St. Patty's Day, or Is it?

Top O’ the Mornin to You!
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Oh but wait, is today really St. Patrick’s Day? Well it’s March 17th, isn’t it? Isn’t March 17th St. Patrick’s day? Well, yes and no. Because of the extremely early occurrence of Easter this year, St. Patrick’s Day occurs during the week preceding Easter, known as Holy Week. This overlap is causing some conflict for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. According to the BBC News, Why is it 'not' St Patrick's Day today?:

The Catholic Church in England and Wales says St Patrick's Day is simply not on the calendar of feast days this year. This week is known as Holy Week in the church and takes precedence over all saint's days.
Any saint's feast day that clashes with it is omitted from the calendar.
But the position is different in the Republic of Ireland, where St Patrick's Day was observed on Saturday 15 March, instead of Monday 17 March.

The situation in the U.S seems even more complicated. Different cities have responded in different ways to the dilemma:

Savannah, Georgia, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia moved their St. Patrick’s Day parades and celebrations to accommodate the wishes of Catholic leaders.

New York and Columbus, Ohio are having their parades as scheduled, on Monday.

From CNN, St. Patrick's Day causing Catholic dilemma:

For the first time since 1940, St. Patrick's Day will fall during Holy Week, the sacred seven days preceding Easter.
Because of the overlap, liturgical rules dictate that no Mass in honor of the saint can be celebrated on Monday, March 17, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
But a few Roman Catholic leaders are asking for even more moderation in their dioceses: They want parades and other festivities kept out of Holy Week as well.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m wearing green TODAY!

A Week for Holidays

This is a busy week, crammed chock full of holidays. Let’s see:

Today is Sunday, March 16 : Palm Sunday, Beginning of Holy Week

Monday, March 17: St. Patrick’s Day

Thursday, March 20: First Day of Spring

Thursday, March 20: Purim begins at Sunset in Israel

Friday, March 21: Good Friday, Purim Celebrated in Israel

Saturday, March 22: Purim celebrated outside of Israel

Ides of March

Today, March 15, is the anniversary of Julius' Caesar's assasination. Here is an excerpt from an interesting blog post about Caesar:

Read the entire post here.

Caesar was a man of talent made great by the exceptional times he lived in. As Machiavelli said, “prowess” must also have “opportunity” or it cannot make itself felt. And so felt and remembered Caesar would be. As Christian Meier put it, "The way in which Caesar played this game--risking his very existence and then raising the stakes, seeking out immense opportunities, finding them and savoring them--affords an absorbing spectacle." I highly recommend on some rainy day you pickup a copy of Caesar's commentaries and absorb the spectacle.

Remembering Caesar on the Ides of March.

Hail Caesar!

I'll put it my to-read list!

How Do You Spell Relief?

I received this in an email this morning...

Congratulations! The IRS has accepted your federal tax return. There's nothing else you need to do.

Whoopee!

(When there's no "Complete Jane Austen" on Sunday night, there's nothing else to do but e-file taxes.)

For the fun of it...

Here's a fun link to a Nostalgic Candy store. It brought back memories of riding bikes to the corner store and coming home with a sack of loot uh, I mean candy. Just looking at those pictures makes my teeth ache.

Enjoy!

Nostalgic Candy.com

Pwnage?

I learned something new today about Internetspeak or "Leet" from Mags at the Jane Austen blog. She was so kind as to mention my blog post about Jane Austen's use of the subjunctive on the Jane Austen blog. The title of the post is: "How does one say
“pwn3d” in the subjunctive?"

From Wikipedia:

Owned and Pwned
Main articles: Owned and Pwned
Owned and pwned both refer to the domination of a player in a video game or argument (rather than just a win), or the successful hacking of a website or computer.[1][17][23] For example, in a multiplayer first-person shooter game, a player with a default starting gun defeats an opponent carrying a vastly superior weapon. This would indicate dominant skill in the player with the inferior weapon, who outplayed (owned or pwned) the player with superior firepower. As in a common characteristic of Leet, the terms have also been adapted into noun and adjective forms,[17] ownage and pwnage, which can refer to the situation of pwning or to the superiority of its subject (e.g., "He is a very good player. He is pwnage.").

