Austen Overload

Hello!

Today's topic is Jane Austen. Why? Because I'm taking a course at Uni! That's right, we have the possibility of attending classes on Miss Austen. It was recommended we read at least two of her books beforehand - though it turned out that we only needed to read one after all - but I've read almost all of them. For some reason my brain doesn't like the idea of having to read Mansfield Park, so that one is still unopened.

My first touch with Austen was when I was 13 years old and we watched Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility in class. Back then my reasons for liking it were simple: the relationships between people and Alan Rickman. (Not that these reasons have much changed in seven years.) I wanted to see it again and again, and when I told my dad I'd seen it and liked it, he gave me a stack of videos. On those videos my mum had recorded to whole Pride and Prejudice when it was on TV. I remember very little of my first reactions to this classical version of PandP, but it must have been good because I now have it on DVD and watch it once or twice a year.

For a long while PandP and SandS were the only ones I knew about. Finally in 2008 there was a lot of new Austen on TV. Northanger Abbey, Emma (with Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong), Persuasion, Mansfield Park... All the lot. I was thrilled, but still hadn't picked up the books as I thought them too hard for me. 2009 there was more new Austen, Sense and Sensibility in four parts. In 2010 I got myself the version of Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam (and Ewan McGregor, even though he really isn't too good in it) and saw the new 4-part version. I also saw the 1980's version of it, as well as Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park.

Also, in the spring of 2010, I read my first Austen. I liked Northanger Abbey, even though the style it's written in felt heavy and I made slow progress. In the summer I read Emma, but after that had a few months' break before a friend at the University demanded I read Pride and Prejudice. Now it's 2011, and I've read Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey (minus the five last chapters) in the matter of couple of weeks.

So that's my history of Austen. Now about the course I'm taking. Our teacher specialises in Austen, so he really knows what he's talking about. In order to complete the course we need to write an approximately 2000 word essay on the book of our choosing and have a class talk. Of the latter I was a little nervous about, since I'm a terrible public speaker, but when I heard what it'll be about, I got excited. One of the options for this 15-20 minute speech is ballroom etiquette, which I've been searching just for fun lately. I intend to get that topic. It would be good for my performance, to be genuinely interested in what I'm talking about.

In short, I'm already in love with the course, even though there's been just one class thus far. I even put a little more effort to my homework than was strictly necessary - we are all supposed to find out what certain words meant in Miss Austen's time. My word is 'fortune'. ^^

Now I need to get on with cleaning.

Love, Wilzo

Revelation!

I simply have to share what I realised a short while ago.

I've been re-reading the Lies of Locke Lamora, as I just got it back after about 3-4 months. Couldn't keep my hands off it, really, I've missed it terribly even though I read RSURS in the meanwhile. I also just finished the Blade Itself, and so have a very fresh feeling of it.
Now, I found out about both Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie in an SFX books special. (I've been trying to figure out when I bought it, but can't find any sort of year in the actual magazine. But as there were the first pictures I ever saw of the first Twilight film, I'm guessing it was summer 2007.) There's a list of "the top 100 sf and fantasy authors of all time", and Lynch and Abercrombie are numbers 88 and 81, respectively. In the bit about Lynch his books are recommended for people who like Abercrombie, and vice versa. Abercrmombie's bit even starts with the words: "The UK's answer to Scott Lynch".

That naturally made me suppose that their stuff was somehow similar to each other. A stupid idea, but it stuck to me. Now that I have read both, however, I find that I enjoy Lynch far better than Abercrombie. The reason for this took a discussion with a friend and a rant to my brother.

To the actual point, then. Joe Abercrombie writes what I (perhaps wrongly, as I have all the fantasy sub-genres nice and muddled in my head) would categorize as swords-and-sorcery. He writes about people who are not beautiful, not perfect, and not Chosen Ones. They are regular people facing problems that are quite ordinary, such as wars between nations and power-hungry superiors. There's absolutely no fault in this, on the contrary, I quite support this kind of fiction. It's brutal, it's conniving, and often unfair, but so is real life.
But what I miss in Abercrombie is the wit. That's what Scott Lynch has, and that's what I enjoy. As an admirer of Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Kushner, Terry Pratchett and, as much as I can be without having read too much of his works, P.G. Wodehouse, I just love word-play and the sort of flowing of language that I think all of the authors mentioned above have mastered. Lynch writes the most amusing dialogue, and I find myself grinning half the time, not because something funny happened but because someone said something in a way that tickled my fancy. But Lynch also has the not-very-pretty characters with flaws - I was very pissed with Locke in RSURS - although he does not display them as prominently as Abercrombie does. In the Gentleman Bastard sequnce there's both sword-and-sorcery (though very little actual sorcery, which pleases me, too) and mannerpunk. And I love the combination.

