
Read an excerpt of A Weekend With Mr. Darcy here
 
My Thoughts: This is a story told in the third person, but it is a very intimate, confiding type of third person, often revealing the streams of consciousness of each of the characters as the story goes along. The three people that the narrative centers around are Katherine, Warwick, and Robyn. Katherine is a university lecturer tired of lying boyfriends (one caught with an ex-girlfriend, one caught with a wife!), Warwick is a popular romance novelist afraid of telling the world his real identity, and Robyn is a sweet Austen fan stuck in a bad relationship.
 
This is the first in a series called the Austen Addicts, and for good reason. When the book begins we are allowed a brief glimpse of Katherine, Warwick, and Robyn’s everyday lives, and then the setting changes to Purley Hall, where their three fates converge. Their reason for being there is of course the Jane Austen weekend, so a lot of the book is about the conference, which includes the lecture Katherine gives, the various events they go to, and general conference goings on. It is all Jane Austen, all the time! I enjoyed this to some extent.  The conference was a good way to show the characters meeting and getting to know each other over a shared passion for Austen and mutual dislike over the caustic Mrs. Soames. I was also really interested in some of the creative ways that Austen was celebrated at the conference.
 
The issue was that after a while, I wanted the story to be more about the individual characters instead of going into every minute detail of the conference. It got a little tedious, especially since, on top of the conference, the characters muse about Jane Austen whenever they can. At first it was cute when Robyn packed her Jane Austen books and went into detail about the state of each of her reading copies (of course she has more than one copy of each book), and when Katherine thinks about how her period drama DVDs got more use after a bad break-up. But over the course of the book, when Austen was referred to in every other page, and some small part of their life would begin a long internal monologue on Jane Austen, it felt like repetitive “filler”, and I started to feel irritation when the narrative went on another Austen-related rumination.
 
Warwick, Robyn, and Katherine were all likable characters, but I wanted to know more about them, and less about Jane Austen. The bones were there for what could have been an interesting set of characters: Warwick’s reasons for hiding the truth of his identity to Katherine, Katherine’s reasons for being wary of lying men, and Robyn’s conflict between what she knows (Jace), and what she wants (Dan). The story maintains a sort of light touch when it came to going into these issues. I think of all the three characters, Robyn’s story is what went the furthest, but it still felt like it could have gone a lot further. I felt like the narrative was playing things safe by focusing on Austen and the conference so much and avoiding character development.
 
Overall: This felt like one for the Austen-super-fans, because it’s a love letter to Jane Austen. The Austen conference in a beautiful country house and characters who can’t help thinking about their favorite author is great for a Janeite who wants to live vicariously, but as a chick lit novel, A Weekend with Mr. Darcy isn’t very substantial. The plot and character development were on the simple side of the spectrum. Once the charming setting wore off, I found the story flat.
 
Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository
 
Other reviews:
About Happy Books – “Lovely, charming, entertaining and beautiful”

Aisha (film)

Posted on by
7


Aisha (2010) is a Bollywood retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma, in the same sort of vein as Clueless. It stars Sonam Kapoor as the gorgeous and spoiled Daddy’s girl, Aisha.

The story begins at the wedding of Aisha’s auntie Chitra to Col. Singh. Fresh from her success at matchmaking (for she introduced these two to each other), Aisha eyes the wedding guests for new matches..


…and she alights on Randhir, heir to a fortune (but a bit of a dork), and Shefali, a country mouse. So Aisha’s meddling begins


Aisha takes “poor Shefali” under her wing, giving her a makeover, while her cynical friend Pinky disapproves but goes along with it. Cue a lot of shopping at designer stores and a sleepover.


Arjun, the boy next door warns Aisha that she shouldn’t treat people like dolls (or something to that effect). Aisha finds him very irritating.


Aisha introduces Shefali to upper-crust Dehli society, where people watch polo matches and go on weekend rafting trips. Sometimes they help out at animal shelters. Shefali hangs on to Aisha’s every word and takes her advice as gospel, including whether she should accept the proposal of the hometown boy she likes.


Aisha dislikes Aarti, a returnee from New York (and Angelina Jolie look-alike), who seems way too cozy with Arjun.


On the other hand Arjun isn’t fond of Dhruv, Col. Singh’s prodigal son. Dhruv is very muscled and takes his shirt of a lot in this movie, and Aisha seems interested in him at first.


Because of her manipulation, eventually Aisha’s friends have had enough and leave her. Aisha is left alone to consider her sense of entitlement.


Of course everything turns out all right at the end.

I thought that Aisha was slickly produced with beautiful sets (I want to live in Aisha’s house) and gorgeous people, but while it’s a lot of eye candy, I had a problem with Aisha’s character. Rather than being a charming, well-meaning busy-body, this version of Emma came off as a spoiled snob who thinks she knows what’s best for everybody. She uses “middle class” as a real insult, and when her friends get mad at her for her judgmental views, Aisha truly deserves it. I understood why in the end she falls for the boy-next-door, but not why he falls for her. Otherwise this movie is very pretty, with the right dose of pageantry, and perfect music selections (I must download them all), but story-wise, it has an unlikable central character, which is too bad because the rest of it is rather cute. I particularly enjoyed the secondary romance with Pinky as one half of the couple. I’d say watch this for the pretty, not for the plot.

Aisha has a very nice website here.

Prom & Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg

Posted on by
5


 

Prom & Prejudice
Prom & Prejudice
Elizabeth Eulberg

This is a review of an ARC copy I forwarded on from another blogger.
 