A 3 is commonly used to replace the letter e as in pwn3d.

Thanks Mags, for mentioning me so kindly on your blog and for the introduction to "Leet".

Don't [sic] Jane Austen

"A woman, especially,if she have [sic] the misfortune of knowing anything,should conceal it as well as she can."
Jane Austen,
Northanger Abbey

Back to Jane Austen and subjunctives from my previous post...
The picture above is from page 11 of Masterpiece's The Complete Guide to Teaching Jane Austen, a beautiful, full-color, teaching guide aimed at educators who want to use the film adaptations of Jane Austen's works in the classroom. I was looking through the guide and came across the above-referenced quote with the bracketed [sic].

Inserting a [sic] in a quoted text draws attention to the fact that an apparent error in spelling or grammar is part of the original and not an editorial blunder:
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines sic as follows:

sic: Latin used after a word that you have copied in order to show that you know it was not spelled or used correctly.

and the The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:

sic: A Latin word for “thus,” used to indicate that an apparent error is part of quoted material and not an editorial mistake.

So, what's wrong with the quote? Obviously, a present-day speaker would most likely say, "A woman, especially,if she has the misfortune of knowing anything...", well actually a modern speaker probably wouldn't give this kind of advice to a young woman, but that's a cultural difference and we're talking about grammar here. And then there's the author's intent, Jane Austen was a master of verbal irony and satire, so even though she seems to be telling women to hide their "smarts", she is really exposing such a view to criticism, but again, I digress from the grammatical point I was making.

Back to the point, is "if she have the misfortune of knowing anything..." grammatically incorrect? Should it be, "if she has the misfortune of knowing anything..." The answer lies in the grammatical mood (also called mode) of the verb (have/has), and progressive dwindling of the use of the subjunctive in English. The word if, lets us know that this is a conditional statement.

The mood or mode of a verb is "the manner in which the action, being, or state is expressed. There are five modes: the indicative, subjunctive, potentioal, imperative, and infinitive. The indicative mode asserts a thing as a fact, ... as, "The man walks,"

"The subjunctive mode asserts a thing as doubtful, as a wish, a supposition, or a future contingency; as, "If this be true, all will end well,..."(Harvey's Revised English Grammar)

So what form should the subjunctive of the verb "to have" take in the quoted sentence, "A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."? To find the answer to this, (I know my readers are burning up with desire for the answer to this question, as I was.) I had to look at 18th century English grammar:
from : The Treatment of the Subjunctive in Eighteenth-century Grammars of English by Anita Auer:

White (White, James. The English Verb (London, 1761))describes the formal aspect of the subjunctive by explaining the way it differs from the indicative mood:
All the difference, then between the Present of the Subjunctive Mood, and the Present of the Indicative, is; that the word expressive of the Verb undergoes changes of termination in several of the persons of the Present Tense of the Indicative, but none in the persons of the Subjunctive. Thus, in the Present of the Indicative, have changes into hast or have, has or hath, in the Person of the Singular Number, before in the Plural it return again to have; whereas, in the Subjunctive Mood, it continues have without variation, in every Person of each Number.

There it is! Eureka! The subjunctive form of the verb "to have" stays the same, "have", even in the singular, "I have", "You have", "He, she it have".

I rest my case! Don't go [siccing] Jane Austen! She was a master of polite English grammar, and knew her subjunctives from her indicatives; we should all be so nice!

(To see Henry Tilney's lamentation over the degradation of the word nice in Northanger Abbey, click on the bold word nice, and read the page, or after clicking, search on the page for nice.)

Cherry Blossoms and Subjunctives

I was going to post a picture I took of my neighbor's cherry tree covered with pretty blossoms. I just took the picture this afternoon, (it looks so pretty in the front of their house), but I can't find the cable to connect my camera to the computer, and I only have a minute to post this so I googled this picture instead. I'm sure it's better than the one I took anyway. (thanks to http://www.alexisleon.com/figs/cherry.jpg for the picture)

Oh yeah, and I do have something to say about subjunctives (and Jane Austen of course) but it will have to wair because I just got a call to pick up my son and I need to be back by 4 to take my daughter to gymnastics... gotta run!

All Jane Austen, All the Time

So it seems...

