We are pleased to report that Lydia Bennet’s Story by Jane Odiwe is available for preorder from Amazon.co.uk and will be released on December 1. More information about the book is available at Austen Effusions:

In Lydia’s Story, Jane Odiwe takes us back to Jane Austen’s most beloved novel, Pride and Prejudice, to a Regency world seen through Lydia Bennet’s eyes where officers, pleasure and marriage are the only pursuits. The events that Austen did not relate are revealed, we follow her comical adventures and are privy to her every folly, every romantic whim. All the characters we love and recognise are there with many new ones besides. From Hertfordshire to Brighton, Newcastle and Bath, to the end of Pride and Prejudice and beyond, we learn of Lydia’s quest for true love.

While we understand that Miss Lydia’s character is not exactly redeemed in the story, she is given a somewhat more sympathetic treatment than she has received in the past.

For the purposes of her wonderful book, Jane Austen quite rightly paints Lydia in a less than flattering light, but for the purposes of mine, I hope I have managed to give her a sympathetic hearing, which I believe she deserves, despite her penchant for silliness and folly. Her heart rules her head, her tongue has a habit of running away with her and she acts without thinking but I confess, I could not resist her and have grown to be very fond of Lydia for all her faults.

Don’t forget to check out Miss Lydia’s Blog for a preview of the book and the lovely illustrations.

Innocent Diversions has been named nytheatre.com’s Pick of the Week:

Theater Ten Ten’s new revival of Lynn Marie Macy’s Jane Austen-style holiday entertainment is absolutely delightful and charming.

The New York Times was less pleased with it, though grudgingly admitted that Janeites might like it. (Gee, thanks! We were waiting for your permission! Sheesh) And having seen Ms. Macy’s thoroughly delightful adaptation of Northanger Abbey from the first row of Theater Ten Ten last year, we can say that moving the seats back from the stage is a pretty good idea–otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see the stage properly.

And we have some new photos from the play:

Christiana Lynn Kuczma as Catherine Bigg and Karen Eterovich as Jane Austen

Karen Eterovich as Jane Austen and David Arthur Bachrach as the Reverend George Austen

Karen Eterovich as Jane Austen, Chelsea Jo Pattison as Fanny Austen and Talaura Harms as Madam Lefroy

Innocent Diversions runs through December 16.

Comedian Russell Brand has had to bow out of Jane Austen Handheld due to previous commitments.

It could have been a stroke of inspired casting: louche comic Russell Brand as the dastardly Wickham in a spoof remake of Pride and Prejudice, alongside mouthy singer Lily Allen as Lydia, the headstrong flirt with whom Wickham elopes. Sadly, Brand has said he will be too busy to take up the role in the film, called Jane Austen Handheld, which will retell the Austen classic in the form of a fly-on-the-wall documentary and is due to go into production next year.

“I met Lily when she came on my radio show and I thought she was fantastic,” Brand says. “It’s a pity, as I’d have loved to run off together and have my wicked way with her.”

So this sounds like it’s going forward…who will play Lizzy and Darcy? Shall we start a letter-writing campaign to Stephen Fry to ask him to cast Richard Armitage as Darcy? Might be the last chance to get him in an Austen adaptation, and imagine him doing those one-on-one camera journal things like in The Office, wondering why Elizabeth doesn’t like him, or oh dear God Wickham’s shown up!

*cackles evilly, stands back as Armitage Army stampedes*

Thanks to Alert Janeite Silent Doug, who posted in the comments for the Region 2 S&S DVD, we discovered that WGBH has just about all the Region 1 DVDs for the Complete Jane Austen available for preorder, for release after their broadcast.

Northanger Abbey will be available first, on January 22, 2008. (Is it just us, or does JJ Feild look like somebody just kicked his Newfoundland in that cover photo?) Mansfield Park will be available on January 29. Persuasion will be available on February 12, and S&S, as mentioned below, on March 1.

Miss Austen Regrets so far seems available only “for educational use” (not sure what that means; possibly licensed to play to a large group?) and will be available on April 15, 2008. We imagine the regular consumer version will be available at the same time.

