Austen Crazed

Jane Austen has been my friend through numerous trying times. She was there when I had my wisdom teeth removed, my divorce, too many break-ups, more surgery... well you get the picture. I love rereading her stories and watching the film adaptions. I also get side-tracked by references to her works. My absolute favorite book is Pride and Prejudice.

I own the UK film version of P&P, and yes, Colin Firth is Mr. Darcy for me. The movie, You've Got Mail featured a full discourse between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks concerning Elizabeth and Darcy's relationship, while their relationship mirrored the P&P characters.

I wanted to learn more about Darcy and read Pamela Aidan's three book series A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman. Excellent P&P book series that shows P&P through Darcy's eyes. I recently read Jane Austen Ruined My Life. A cute humorous book for Austen fans who can somewhat relate to the character. Warning: I thoroughly enjoyed the book until the last two chapters. My girlfriends are currently reading Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. I'm sorry, I can not bring myself to read it. One of my all time favorite authors, Mary Balogh, recently had an assembly scene in her book First Comes Marriage that I reviewed stating she could not reach the same caliber as Austen since the scene was very similar to P&P's first meeting of the characters at an assembly.

I saw the Keira Knightley film version and can't state how emphatically I despise this adaption of the book. I can be particularly picky concerning P&P. That's why when my guru, Kay, told me about Lost in Austen and how much she enjoyed it, I wondered. Kay has exacting taste and the story she described seemed interesting, so I gave it a try. I was amazed that I sat through the whole 3 hours late at night.

It is the story of a devotee of P&P who gets transported into the novel and changes the course of the book. It is a very entertaining tale and I enjoyed seeing the characters interact with someone who knows them from the book. Shockingly, Elliot Cowan was an excellent Darcy (2nd to Firth). There are a few very entertaining scenes; such as when Amanda (the devotee) asks Darcy to jump in the water so she can have her Firth version of Darcy, and when Amanda discovers a secret of Miss Bingley, which sheds light on why Amanda could never understand the character in the book.

I highly recommend watching the series and reading some of the books mentioned in the post. Of course, we should all plan to pull out our edition of Pride and Prejudice and read it as well as watching the UK adaption of the book.