Boiling Frogs for Jane
There’s an old story about how to boil a live frog: he will protest at being put into a pot of boiling water, so put him in a pot of nice cool water, and then slowly, slowly bring up the temperature. Before the poor thing knows what hit him, you’ve got one parboiled froggie.
(Disclaimer: AustenBlog.com does not condone or promote the slow torture of amphibians. It’s a metaphor, savvy?)
If you have a friend or family member to whom you have been trying to introduce the wonderful novels of Jane Austen, take the boiled frog approach, and do it a little at a time by using the dailylit.com service.
dailylit.com will e-mail a small piece of a classic novel each day; just enough to read in, say, fifteen minutes or so. For instance, Persuasion is divided into 95 sections, so each piece will be much less than a chapter. If the reader is at a good spot and eager to continue immediately, he or she may click a link in the e-mail to immediately receive the next section. With the prevalence of e-mail and Internet access on smartphones and mobile devices, anytime you’re stuck waiting somewhere, you’ll have something to read; if you are working hard at the computer and wish to take a little break, a few minutes to read an e-mail is an excellent pause that refreshes.
Suggest this method to your friends and family who want no parts of Jane Austen’s novels, and see if they are amenable to trying the novels in bite-sized chunks.
We currently are reading Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers this way. We own a copy of the novel, which sits on a shelf and mocks us. Rather than have to schlep around a humongous book or be intimidated by its length from even beginning it, we will read a little bit each day. Perfect!
May 24th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
I must say, the title was quite startling when I first opened the page. For some reason I had visions of French soldiers in large pots, ala Robinson Crusoe and I was very baffled.
May 24th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Well, headlines are supposed to be attention-grabbing, are they not?
Actually the idea of using the service for Austen-evangelizing occurred to me along with the frog-boiling metaphor as I was reading today’s bit and decided to post it to the blog.
May 24th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
[...] The AustenBlog just put up a post about a cool website. DailyLit provides small sections of literature via email or RSS feeds. Mags at AustenBlog writes: dailylit.com will e-mail a small piece of a classic novel each day; just enough to read in, say, fifteen minutes or so. For instance, Persuasion is divided into 95 sections, so each piece will be much less than a chapter. If the reader is at a good spot and eager to continue immediately, he or she may click a link in the e-mail to immediately receive the next section. » [...]
May 25th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
That one certainly grabbed!