Saturday Snapshot: Pride and Prejudice

These days, I tend to rely on Instagram and texting to communicate with family and friends.  While I've posted numerous photos on Instagram (as some of you know), I haven't posted anything on my blog since April.  The merry month of May flew by before I had a chance to post here!  

In May, my husband, Randy, and I took a trip back east to attend Family Weekend at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where our youngest daughter, Angela, goes to school.  While we were at Dartmouth we visited the Rauner Special Collections Library, which houses original editions of many books, including the supremely popular English novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which was first published in 1813.  Here are a few photos I was lucky to take with my iPhone (I say this because there was a crowd of people gathered for this special book viewing at the library).  If you look at the third photo (click to enlargen it), you'll see that Jane Austen was referred to as the author of "Sense and Sensibility".  After the photos, I've added a proper "nametag" that I devised from a later (1907), edition of Pride and Prejudice, illustrated by C.E. Brock, that I found on Wikipedia.

Rauner Library (photo by Randy)

Original edition of Pride and Prejudice, in three volumes

By the author of "Sense and Sensibility"

"It is a truth universally acknowledged... "

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Many thanks to West Metro Mommy for hosting Saturday Snapshot! 

Really Random Tuesday #77: Jane, a Book Winner, and Motion-X GPS

Isn't she pretty in pink?  This fabulous Jane Austen action figure arrived recently from GoneReading.  She's a welcome addition to my home!  

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Félicitations!  The winner of  I See London I See France by Paulita Kincer is Vicki from I'd Rather Be At The Beach.  Congratulations, Vicki!  I think you'll really enjoy reading this book.  When I visited Vicki's blog, I noticed that Vicki participates in numerous reading challenges (unlike me), and that she's hosting one called Foodies Read 2014, which sounds like it would be a lot of fun.  She also talks about fitness, and has a feature called Get Fit Tuesday 2014, which led me to my next topic.

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I've been using the app Motion-X GPS on my iPhone to track my walks and runs and I love it.  It helps me to stay motivated.  Does anyone know if you can print out tracks directly from the site?  I could print them from my email, but I'm hoping there's an easier way to print them out.  I would like to put them in a fitness binder for 2014.  That, too, would help me to stay motivated.

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Appearing on random Tuesdays, Really Random Tuesday is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related things you can think of. I often announce book winners in these posts. If you have miscellaneous book news to gather up and are inspired by this idea, "grab" the button for use on your own blog, then add your link to the "master" Mister Linky on the Really Random Tuesday page.

Your comments are welcomed. Thanks for reading!

Really Random Tuesday #76: Blog Talk, Book Winners, and Jane Austen

It's a good thing we have a sense of humor.  I think many bloggers can relate to this humorous card.  My husband gave me the card above for Valentine's Day (along with a more traditional card), in an envelope addressed to "Suko".  I do find this quite funny, and "spot on"--I've watched numerous eyes glaze over when I've talked at length about my blog.  ;)

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Please help me to congratulate Laura from Library of Clean Reads and traveler.  Each has won a copy of The Pact by Mitchell S. Karnes.  Congratulations to both of you! 

Dear readers, if you didn't win this time, please scroll down and take a look at the other book giveaways listed on the right side of my blog.  I update this list frequently, so check back as often as you wish for new book giveaways. 

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Isn't she lovely?  GoneReading, a glorious online gift shop for readers, now has a Jane Austen action figure available, part of an entire collection devoted to this English novelist.  Like me, you may think of Jane Austen as more cerebral than action-oriented, but imagine her lending unmistakeable poise and presence to your writing desk, home library, or reading nook, or as a special guest at your next book club meeting.  It'll be hard for Jane Austen fans to resist the wonderful stuff in this collection. Through the end of March, enter SUKOS20 at the check-out for a 20% discount on all GoneReading purchases!

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Appearing on random Tuesdays, Really Random Tuesday is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related things you can think of. I often announce book winners in these posts. If you have miscellaneous book news to gather up and are inspired by this idea, "grab" the button for use on your own blog, then add your link to the "master" Mister Linky on the Really Random Tuesday page.

Thanks for reading!  Your comments are welcomed.