To make the most of the Masterpiece's presentation of The Complete Jane Austen on PBS Sunday nights, I've been re-reading all of Jane Austen's novels and watching as many film adaptations as I can. I picked up Sense and Sensibility from the library and, I rented the DVD of the Jane Austen Book Club and watched it this weekend. So, it's not surprising that I have Jane Austin "on the brain". There are worse things to be stuck on I guess.

It was Grigg from the Jane Austen Book Club who said, "All Jane Austen All the Time." Last night we watched the final episode of Pride and Prejudice (1995) with the dreamy Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

One of the things that makes Pride and Prejudice such a classic work of literature is the sterling cast of supporting, perfectly pitched, comic characters. The genre of Pride and Prejudice is a comedy of manners and the manners of the minor characters are truly comical. One of the most unforgettable comic characters of all times is the smarmy Rev. Mr. Collins. Tonight as we sat down for our Sunday family fellowship time, Chuck threatened to read Fordyce’s sermons to us for an hour or two, for our moral edification. (See, even my macho husband is being sucked into the Austen frenzy.)

And who can forget the annoyingly loud and nervous Mrs. Bennet, along with her permanently bemused husband, Mr. Bennet. To my mind the most perfect Mr. Bennet is Donald Sutherland in PandP 2005, in fact the most perfectly cast and perfectly acted character in any of the Jane Austin adaptations I’ve seen is Sutherland’s Mr. Bennet.

Another supporting character is Lizzy’s pedantic sister Mary Bennet. Mary spends all her time with her nose in a book and thinks that books alone make her wise and someone worth listening to. In honor of the comic supporting cast of Pride and Prejudice here are some choice Mary Bennet quotes:

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached.

…she was eagerly succeeded at the instrument by her sister Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.

“…What say you, Mary? for you are a young lady of deep reflection I know, and read great books, and make extracts."
Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.


They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature; and had some new extracts to admire, and some new observations of thread-bare morality to listen to.

And even Mary could assure her family that she had no disinclination for it.
"While I can have my mornings to myself," said she, "it is enough. -- I think it no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening engagements. Society has claims on us all; and I profess myself one of those who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for every body."

"Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonomously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

"I admire the activity of your benevolence," observed Mary, "but every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required."

Gone Too Soon

My sixteen year old son Eric walked in the door on Monday evening with a disturbed look on his face. "One of my good friends from school died this weekend", he said. "Look Mom, here he is on Myspace." A good-looking blonde kid's picture stared me in the face.

"He died in a dirt-biking accident. A friend texted me this morning about it, but I thought it was a bad joke. I can't believe he's gone. I just talked to him Thursday after school. He's the last person I would think wouldn't make it."

Fifteen year old Taylor LaKamp was killed this President's day weekend when his dirt bike collided with another biker while making a jump. The funeral is this Friday at 11am at Santa Clarita's Eternal Valley. I didn't know the kid but he looks like he was a great kid, good-looking, with his whole life ahead of him.

My son says he's okay, but after school yesterday he came home and went to his room. I heard him playing his guitar and when he came out of his room his eyes were red like he'd been crying. I know he wouldn't cry in front of me, but I know he's grieving and it's very important to him to be at the funeral on Friday, even though it's in the middle of a school day.

I'm praying for Taylor's family and friends to be comforted in the midst of this tragedy. Read the Bakersfield Newspaper report here.

Getting "Crabbey" with Jane Austen

On Sunday, Feb 3, I watched Masterpiece's, The Complete Jane Austen's new biopic Miss Austen Regrets. One scene shows Miss Austen's introduction to a young MP (member of parliament) named Stephen Washington. The meeting takes place in a library, and the young man begins to quote a poet named Crabbe:

"All around these silent walks I tread
These are the lasting memories of the dead."

Since I collect library and book quotes and I had never heard this one before, I had to find out more about Crabbe and the source of the quote.I found that George Crabbe was one of Jane Austen's favorite poets, and that the source of the quote is a poem he wrote called The Library. It's a very long poem, but here is the section that the quote came from:

With awe, around these silent walks I tread;
These are the lasting mansions of the dead:-
"The dead!" methinks a thousand tongues reply;
"These are the tombs of such as cannot die!"
Crown'd with eternal fame, they sit sublime,
"And laugh at all the little strife of time."