The Premise: This is Pride and Prejudice set in the prestigious world of uber-elite boarding schools where the most important thing in the world is the prom. Prom at Longbourn Academy can make or break a girl, and the student body doesn’t want a repeat of a few years ago, when a scholarship student not only snagged the most eligible boy from neighboring Pemberley, she showed up in a department store-bought dress and was featured in the New York Times Style section. For her predecessor’s faux pas, the newest scholarship student to Longbourn Academy, Elizabeth Bennet, is routinely hazed. The only people who treat Lizzie like a human being are her sweet roommate, Jane, and the other scholarship student at the school, Charlotte. Lizzie perseveres however. She has no interest in the Prom, but she’s delighted for Jane when she falls for the unpretentious Charles Bingley, but can’t stand his best friend, Will Darcy.
 
My Thoughts: This was a very quick read – I read it over the course of one evening in a couple of gulps. There’s only 227 pages and a lot of it is dialog so it goes very fast.
 
I thought that the idea of doing a retelling of Pride and Prejudice around a boarding school and around Prom was a really great one. The wealth of the characters and the visits to different houses translates well to this setting, and the reduced circumstances of the Bennet family is reflected in Lizzie Bennet as a scholarship student and Jane and her sister Lydia as daughters of a recently laid off executive. The core characters of the original are there (Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, Charles, Carolyn, Charlotte, Darcy and Mr Collins – Colin here), without the Bennet parents or any interfering great aunts.
 
That said, this Lizzie and Darcy are very different from the originals. Lizzie is determined and talented, but she doesn’t have the personality that observes the world and remarks upon it that the original does. In fact, she seems to build a wall between herself and the wealthy. Maybe this should be expected from the way she’s treated at school. In any case, Lizzie’s prejudice is against the very rich. Similarly Will Darcy different from the original. For most of the story his character basically stands there while Lizzie willfully misunderstands him and tells him off. I knew very little about him and had no idea why he keeps trying to see Lizzie after she repeatedly yells at him, except that this was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice and that’s just what he’s supposed to do. It is fine that Darcy and Lizzie are not the same as the original, but I didn’t feel any chemistry between them for most of the book, and didn’t understand why Darcy liked Lizzie. It’s only after they figure out their misunderstandings that their relationship becomes more believable and sweet, but the original attraction was something that felt unexplained unless I think about the original and what happens there.
 
Darcy doing something just because that’s what his character is supposed to do exemplifies what I had problems with in this story. I think it’s biggest flaw is a stiffness which seems to be the result in rigidly following a certain path. Take the dialog for example. As I already mentioned, there’s a lot of it, so it was a shame that I’d regularly hit a phrase that has odd, formal quality, especially when it’s coming out of the mouth of a teenager.  Maybe this was done deliberately, but in this setting, it’s jarring.  I had a hard time imagining teens who begin conversations with “Bennet? I’m afraid I don’t know your family. Where do you vacation?” or the a teenage boy saying, “How could you say such a thing to me?” during an argument.  When particular dialog was taken from the original and mirrored in Prom and Prejudice (take Darcy’s first declaration to Lizzie for example), it feels like it’s a pale copy that doesn’t hold the same feeling.
 
Similarly, the brilliant observations of high society that are in the original are missing from this retelling. Instead there’s a stereotypical view of the very rich, which makes any observation about them kind of moot. While I really liked the idea of the boarding school setting, I found the execution very shallow. A whole school is so obsessed with Prom that everyone would pick on some lowly scholarship student because of what another scholarship student did years ago?  Perhaps if it was one pocket of mean girls or some girl with a particular grudge, I’d have gone along with the idea, but this scenario of a whole school holding a grudge didn’t fly.
 
I wanted to like Prom & Prejudice, I really did, but it didn’t quite hit the mark.  It’s only when the story veers away from the original and focuses on Lizzie’s love of music that I felt like the story shone. These were the cute moments in the story and what ultimately made me kept reading and actually like how the story ended. I think that if this book broke script like this more, I would have been happier with it.
 
Overall: There are some cute moments in this high school version of Pride and Prejudice, and I liked the ending, but it has a stiffness throughout that kept me from enjoying it as much as I wanted to. It felt like the book spends too much time trying to emulate the original. I would have been happier if this book veered off into its own path and spent more time making the romance between Darcy and Lizzie believable and its own. However, I may be in the minority in my opinion, as I see a lot of reviews with a more positive response than mine.
 
Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository
 
Other reviews:
She is Too Fond of Books – positive
Steph Su Reads – 2.5 out of 5
The Compulsive Reader – positive
Amaterasu Reads – 4 out of 5
Galleysmith – mixed
Austenprose – 4 out of 5
 
Loved the trailer for this one:

Impromptu Austen Week

Posted on by
12


Through last year I’ve been reading and watching some modern day Jane Austen retellings and Austen inspired stories, but not posting about them on the blog. I was hoping that Stephanie’s Written Word would have another Everything Austen challenge, but that doesn’t look to be the case.

So time for an impromptu Jane Austen week here! I’ll be putting up my reviews of:

  • Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale (a mystery/comedy/romance set in a Austen inspired resort)
  • Such A Girl by Karen Siplin (a Persuasion-influenced novel with a New York hotel phone operator)
  • Prom & Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg (a Pride and Prejudice retelling set in a prestigious boarding school)
  • Aisha a Bollywood movie loosely based on Emma.

Depending on how good I am, I may also review the following in time to post them this week:

  • A Weekend With Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly (chicklit romance set around a Jane Austen conference)
  • The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy by Sara Angelini (Darcy is a judge, Liz Bennet a lawyer)
  • I Have Found It – another Bollywood movie, this time based on Sense and Sensibility