ETA: We’ve added links to the sidebar, to Amazon where available; interestingly, Persuasion 07 is listed as available in mid-January, which actually makes sense, since that is when it will be broadcast. As always, we use links to Amazon only for our convenience; if you are going to buy these DVDs, please patronize the online or brick and mortar establishment of your choice.

Even the BBC is calling it 2008, so we guess it is official!

Alert Janeite Helen B. let us know that the BBC Shop is accepting preorders for the Region 2 DVD of Sense and Sensibility 2008, which will be released on January 21, 2008. It doesn’t look like there are any extras on the DVD, but it’s too early to tell for sure.

ETA: And many thanks to Silent Doug, who let us know in the comments that WGBH is also accepting preorders for the Region 1 DVD, which will be available on March 1, 2008.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to a column by Mikita Brottman at the Huffington Post, in which she registers her complaints about the recent spate of Jane Austen adaptations, books, etc. While she certainly is entitled to her opinion, we think she paints the phenomenon with much too broad a brush.

There’s no point trying to understand what it is about Jane Austen that’s so compelling to today’s women, because Jane Austen™ has very little to do with Jane Austen. Jane Austen™ is a retro fantasy creation, a sassy, ironic, independent woman. Jane Austen™ is all about social snubs, overheard conversations, implied relationships, and signifiers of status, especially hair and clothes. Jane Austen™ thrives in social enclaves full of privileged women obsessed with material wealth, class distinctions, and, always, the underlying mating dance. Exactly like He’s Just Not That Into You.

In the world of Jane Austen™ the women who win may not be perfectly beautiful, but they’re witty, smart, and well dressed. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the actress who plays Jane Austen in Becoming Jane, the voluptuous Hathaway, is best known as the star of The Princess Diaries, since Jane Austen™ is essentially The Princess Diaries for grownups.

Actually, Becoming Jane is Jane Austen for overly romantic fourteen-year-olds. Try again.

It may be a lovely fantasy, but I suspect the historical Jane Austen would be Just Not That Into It.

Certainly there are some “Jane Austen fans” (and we use the term loosely) who like the novels and films and books for the pretty people and pretty clothes, but there are plenty of us who are real, serious Jane Austen fans, who can quote the novels chapter and verse, who have read and digested 200 years of scholarship about her work, but who don’t take it all so darned seriously that we can’t have a little fun with it. What else have we spent the past three and half years (longer, really, on our personal blog) blogging about if not the fun, pop culture aspects of being a Janeite? Not that all of the Jane Austen Brand™ (and please to stop stealing our schtick without at least acknowledging it) products are of the best quality, and Jane knows we’re the first to point that out. And that’s the whole point: you can’t paint the modern Jane Austen phenomenon with such a broad brush, and you can’t write about it in 1000 words, either.

Review by Allison T.

The life of a reviewer of Jane Austen prequels, sequels and re-tellings is a hard and lonely one. Some days it feels like every Austen-lover (but me) has written some version of P&P—motivated principally by feelings of love and admiration for the source but also not un-aware that almost anything with a P&P-like title or a tie-in to The Great One can get published and bring in the bucks.

And yet here I am perplexed as to how to categorize Kara Louise’s Drive and Determination, a book that has a splendid, double-barreled, Austen-like name but a disclaimer on the back-cover that reads: “This modern day novel is inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. It is not meant to replace her story or to even incorporate all the events. Those familiar with her story will recognize certain characters and events.”

Here the author has both neatly connected yet disconnected herself from the real P&P: are we meant to read this story as P&P or are we not? This reviewer selflessly plunked down $14.95 (plus S&H) to find out.

It turns out that we are, kinda. Here’s the story, more or less.