Another reason I prefer Lynch might be that when I finished the Lies I felt I could either continue of leave it at that and be satisfied with it. With only two books of seven out it's a tad early to say, but at least these two have plots of their own that get completed when the book ends, but under them lies a larger picture that will slowly unfold as the series progresses. It's something like the plotting in Harry Potter - you can read the books as individual stories, if you really insist, or you can see what the significance of the earlier books is in relation to the on-going plot.
With the Blade Itself, and with A Game of Thrones, I was almost frustrated when I realised the book ended and the story was still wide open. It's a matter of preference, of course, but I'm too impatient to wait for three or more books before something gets settled. (A reason I tend to steer away from long series. I started the first Wheel of Time a long, long time ago, got bored on page 10 and quit it. It was probably a wise decision with my attention span.)

If somebody finds this, and they have read the authors concerned, I'm sure to get very angry mail. Now that I've tried both Lynch and Abercrombie, I see they are nothing alike, but the comparison has been in my head for so long now it's hard to get rid of it. But I'm positive that in time I'll be separating the authors comfortably from each other. But for now, I'm a total Lynch-fan, unless someone can point out something I really missed in the Blade Itself.

Now I'm going to go read Lies again. If you're a fan, too, you may want to visit Camorr
Great people, interesting discussion, fairly active with the little members there are. Or at least the little active members there are. We always need more! :D

Books read 2010

So here's the list of what I've read this year.

William Shakespeare: Macbeth

Terry Pratchett: Night Watch

P. G. Wodehouse: Jeeves In the Offing

Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment

Colette: Chéri

Eva Hoffman: Lost In Translation (x3, an entrance exam book)

Scott Lynch: the Lies of Locke Lamora

Anne Rice: Angel Time - the Songs of the Seraphim

Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimna: Good Omens

Humphrey Carpenter: J.R.R. Tolkien - a biography

Jaana Kapari-Jatta: Pollomuhku ja posityyhtynen (a book by the translator of the Potter-series, about her decisions in translating)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study In Scarlet

E.M. Forster: A Room with a View

Mike Ashley (edit.): the Mammoth Book of Fantasy

Ellen Kushner: the Privilege of the Sword (x2)

Ellen Kushner: Thomas the Rhymer

Gregory Maguire: Wicked

Ellen Kushner: Swordspoint

Jane Austen: Emma

Gregory Maguire: Son of a Witch

Trisha Telep (edit.): the Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

Gregory Maguire: A Lion Among Men

Diana Wynne Jones: Tough Guide to Fantasyland

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman: the Fall of the Kings

Terry Pratchett: Going Postal

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix

Oscar Wilde: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Jonathan Strahan and Lou Andrews: Swords and Dark Magic: the New Sword and Sorcery

Donna Tartt: the Secret History

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Choderlos de Laclos: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in English despite the name)

Jon Sprunk: Shadow's Son

Diana Wynne Jones: House of Many Ways

Scott Lynch: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer: Sorcery and Cecelia, or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot

Robin McKinley: Deerskin

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice

Toby Barlow: Sharp Teeth

George R.R. Martin: A Game of Thrones

Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer: the Grand Tour, or the Purloined Coronation Regalia

Soooo. That's quite a few books more than last year. The list doesn't include stuff I've read for school:
Shakespeare - King Lear
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Graddol et al. - Changing English (x4)
Yule - Pragmatics (x4)
Melchers and Shaw - World Englishes
+ miscellaneous items of literature, such as Swift's A Modest Proposal and excerpts from Beowulf
The Graddol book and the Yule book were entrance exam books, hence why I've read them so many times. Have to say, Changing English is actually very interesting, not to mention useful in my line of study.

I'm not gonna add pictures just now, maybe later.
At the moment I'm contemplating on buying all the three books by Stevermer and Wrede, but maybe I'll just start with buying the third one, since it's not available in the libraries.

I just watched the Serpent's Kiss for the second time after buying it, and I love love love love it. It's still wonderful, and I've probably seen it about ten times. ^^

That's all folks!

~Wil

//2nd Jan 2011: Added pictures, but couldn't be bothered with the Potter covers.