Letter to My Daughter: Review and Giveaway

Think about the letters you've saved over the years. Are they love letters? Are they the letters you got from home during your first summer away at camp? Do you have a box full of letters from best friends, full of events and compliments, or acceptances to schools or for jobs? You probably saved these letters because they touched your emotions when you first read them. Chances are good that they still affect you when you reread them.

An epistolary novel is a fictional book written as a series of documents, usually letters, although diary or journal entries, newspaper clippings, and other documents are sometimes used. In recent times, electronic "documents" such as email and even blogs have also come into use. The word 'epistolary' comes from the Latin word epistola, meaning a letter. The very first epistolary novel may have been the Spanish Prison of Love (Cárcel de amor) (c.1485) by Diego de San Pedro. Throughout the years, there have been countless books written in epistolary form, which became popular as a genre in the 18th century, fell largely out of use in the late part of that century, and then became popular again. Even Jane Austen tried her hand at epistolary writing, with her novella, Lady Susan, and Pride and Prejudice, which contains many letters, may have originally been intended as an epistolary novel called "First Impressions". Recently I read two epistolary books, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows (which I reviewed in epistolary form), and West From Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder (which I also reviewed). Epistolary novels often feel a bit more intimate, more revealing, and more passionate to me than regular novels, and I looked forward to reading a new book in this genre, Letter to My Daughter by George Bishop, published in 2010.

Letter to My Daughter is written as a letter from a distraught mother, Laura, to her daughter, Liz, on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. Liz has left home in the middle of the night in her mother's car after a fight with her. As Laura anxiously awaits her daughter's return, she writes a letter to Liz about her own past and the secrets she has kept hidden. In it, she reveals how at fifteen she fell in love with a Cajun boy, Tim Prejean, who was two years older than her. Her parents strongly disapproved of her relationship with Tim, and sent Laura away to a boarding school run by nuns, the Sacred Heart Academy in Baton Rogue. Tim has enlisted in the army during the era of the Vietnam War, and he and Laura continue their forbidden romance through letters in this coming-of-age story.

Imaginative and affecting, I was transfixed and transported by descriptions in Letter to My Daughter of rural Louisiana and could easily envision "the sticks" where "small houses stood scattered here and there among the trees" in a place with "dirt roads, dirt yards, and dirt gardens". The beauty of this book is in the details and the way the author captures feelings on paper (Tim's father, who lives in a camping trailer in the woods, is described as "desperately hospitable", offering can after can of RC Cola to Liz). Although it's short, the story is full of power and emotion. Like a treasured letter, this is a book to read and reread. It would be a very good choice for mother/daughter book clubs, and may even inspire some mothers to write letters to their own children--about things that are important but difficult to express face-to-face.

After reading Letter to My Daughter, I was curious about something and asked the author a couple of questions:

Why did you write Letter to My Daughter from the point of view of a woman, Liz's mother? What "advantages" and/or "disadvantages" did this give you as a writer?

Here is his reply:

Dear Suko's Notebook,

Thanks for hosting me here on your blog. Lots of readers have wondered about the female point of view in my novel Letter to My Daughter.

A few years ago I was working in India, and at the end of my job, I took a camel safari in the desert. I went to sleep in my tent one night, and I dreamed this whole novel, beginning to end. In my dream, the story was clearly told from the point of view of the mother. I heard the woman's voice, even. The odd thing is that I don't know anyone quite like Laura, the narrator in the story. She's not based on anyone in real life.

So I went into the novel with a strong sense of the voice and the story. Still, it took some time to overcome my doubts about writing from a woman's point of view. But eventually I realized that it wasn't all that different from a man's point of view. The big emotions--fear, love, hate, jealousy--are all the same no matter who you are. The challenge is in getting the details right--what a teenage girl sees when she looks at a boy she admires, for example. Things like this took some imagining. Happily, women who've read the novel seem to think I got it right.

~George Bishop

Fascinating! George, I enjoyed reading your answer in epistolary form.

Wonderful news! Random House is offering one copy of Letter to My Daughter as a giveaway (U.S./Canada).

• To enter the giveaway for this book, simply leave a comment.
• For another chance at winning, become a follower of this blog, or let me know that you're already a follower, or that you subscribe in Google Reader.
• For an additional chance, post about this contest on your blog, Facebook, or Twitter.
• For yet another chance, mention an epistolary book that you've enjoyed reading.