Hail, then, immortals! ye who shine above,
Each, in his sphere, the literary Jove;
And ye the common people of these skies,
A humbler crowd of nameless deities;
Whether 'tis yours to lead the willing mind
Through History's mazes, and the turnings find;
Or, whether led by Science, ye retire,
Lost and bewilder'd in the vast desire;
Whether the Muse invites you to her bowers,
And crowns your placid brows with living flowers;
Or godlike Wisdom teaches you to show
The noblest road to happiness below;
Or men and manners prompt the easy page
To mark the flying follies of the age:
Whatever good ye boast, that good impart;
Inform the head and rectify the heart.

Crabbe also seems to have been Jane Austen's source for the name of the heroine of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price.

"In The Parish Register, Part II (1807), Jane Austen’s favourite poet Crabbe had written:

Sir Edward is an amorous knight
And maidens chaste and lovely shun his sight;
His bailiff’s daughter suited much his taste,
For Fanny Price was lovely and was chaste”

(from E.E. Duncan-Jones in Jane Austen and Crabbe, The Review of English Studies, 1954) ht: oldgreypony

Crabbe also appears on a table in Fanny Price's study. The speaker in the following excerpt is Fanny's cousin, Edmund Bertram, speaking to Fanny:

Mansfield Park
Volume I
Chapter 16
You, in the meanwhile, will be taking a trip into China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on?"--opening a volume on the table and then taking up some others. "And here are Crabbe's Tales, and the Idler, at hand to relieve you, if you tire of your great book. I admire your little establishment exceedingly; and as soon as I am gone, you will empty your head of all this nonsense of acting, and sit comfortably down to your table. But do not stay here to be cold."

Valentine's Day love Poem

Invitation to Love
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

COME when the nights are bright with stars
Or when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry.
Come when the year's first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter's drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.

How to Marry a Millionaire

Watch PBS' Masterpiece Pride and Prejudice tomorrow night, Sunday, Feb. 10, to find out. (You'll have to come back on the 17th and 24th to catch the whole story.)

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Lover's Vows

It's been too long since my last post.

Going on with the Jane Austen theme, I've been enjoying immensely the Sunday night Masterpiece Jane Austen novels adapted for TV. Mansfield Park was the offering last Sunday. Fanny Price is the heroine of Mansfield Park and one of my favorite Jane Austen characters. Many people feel Fanny is too tame and too much of a goody-two shoes to be a favorite heroine. But I like her quiet ways and her absolute confidence to do the right thing in spite of her anxiety and fears and in the face of strong opposition.

The latest PBS version of Mansfield Park stars Billie Piper as Fanny. The character is written for the movie with a bit more spunk than comes across in the book. Her constant running here and there in the movie is definitely not in the book. But, I like the liveliness that comes across on the screen.

One of the key plot elements in the book is the preparation for a play by the residents of Mansfield Park and their friends. The play is entitled Lovers Vows. Fanny and her cousin Bertram disapprove of the endeavor and especially the choice of the play and the decision to cast the engaged Maria Bertram in the part of Agatha (the victim of a seduction and the resulting unwed pregnancy).

Reading the play helped me to understand the story of Mansfield Park better.


Fanny's Opinion of "Lovers' Vows"

From Chapter 14

The first use [Fanny] made of her solitude was to take up the volume [of "Lovers' Vows"] which had been left on the table, and begin to acquaint herself with the play of which she had heard so much. Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance—that it could be proposed and accepted in a private Theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly make

More to come, got to run to take Aimee to gymnastics...

Soul Piercing

The Masterpiece presentation of Persuasion on Sunday was not a disappointment. Watching Miss Anne Elliot brought back to life by the return of her true love, Captain Wentworth, after an eight year separation was quite enjoyable.

I am re-reading each of Jane Austen's 6 novels in preparation for watching the Masterpiece presentations. The climax of the novel Persuasion and the movie comes with the unveiling of one of the greatest love letters ever written (well certainly better than any I ever received.) Here is Captain Wentworth's impassioned epistle to Miss Anne Elliot, for your enjoyment and mine:

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Next Sunday watch out for Gothic twists and turns in Northanger Abbey.

