Just in time for all those new Jane Austen fans hatched from the incubator of P&P3 and BECOMING JANE, Alert Janeite Julia wrote to tell us about her new Web site, Jane Austen for Beginners. It’s still a work in progress, but if you’re new to the world of Jane, check it out!

Not one but two modern-set interpretations of Persuasion are reviewed in the Christian Science Monitor. First up, Jane Austen in Scarsdale by Paula Marantz Cohen:

Paula Marantz Cohen is no Austen novice. Her “Jane Austen in Boca” offered one of the more delicious updates, setting “Pride and Prejudice” in a Florida retirement community. “Persuasion,” however, is more difficult to modernize. In 19th-century England, a young girl would have faced serious financial and social repercussions by going against her family’s wishes. In today’s America, the stakes just aren’t that high - making our heroine look either like a wishy-washy snob or a flat-out wimp.

We are not so sure of that. You just have to drill down deep enough to get to the core of the story. The circumstances may change, but duty to family is universal. In the 19th century, it might be class snobbery that causes a breakup, but in the 21st century a heroine might break up with a fiancé because she feels duty-bound to take care of children or elderly parents…so many things. Imagination is everything!

(But really! No Mary? No Letter? Quelle dommage!)

Next up, we have The Family Fortune by Laurie Horowitz.

n an opposite twist from “Scarsdale,” “Fortune” is at its most uneven when Jane is at work running her literary magazine. When Jane comments that “by now, I was usually able to spot a story’s potential in the first paragraph, and certainly by the end of the first page,” and then starts to sing the praises of a cheap “West Side Story” knock-off, I snorted with laughter.

Um…a “cheap ‘West Side Story’ knockoff?” Isn’t West Side Story a knockoff of Romeo and Juliet?

Alert Janeite Jenny sent us a link to an article about Korean ballerina Kim Joo-won, who recently won the women’s division of the 14th annual Benois de la Danse, also known as the Academy Award of Dance, in which she reveals her favorite book.

“I have been fascinated by ‘Pride and Prejudice’ since the very first time I read it when I was a middle school student,” said the ballerina who has been challenging widespread ‘pride and prejudice’ that Westerners are the best at performing ballet. “Darcy used to be the man of my dreams, though I have come to realize that such a character is hard to find in the real world.”

Oh, honey, don’t we know it.