Elyssa Barnett, an young interior designer, has long wondered why sister Janet’s boyfriend, Chad Blakely, has put up with the handsome (on a 50 top eligible bachelor list for two years running in a “well known publication”) cold, rich Will Denton, but she really gets P.O’d at him when he turns up late to Janet and Chad’s wedding rehearsal. So rude of him! Elyssa hates cold, manipulative, rich CEOs since her father dropped dead from over-work a few years ago. (Huh?) And Will is the president of a family-owned coffee company in Guatemala called Pemberleo Coffee. (???) Then Elyssa really takes a scunner to Will when gives Chad the wedding gift of a promotion, sending him to Guatemala. Then 2 years later Janet and Chad die in a car accident (this isn’t a spoiler, as it is mentioned on the back cover) and now Elyssa is REALLY mad at Will because It’s All His Fault. But he finds himself Strangely Drawn to her when she, sobbing, gives a Really Really Great Eulogy for Janet. And then she goes to Guatemala to sort through the effects and meets a Pemberleo Coffee employee George Westham (who would like to get into bed with Elyssa but merely hints at it—and we know that he’d like to get to know younger sister Lynette whom he remembers from the wedding, but of course, he’s down in Guatemala and she’s in the U.S. somewhere so nothing happens and Will sends him away and we never hear about him or Lynette again). There are a few other characters with P&P names but who don’t exhibit much, if any, P&P characterization. Mud slides, a bout of Montezuma’s Revenge, a visit to a day care in a poor neighborhood, paparazzi and other extreme events fill the pages of this tale, which relies heavily on description and narration and not so much on dialogue or character development.

So what is this reviewer to do? I can say that it’s not much like Austen’s P&P except that the boy and girl “meet cute,” dislike each other at first and then get married at the end—but the author has already disarmed reproof by stating that this is only “inspired” by the original; it does not attempt to retell it. But if she uses P&P names and a P&P-like title, but not really any of the insight into character, then—oh, dear! Head spinning on shoulders! Must stop!

The spate of Austen para-literature has gotten out of hand. It wasn’t so bad when it was confined to the Internet (and was free) where only the most obsessed found it, but now that so much money is changing hands in Austenland it seems only fair to demand some ground-rules. Unlike happy families, good para-literature is unique; bad para-literature all fail in similar ways. So listen up, boys and girls: here are this reviewer’s Official Rules of Jane Austen Retellings.

1. Your characters are not required to have names that match the initial letters of Austen’s characters (in fact, it’s more fun if they don’t), but;
2. Your characters must exhibit similar qualities to hers: that is, your Elizabeth and your Mr. Darcy must each exhibit elements of both pride and prejudice and they must both be taught a lesson and learn and grow from their mistaken beliefs. They are not permitted to simply dislike each other on sight and then get the hots for each other without saying at least once to themselves or others: “Gosh, I was wrong wrong wrong about him/her and I acted badly and I’ll never get him/her back.”
3. You are permitted to drop minor characters, which is why Kitty and Mary Bennet are so often relegated along with Margaret Dashwood, Mr and Mrs Hurst and Betsy Price to the Department of Un-Wanted Characters; but
4. You are required to maintain the basic plot sequence (if you are Retelling an Austen work). That is, your characters aren’t permitted to die if Austen’s didn’t. The reason for this rule is that it introduces a whole different set of emotions and motivations to the plot, which your characters must reasonably deal with, but which Austen’s didn’t. It’s inconceivable to me to imagine a retelling of P&P or even more radically, S&S—both books in which the loving relationship between the sisters is at the heart of the story—in which one sister is bumped off within 30 pages of the beginning. This action makes it a WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY. Be brave! If that’s the story you want to tell, then tell it, but don’t tie it to Austen!
5. Finally, if you choose a double-barreled title like, oh, I don’t know, “Folly and Futility,” then you are committed to showing that both your hero and your heroine exhibit extremes of these qualities (see rule 2, above) but then learn to bring them into appropriate balance. You might even repeat these words, separately or together, at various times throughout your novel. You are not permitted to merely close your novel with the very first reference to this phrase.

If you do not care to follow these rules, then what you have is Your Very Own Romance Novel—which is great! You are not, however, permitted to jump onto the Jane Austen bandwagon with it tucked under your arm. Your novel must stand on its own two feet. Drive and Determination doesn’t.

