Alert Janeite Lisa sent us an editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald about the importance–and pleasure–of reading, wisely quoting the Rev. Mr. Tilney, which is always a smart thing to do in our educated opinion.

The novel Northanger Abbey, one of Jane Austen’s less read works, has a gentle dig at the contorted plotlines and melodramatic expression of the gothic novels popular in the author’s day.

But still Austen offers a defence of the novel, having her hero Henry Tilney say, “the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid”.

Today’s students need Jane Austen (and other authors who have stood the test of time) as much as ever. Good fiction is not a waste of time.

Preach it!

As well as helping us understand the world, fiction helps us understand ourselves. Jane Austen’s heroines are appealing (except, perhaps, the insipid Fanny Price)

Uh-oh….*runs as enraged Fannyfans burn down Sydney Morning Herald building*

Lisa also sent us a really funny article in the New Statesman by Sophie Gee, who has found a great new way to choose Christmas gift books: apply the Sir Walter Elliot test!

This new approach was suggested by the opening sentences of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which give the best description of reading I know:

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed.

Even as we laugh at Sir Walter for his snobbishly trivial turn of mind, we admire Austen for putting her finger so exactly on what gives reading its delight: “occupation for an idle hour and consolation in a distressed one”. Which of us doesn’t have an equivalent of the Baronetage to take down in hours of need, hoping that nobody is looking?

Well, that would probably be Jane Austen’s books for us! And a few select titles by Georgette Heyer. Do read the whole article, it’s really fun.

The audio version of Laurie Viera Rigler’s Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict got a great review in Publishers’ Weekly:

Orlagh Cassidy is delightfully fun as Courtney Stone, a modern Los Angeles girl nursing a heartbreak who wakes up to find herself inhabiting the body and life of a Jane Austenesque Regency girl. Cassidy is spot-on with Courtney’s California accent, modern-day moaning about men, self-analysis and doubt, and sarcasm—and then, without missing a beat, flips easily into the proper, upper-class English tones of Jane (the Regency girl Courtney has replaced, whose accent came with the body), her pompous, controlling mother, her desperate suitor and her sympathetic best friend.

We are pleased to report that the U.S. release of Captain Wentworth’s Diary by Amanda Grange is available for preorder and will be released on May 6, 2008. Check out the cover on Amanda Grange’s website.

Lastly, we heard from Professor Janet Todd, who gave a great plenary talk at the JASNA AGM in Vancouver this past October. She has written a book called Death and the Maidens about the Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelley-Byron circle of Jane Austen’s lifetime–authors, poets, and amazing and sad lives. Prof. Todd found some kinship between Fanny Wollstonecraft, who committed suicide at 22, and Fanny Price. It sounds like a really interesting book, and insight into a very different kind of lifestyle than that which Jane Austen and her family–and even her characters–led.

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