Milestones

January 2008 has already been a month of milestones. This past week my son turned sixteen. And the week before that yours truly, turned, ahem, fifty. That’s right. FIFTY! But I don’t feel like fifty. Well, I’m not sure what fifty’s supposed to feel like, but I don’t feel any different than I did at say, forty-nine.

I guess I have some good company and lots of it. I read somewhere that since 2001 someone turns fifty every six seconds. Here are some other people turning fifty in 2008:
1958: Grandmaster Flash, Ellen DeGeneres, Ice-T, Sharon Stone, Holly Hunter, D. Boon, Alec Baldwin, Andie MacDowell, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rick Santorum, Drew Carey, Annette Bening, Prince, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Jello Biafra, Kevin Bacon, Mark Cuban, Bill Berry, Madonna, Angela Bassett, Belinda Carlisle, Steve Guttenberg, Tim Burton, Michael Jackson, Thomas Dolby, Tim Robbins, Viggo Mortensen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charlene Tilton, George Saunders, Nikki Sixx, Bebe Neuwirth. Elsewhere: Andy Gibb, Gary Numan, Gary Oldman, Simon Le Bon.
Source : Braniac

In the Bible, fifty is a Jubilee year. It’s a year of liberty and release from debt. It's a year that to enjoy the increase of the land without sowing or reaping:

Leviticus 25:10, 12
And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.

That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows..., not gather the grapes of you untended vine.

For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its increase from the field.

I'm ready for some JUBILATION! Let's Party!

On Turning Fifty
Today I turned fifty. I feel really good.
My body's still working quite well thanks. (Touch wood!)
My hair's not too grey, my wrinkles are few,
I can still touch my toes with my knuckles. (Can you?)
I'm quite full of vigour, just getting ripe.
(But they now print the phone book in much smaller type.)
Inside this old body I'm still young, but then
If life starts at forty, I'm really just ten.
By Sue Taylor

You'll Be a Man, Son

For my son on the week he turns sixteen:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Rudyard Kipling

Where's My King Cake?

Today, January 6, is Kings Day. Kings Day, also known as Ephiphany, is the day when according to tradition, the Magi brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. For me, growing up in New Orleans, that meant one thing, King Cake! I love King Cake. I am craving King Cake, I have been all day. Last night I did a google search asking "where to buy a King Cake in Los Angeles".

Google gave me one suggestion. The suggestion Hansen's Bakery. Oh yes, Hansen's Bakery does have King Cakes, but this is not a New Orleans King Cake, not by any stretch. This is a fake King Cake:




I could order one online from New Orleans, but I just can't bring myself to spend $40.00 to $50.00 to ship one here. I could make one, but it just wouldn't be the same, so here I sit, craving King Cake.

Jane Austen's Captain Wentworth

I’m looking forward to Sunday evenings this winter. I’ll be tuning in to PBS for The Complete Jane Austen on Masterpiece 2008. (9pm/8pm CT) Here’s the schedule:

January 13 Persuasion
January 20 Northanger Abbey
January 27 Mansfield Park
February 3 Miss Austen Regrets
February 10 Pride and Prejudice
to 24
March 23 Emma
March 30 to Sense and Sensibility
April 6

In preparation for watching the film adaptations I’ve started re-rereading the Austen novels. I’m reading Persuasion now. Miss Anne Elliott is pining away for her lost love when he suddenly reappears in her life. Anne had fallen in love with a young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, eight years earlier. She was persuaded to break it off by well-meaning friends and relatives on the grounds that he was not a suitable match for her in station or fortune. Now that he is a naval captain and has made his fortune and she a spinster the chances of them being reconciled seem slim. You’ll have to read the book and/or watch the movie for the rest of the story.

I came across something interesting pertaining to the possibility that Jane Austen had a romance with a real naval officer who perhaps became the model for Captain Wentworth. This is from Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, by her nephews, William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh:

A story is given in the Reminiscences of Sir Francis H. Doyle, to the effect that Mr. Austen, accompanied by Cassandra and Jane, took advantage of the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, to undertake a foreign tour. Whilst in Switzerland, they fell in with a young naval officer, who speedily became attached to Jane. His love was returned, and all seemed to be going smoothly. The party were making for Chamonix; but while the Austens kept to such high road as there was, their friend was to make his way thither over the mountains. The Austens reached Chamonix safely, but their friend never arrived, and at last news came that he had over-tired himself and died of brain fever on the way. The Austens returned to England, and Jane resumed her ordinary life, never referring to her adventures abroad.