A week before The Alleged Biopic appears in North America, we will have both regular and Blu-Ray DVDs of The Jane Austen Book Club, both with added features including an audio commentary with cast and crew, four featurettes (”Behind-the-Scenes of The Jane Austen Book Club,” “The Life of Jane Austen,” “Walking the Red Carpet: Los Angeles Premiere,” “The Book Club: Deconstructed”) and deleted scenes.

All of us who enjoyed seeing a Jane Austen film for grownups–let’s support this. Maybe we’ll get some more. Stranger things have happened.

Both Miss Austen Regrets and S&S07/08 (depends, doesn’t it?) will be broadcast on BBC One the week of December 30, 2007. No definite dates that we can tell yet.

There’s also a little photo of Olivia Williams as Jane Austen in Miss Austen Regrets, and a new montage photo from S&S. (We can’t stop giggling at Willoughby. He needs to hang a sign around his neck, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am a rake, a cad, and a blackguard. Thanks for asking.”)

There are feature articles on Charity Wakefield and David Morrissey. From the latter:

Having already watched some of his scenes back, Morrissey is pleased with the finished result, even though he finds it slightly awkward watching himself on screen.

“I think it’s great,” he says. “What Andrew does brilliantly is to dramatise what has been reported in the novel. I think that’s really important, and it gives a richness to the adaptation.”

Oh, does he now? Good to know.

Thanks to Alert Janeites Franka and Amo for the links!

An excellent column by John Mullan in the Guardian reminds us that in Jane Austen’s day, books were often read by groups, but not in quite the same way that we think of book groups today.

The modern book club echoes habits of reading in Austen’s day. Reading, especially of fiction, was often a communal experience. And so, too, in the novels themselves. If something is worth reading it is worth reading aloud to someone you like. On rainy days in Bath, Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe retire to “read novels together”. When the perfidious Willoughby inveigles his way into the hearts of Marianne Dashwood and her mother and sisters, the sign of their intimacy is that they read aloud together. When he abruptly leaves them, they are in the middle of enjoying Hamlet.

But remember, not everyone can be Elizabeth Bennet.

The Jane Austen Book Club, in book and film versions, believes that we can discover ourselves and our dilemmas in Austen’s novels. So every self-respecting Janeite would believe. Most of us, like those Californian narcissists, are happy to think we might be like Elizabeth Bennet. But why not Mr Collins or Lady Catherine de Bourgh or the immortally idiotic Mrs Bennet? Austen got her fools and monsters from her observations of people, too. And who ever recognises themselves as Mrs Norris? One of the first readers of Mansfield Park, Mrs Wither Bramston, did think that she was herself rather like the elegant, enervated, vacuous Lady Bertram. And this was a sign of her admiration for the novel. But perhaps readers were a little more honest with each other in Austen’s day.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us an article in the Guardian that describes Audiobooks Online, a Netflix-like service for audiobooks (what a great idea!), including unabridged audiobooks of Jane Austen’s novels. The article also suggests giving audiobook sets as holiday gifts, including the unabridged Austen library from Naxos.

Alert Janeite Laurel Ann sent us an eBay auction link for a Jane Austen doll do-it-yourself kit.

Laurel Ann was a little distressed by the dismembered doll, but remember she’s not Jane till she’s put together and it’s a little better.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us an article in the Liverpool Daily Post about the Pemberley Players, a group of musicians who play period music at various events in the U.K. occasionally other countries.

The dances Austen and her characters performed, at the balls that spiced up the monotony of middle-class country life, were refined versions of the dancing practiced at village festivals for centuries.

OVER the years they became, in refined society, what the young people performed when the royalty and older people had left the room – there was more movement and raciness than in the stilted Elizabethan minuets.

The Pemberley Players will be performing at the Pride and Prejudice Ball at St. George’s Hall in Liverpool on March 8, 2008.