Enter by 5 PM PDT on Wednesday, June 2. One winner will be selected randomly and announced on Thursday, June 3. Good luck!



Special thanks to Lisa from TLC and Random House for sending me this book. For more reviews of this book, please visit the other stops on TLC's blog tour for Letter to My Daughter.

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

"That's when I decide to order myself a large clam-and-garlic pizza and reread Pride and Prejudice. I would self-medicate with fat, carbohydrates, and Jane Austen, my number one drug of choice, my constant companion through every breakup, every disappointment, every crisis. Men might come and go, but Jane Austen was always there. In sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, till death do us part."
~Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie Viera Rigler

English novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817) published her books anonymously, so she was not well known or recognized for her talent as a writer during her lifetime. After her nephew published A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869, Austen's work was introduced to a larger audience. By the 1940s, Austen was regarded as a great writer of English literature by academia. Within the next decade, a Janeite fan culture began, which now includes JASNA (the Jane Austen Society of North America) and numerous websites devoted exclusively to Jane Austen, such as Jane Austen Gazetteer and simply, Austen.com. Stephanie's Written Word is currently hosting a special challenge for Austen admirers, The Everything Austen Challenge. Jane Austen even has her own Facebook page, with over 50,000 fans!

Last month, I won an autographed copy of the LA Times bestseller, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, published in 2007, on Naida's blog, the bookworm. Laurie Viera Rigler, the author, inscribed it with a personal message to me. One of the perks of visiting book blogs is winning books. (Please don't be jealous because these book giveaways are frequent. I host and post about some, too.) This book fits the Women Unbound Reading Challenge in several ways. Briefly, it was written by a woman, and is about a woman writer, social commentator, and early feminist, Jane Austen. It's also more generally about the roles of women in different eras.

As I read Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, I immersed myself in the past with Courtney Stone, the main character, a present-day Jane Austen addict, who awakens bewildered one morning in a bedchamber in Regency England. Along with Courtney, I was transported to a different place and time. I imagined myself living in this past era and enjoying the pampering, such as being brought a tray of light refreshment while in bed, or having my hair done by someone else on a daily basis. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is quite a fun book to read. Humor abounds due to Courtney's surprising situation: she's a modern woman with modern ideas who suddenly and inexplicably finds herself transported back in time to an age full of lace and romance, but without many of the creature comforts and freedoms we take for granted today. A bath is a rare luxury in this time period, so body odor is omnipresent and unyielding. Barnes, her chambermaid, helps Courtney with the time-consuming productions of getting dressed and undressed, out of necessity, as laces and buttons are often located in the back of garments. (No thank you, I'm used to the ease of dressing myself in warm Southern CA.) In the romance department, Courtney meets the dashing Mr. Edgeworth, but isn't sure what to think or do, in an age when women are supposed to be demure and repressed. Courtney quickly perceives that women have very little freedom and choice in this world. They're constrained by society in many ways, and considered to be old maids if they're not married before the age of 25. Because career possibilities for women were so limited, women of this era were dependent on marriage for social status as well as economic security, a subject which Jane Austen herself wrote much about.

I appreciated the humor and cleverness in Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, but was glad that my excursion to Regency England was fictional, and that I live in this age.

Special thanks to Laurie Viera Rigler for sending me this autographed book.

Free Zombies

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
~First sentence of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1813

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."
~First sentence of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, 2009

Austen is in the air. Stephanie's Written Word is hosting an Everything Austen Challenge, Laura's Reviews talks about Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and the bookworm has been hooked by Austen as well. I've jumped on the bandwagon. I have one new copy of the Quirk Classics NY Times best seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith to give away. The story follows the plot of Pride and Prejudice, but takes place in an alternative universe version of 19th century England, where zombies traipse the countryside. This parody of Austen's most popular novel about heroine Elizabeth Bennet has been purchased by a major film company and will be made into a movie.

To enter this contest, leave a comment after this blog post by 5 PM PDT on Thursday, July 30. If you also mention this giveaway on your own blog, you'll have an extra chance of winning the book. I'll put all commenters' names "in a hat" and select one randomly. The winner will be announced on Friday, July 31.

Good luck!