Here's an excerpt from a poem by W.H. Auden about Jane Austen:

A Letter To Lord Byron, W. H. Auden
"...
There is one other author in my pack
For some time I debated which to write to.
Which would least likely send my letter back?
But I decided I'd give a fright to
Jane Austen if I wrote when I'd no right to,
And share in her contempt the dreadful fates
Of Crawford, Musgrove, and of Mr. Yates.

Then she's a novelist. I don't know whether
You will agree, but novel writing is
A higher art than poetry altogether
In my opinion, and success implies
Both finer character and faculties
Perhaps that's why real novels are as rare
As winter thunder or a polar bear.
...
I must remember, though, that you were dead
Before the four great Russians lived, who brought
The art of novel writing to a head;
The help of Boots had not been sought.
But now the art for which Jane Austen fought,
Under the right persuasion bravely warms
And is the most prodigious of the forms.

She was not an unshockable blue-stocking;
If shades remain the characters they were,
No doubt she still considers you as shocking.
But tell Jane Austen, that is if you dare,
How much her novels are beloved down here.
She wrote them for posterity, she said;
'Twas rash, but by posterity she's read.

You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle-class
Describe the amorous effects of 'brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.

New Year's Reading Roundup

Happy New Year!

You crown the year with your goodness and your paths drip with abundance.

Psalm 65:11


Here's a list of the books I read in 2007, at least all the ones that I finished and remembered to write down in my journal. I didn't read as many books this year as I did last year. There are probably a number of reasons for this. I think that I probably started more books and didn't finish them. Right now I'm in the middle of four or five books. I also spent more time online this year reading blogs, social networking and just chasing bunnies around the internet. I did a lot more reading when I was driving my daughter to gym 50 miles away in 2006. Not wanting to make two round trips and not really feeling comfortable with leaving her there alone, I was "stuck" there for four to six hours at a time. Needless to say that gave me quite a bit of time to read. Now she's at a local gym and I'm not "stuck".

The books are listed in the order that I read them, except that I found a few that I had missed in another list and stuck them at the end. The books marked with asteriks are those that I bought this year.

Books Read in 2007

The Princess and the Wise Woman by George McDonald

Emily Bronte and her Sisters

*The Book of Hours by Davis Bunn

Codex by Lev Grossman

The Good Nanny by Benjamin Cheever

*The Jane Austen’s Guide to Manners by Josephine Ross

Lileth by George McDonald

*The Know It All by A. J. Jacobs

Phantastes by George McDonald

Middlemarch by George Eliot

An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

*Amazing Grace, William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas

*The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Christ in the Passover by Cecil and Moishe Rosen

Tess of D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

*Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

*The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

The Histories by Herodotus

The Bookwoman’s Last Fling by John Dunning

The Mill on the Floss George Elliot

Never Before in History by Gary Amos

Misquoting Jesus By Bart Ehrman

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

*Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle

The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansome

*Rashi’s Daughters, Book I: Joheved by Maggie Anton

The Holiest of All by Andrew Murray

Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott

*Thursday Next: The Sequel by Jasper Fforde

*The Narnian by Alan Jacobs

*Rashi’s Daughters, Book II: Miriam by Maggie Anton

*Rotten Tomatoes by Jasper Pford

*The Copper Scroll by Joel Rosenberg

*How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

Our Father Abraham by Marvin R. Wilson

The Gift of the Jews by Thomas Cahill

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

The Collectors by David Balladuci

Studies in Words C.S. Lewis

The Light Princess by George Macdonald

Prometheus Bound by Aescylus

The Truth War by John MacArthur

God’s Gold: A Quest for the Lost Temple Treasures of Jerusalem

The Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman

1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina by Chris Rose

The World of the Talmud by Morris Adler

Reordering Your Day by Chuck Pierce

*Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

*The Fight for Jerusalem by Dore Gold

*1453 by Roger Crowley