Alert Janeite Kathleen B. sent us a paragraph from the book Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery that mentions Jane Austen:

The Spooners lived at Elmdon hall and had a second home in Bath. But suddenly their Barbara no longer skittered along to each ball and assembly, as she must do. What was the blessed point of being in Bath at all if not to display to eligible bachelors one’s marriageable daughters? And there was a giggling queue of Spooner girls just behind Barbara who needed marrying off once she’d been settled. But now she’d gone Methodist. Her parents surely feared she would end an old maid–their beautiful Barbara! It is no wonder Jane Austen set several of her novels in Bath during this time. One can almost hear Mrs. Spooner assaulting the ears of her dear husband with keening lamentations over their unprecedented tragedy: “O! Mr. Spooner! Our dear girl has gone Methodist–Methodist! And she the prettiest of the bunch! O! What shall we do now? O! Mr. Spooner. I tell you we are ruined–ruined! Call the apothecary! O!”

Jane would just have married her off to Mr. Collins.

Norman Geras and his wife Adèle went to Chawton Cottage and Winchester.

The house is now a museum, and we walked about it looking at everything in a suitably reverent way. For me the highlight of the visit was this - the table at which she wrote. The very one. I stood before it in wonder.

That’s a pilgrimage that every Janeite should try to make. We haven’t been to Winchester yet, but we will get there one day!

We were amused by the blog of Dennis St. Michel, Viscount Stokington, whom you might know in another incarnation as Dennis the Menace. Not only is it hilarious, there are parts that sound awfully familiar…

What nonsense is this, I thought with mad bravado. What fear? What shame? I am Dennis St. Michel! But even as I made plans for the appeasement of my father, the dread settled into my very marrow. Perhaps, if I told him that I intended to make an honest man of myself, to make an honest woman of Margaret, he might be lenient on the matter of Oxford. For, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a scoundrel not in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

(That’s not the only one; we got a good hearty horse-laugh out of “Last night I dreamt I went to Menacing House again.”)

Found via The Comics Curmudgeon

From Overheard in New York:

Pop Quiz: To Which of These Women Is This Conversation Most Insulting?

Girlfriend: Come on, I really wanna see that movie about Jane Austen.
Boyfriend: She was the one that lived with the chimpanzees, right?
Girlfriend: No, that was Jane Seymour.

Argh.

We just heard that Amanda Grange’s latest Austen hero retelling, Edmund Bertram’s Diary, will be released on November 30, though Amazon UK claims to be shipping it; you can save a few pounds (not to mention postage and packing) if you order directly from Robert Hale. For the more patient in North America, Berkeley will be publishing a paperback version next year, along with Captain Wentworth’s Diary, though we don’t have dates on those yet. We are told a copy of His Lordship of W’ville’s diary is on its way to AustenBlog World Headquarters, so expect a review soon. (Up next…Colonel Brandon’s Diary, which we are told contains “Frustrated elopements, affairs, divorce, consumption, illegitimate children, a duel” and other good stuff! Who knew Jane Austen wrote melodrama? Just as backstory, of course.)

It also has been whispered in our shell-pink ear that Berkeley will be publishing a paperback edition of The Confession of Fitzwilliam Darcy by Mary Street, long considered the Holy Grail of Jane Austen paraliterature, next March. Team Darcy is no doubt dancing in the streets in anticipation.

Mr. Knightley’s Diary is of course available from Berkeley now, as well as e-book editions for Mobipocket, eReader, MS Reader, Adobe, and even a Kindle edition.

Some may be asking, “What’s a Kindle edition?” The Kindle is a new e-book reading device that was launched with great fanfare by Amazon this week. The device, and the Kindle edition e-books that work on it, are only sold by Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, said he wanted to make the iPod of e-book readers, and we don’t think he quite succeeded, but he might have come really close. The really new and interesting thing about the Kindle is that it contains a wireless radio so that users can purchase and download books without using their computer. The book will be downloaded directly to the Kindle. The books are competitively priced (a bone of contention among e-book readers; usually prices for e-book editions of hardback books are about the same as the paper copy) at $9.99 for New York Times bestsellers and less for many older books. We think the main selling point of the Kindle is the eInk screen, which is not backlit like a PDA or computer monitor and is the closest electronic imitation of paper that is available right now. The Sony Reader also has an eInk screen, as do the Bookeen Cybook Gen3 and the iRex iLiad. Just about any PDA or smartphone (including Palm, PocketPC, and BlackBerry devices, and we believe iPhones can handle ebooks after a fashion) can be used as ebook readers, as can any computer, and while we love the portability of carrying dozens of books on our Treo, we find that our eyes grow tired after a while of reading on a backlit screen, especially as we spend a lot of time using a PC.

