Category: Jane Austen
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Secret Admirers Don’t Exist
“I have a secret secret admirer. Not only is her identity a secret—but so is the fact that she admires me.” ― Jarod Kintz, This Book Title is Invisible It’s a bit of an awkward admission to make, but every once in a while, I need to give up on a guy more quickly. I…
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Top 5 Literary Couples
So if I complain about Romeo and Juliet, Twilight, et al., what literary couple do I think worthy of being in the “top five”? Clearly, ones with some sort of strong personality types, and some sort of relationship journey. I don’t necessarily think these couples have to be in “romance books,” because sometimes the best…
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Let’s Just Blame the Plot on Someone’s Sex Drive
The Problems with Leaving Romance up to “Overwhelming Attraction” You know what I hate? I hate when romantic comedies or romance novels set up a perfectly good antagonistic relationship between two main characters (you know, where they take an instant dislike to each other, like in the beginning of Pride and Prejudice), and then easily…
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Why Some Girls Like Mr. Darcy
Maybe this post should actually be called ‘why I like Mr. Darcy,’ but I flatter myself these reasons might be shared by other females. Mr. Darcy gets a lot of flak from guys. He’s just some woman’s imagination of the perfect guy, no real guy acts like that, women in general should just grow up…
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Rant About Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’
So, I don’t usually do book reviews on this blog, but Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is so frustrating, I just have to vent about it somewhere. If you haven’t read it or what to avoid spoilers, don’t worry, you can skip this post. Mansfield Park is a book that has had love and hate poured…
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Happy Endings vs. Sad Endings
And Everything In Between Endings are one of the hardest things for me to write. Obviously, I feel the weight of the readers’ expectations—hey, if anyone is reading this, they’re trusting me to end this satisfactorily! And I’ve read so many books where a so-so ending kept the book from becoming great. But both happy…
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Do You Need to be Younger than 40 to Write Great Novels?
The other day, Little Brown Mushroom Blog linked to an article in the New York Times – an article which claims that most great novels are written by authors under the age of forty. The Little Brown Mushroom Blog was interested in this because they wanted to know if the same was true for photographers.…
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The Pleasures of Re-Reading
Or, Surprise! I Actually Like This Book Some novels can stand up to the pressures of being re-read over and over – Lord of the Rings, Howl’s Moving Castle, Pride and Prejudice – and get better and better each time I read them. To come back to them is like finding a comfortable old friend,…
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The Trouble With Modern Romance
The trouble with modern romance novels is that our culture sees no reason for two people who are in love not to be together. This significantly cuts down on the potential for conflict in the novel. In comparison, Jane Austen had it easy. I’m going to use Jane Austen as an example for a second,…
Hmm... 