One of the selling points of the Kindle was the availability of more than 90,000 books on launch, and we were pleased to see Jane Austen well-represented, including her own books as well as various paraliterature titles. Also, the Kindle can use unencrypted Mobipocket, HTML, and text documents, so it is possible to use the free versions of Jane Austen’s novels at Project Gutenberg or manybooks.net. This also is true for just about every e-book reader available. The article in Newsweek touting the launch of the Kindle even mentions Jane Austen in a couple of places:

And, to soothe the anxieties of print-culture stalwarts, in sleep mode the Kindle displays retro images of ancient texts, early printing presses and beloved authors like Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen.

and

A company called DailyLit this year began sending out books—new ones licensed from publishers and classics from authors like Jane Austen—straight to your e-mail IN BOX, in 1000-work chunks. (I’ve been reading Boswell’s “Life of Johnson” on my iPhone, a device that is expected to be a major outlet for e-books in the coming months.) And recently a columnist for the Chicago Tribune waxed rhapsodically about reading Jane Austen on his BlackBerry.

In our opinion, the Kindle is a great first step for a true e-reader for the masses. It’s easy to use and has a wide selection of titles; by the time one works one’s way through what is already available plus what can be picked up for free around the Internet, we’re sure even more titles will become available. However, there are some concerns. The most important of these concerns, in our opinion, is that the Kindle editions use a proprietary format that includes digital rights management to prevent copying. That means you can’t read Kindle editions on any other device; you can’t even buy a Kindle edition if you don’t own a Kindle that is linked to your Amazon account. You can read some other formats on your Kindle, but if you’re an early adopter of e-books and already have a library of DRM-protected Adobe PDF or Mobipocket format e-books, or any flavor of eReader books, you are out of luck. They can’t be read on the Kindle or converted to read on the Kindle. (Non-DRMed Mobipocket is supported natively and non-DRMed PDFs can be converted for reading on the Kindle.) Beta and VHS, anyone? And what happens if Amazon decides to get out of digital books in a few years? How are you supposed to read all those books you bought for the Kindle with the click of a button? Neil Gaiman and Mark Pilgrim discuss two views of DRM related to the Kindle. Of course, the proprietary format of iTunes downloads hasn’t affected the popularity of the iPod any, though of course it’s much easier to convert your physical media for use on the iPod than it is to convert a book for use on a Kindle. (You have to scan the book and format it. We’ve done it, but we’re a little nuts.)

Cory Doctorow, an author and evangelist for freedom in digital media, writes about some of the privacy concerns with the Kindle at BoingBoing. We think many consumers won’t be a bit put off by these issues, but his criticism is important. It’s one thing for a company to keep records of what you’ve purchased from them and use that information for future marketing purposes (and one of the things we love about Amazon is getting suggestions of things we will like based upon other things we’ve purchased), but knowing when and how you read a book, what you’ve bookmarked, how many times you’ve read it, is just a little creepy and Orwellian for our taste. The information gathering should stop at purchase, in our opinion.

And, we hate to say it, but the Kindle puts the fug in fugly. We like the idea of a keyboard for notes and annotations, but there’s an awful lot of wasted real estate there. Half the reason to have a dedicated e-book reader is portability! Keep it small, and reserve most of the surface area for the screen. This is not difficult to figure out. And, being tied to the Sprint network, the Kindle is currently US-centric, as the type of wireless signal used by Sprint is not used outside the U.S.

So why is the Kindle important to Janeites? We think it is an important step in making e-books easy to buy and use and raise the consciousness of e-books in the public eye; it also will fuel the development of other readers, and speed availability of many of our favorite authors’ books in digital format. (Hint: Georgette Heyer! Dorothy L. Sayers! Patrick O’Brian! C’mon, publishers!) The latter is important even for owners of devices other than the Kindle, as once a book is converted to text for the Kindle, it’s fairly easy to also make it available in other formats (see Mr. Knightley’s Diary, above). And again, why is this important to Janeites? Because there is 200 years of scholarship and publishing related to Jane Austen. Imagine having everything ever written about Jane Austen on instant demand. And the Kindle has a web browser–one even can use it to access the e-text library at Molland’s, for instance. There is lots of stuff out there, and we would like to see more, and we would like to download it all to our eInk device of choice and carry it around with us, for we are greedy when it comes to Jane Austen. We’ve contributed a mite to this archive of Janeite knowledge with our e-texts at Molland’s (and will be contributing more in future). Won’t it be a wonderful thing when books never go out of print? When we won’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for an obscure paraliterature title from the 1940s, because it’s available for a few dollars as a download? No one will have to warehouse it or pay for it to be printed; just give it server room. That will indeed be a wonderful thing for Janeites.

And guys, the Kindle can help you get chicks. Maybe.

Incidentally, Santa is bringing a Cybook Gen3 to AustenBlog World Headquarters next month (if it doesn’t sell out before the elves get there to pick it up, that is). Expect a full report. And we would love to hear from anyone who purchased a Kindle.

That’s it for this week’s Friday Bookblogging, Gentle Readers, and remember: Books Are Nice!

Alert Janeites Franka and Sylvia M. sent us a link to some new hi-resolution photos from S&S08. Discuss, we know you want to!

We got a kick out of this post on Feeling Kinda Blog Today about a real-life Jane Austen Book Club.

Recently we saw the movie “The Jane Austen Book Club” because in our infinite nerdiness we deeply love all things having to do with oldsy timesy. The movie was ok, but it got us to thinking that we would really love to read all the JA books (there are only six) since both of us had only ever read Pride and Prejudice.

Thus was born “The Brooke and Mom Jane Austen Book Club”. Once a month we read a different JA book. While reading it I send a barrage of emails to mom saying “What do you think is going to happen? Do you think he still loves her?” Or we email each other using JA expressions “dearest Mom, you are so droll. I would be monstrous happy if you should yes lend me twenty pounds for luncheon.” Or Mom gets confused by all the characters and emails me for clarity (I’m good at keeping track of epic large families) “Mom, the reason you are confused is because Mr. Dashwood and Mr. John Dashwood are separate people.” Then, we set a date to meet and discuss the book at a location that is somehow connected to the book.

Sounds like a great idea to us! We also were thoroughly amused by Brooke’s summary of Northanger Abbey:

-Catherine used to be ugly, now she’s ok looking so she leaves her giant family and goes to Bath with some friends.
- She meets a guy and totally starts crushing on him.
- She makes a friend who is a whopping beyotch.
- Catherine slyly makes friends with her crushes little sister who then invites her to Northanger Abbey cause Bath is like, so last year.
- Catherine goes to Northanger Abbey with crush, crush’s little sister, and crushes creepy mean dad. Fun!
- Catherine suspects creepy mean crush dad of being a killer and of killing his wife, logical. (She’s been reading too many gothic novels) While getting busted by crush for sneaking around forbidden rooms in the Abbey she confesses to him that she thinks his dad is a killer. Clearly she’s laying down the groundwork for a great romance here.
- Crush is mad and puts her in her place, but he still likes her, the crazy kid.
- Suddenly Catherine is cast out of Northanger Abbey rudely and sent back to her giant family.
- Crush comes chasing after her and arrives by horse days later to announce that his father cast her out because he was under the misconception that she was wealthy and then he found out she wasn’t and kicked her to the curb. Crush still loves her though, cause she’s got spunk. Crush proposes, all is well. The good people prosper in the end and marriages ensue like a Shakespeare comedy on speed.

We hope that Brooke and Mom enjoyed Sense and Sensibility, and can’t wait to read all about their next meeting.