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Confessions Press
Here are selected features, interviews, round-ups, guest posts, and "best-of" lists. For reviews, please click on "Confessions" or "Press & Reviews" in the menu bar above.
The Book Studio (WETA-Public TV, Washington, D.C.)
The Book Studio's Jane Austen booklist
Intrigued by the book or show? Here are 13 more books to explore!
Books
A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen Becoming Jane Austen by Jon SpenceSo You Think You Know Jane Austen?: A Literary Quizbook (Oxford Worlds Classics) by Deirdre Le Faye and John SutherlandLost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure by Emma Campbell WebsterJane Austen's Guide to Dating by Lauren HendersonEmma & Knightley: Perfect Happiness in Highbury: A Sequel to Jane Austen's Emma by Rachel BillingtonJane Austen in Hollywood Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth PattilloThe Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World by Margaret C. SullivanConfessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera RiglerThe Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie JamesThe Jane Austen Book Club (movie tie-in) by Karen Joy FowlerAustenland: A Novel by Shannon Hale
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Jane Austen in Hollywood
A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen
by Susannah Carson
Martin Amis wants a “twenty-page sex scene” at the end of “Pride and Prejudice.” Diane Johnson notes that Austen never writes from the perspective of men, or servants. Margot Livesey finds that reading Jane Austen is worthwhile whether you’re in the East End or on the Lower East Side. These essays (from venerable authors like J.B. Priestley, Somerset Maugham, and Harold Bloom, too) will give even the most jaded reader a shock of the new about “Our Jane.”
Austenland
by Shannon Hale
Imagine an English manor house and grounds converted into a resort for readers who want to enter Jane Austen’s world. Wait; why hasn’t someone created this already? Fortunately, Shannon Hale’s progragonist Jane Hayes gets the chance to go to Pembroke Park. Since Jane worships the character of Fitzwilliam Darcy, particularly as portrayed by Colin Firth, she’s ready to immerse herself in the world of her favorite novelist. Unfortunately, even while living an 19th-century life, surprises occur.
Becoming Jane Austen
by Jon Spence
You’ve seen the movie, now read the book – just don’t expect it to be the same. Author Spence is an academic who teaches in Kyoto, and his biography of Jane Austen is not simply a story, but a fully researched investigation into the obstacles Austen had to overcome that were accepted parts of women’s lives in 19th-century England. For example, dying in childbirth was so common that had Austen married and become pregnant, we might never have seen her later novels.
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
by Laurie Viera Rigler
Laura Viera Rigler must have had as much fun writing this book as Jane Austen addicts will have reading it. Her conceit is terrific: One day Courtney Stone is a contemporary career babe, living in LA with a great car and a plush wardrobe; the next, she’s “Jane Mansfield” (too funny), an Austenian character who lives in a very fine but damp and drafty English country house. As “Jane” attempts to adjust to a life of corsets and days in bed due to “female troubles,” she also learns a lot about her essential self.
NB: Viera Rigler wrote a sequel, “Rude Awakening of a Jane Austen Addict,” too!
Emma & Knightley: Perfect Happiness in Highbury: A Sequel to Jane Austen's Emma
by Rachel Billington
The spoiled Emma as newlywed is such a delicious idea for a sequel that readers may be surprised that Jane Austen didn’t write this book herself. Never fear, Rachel Billington has taken on Mr. and Mrs. Knightley and their first year of married life, bringing in many of Austen’s beloved characters and even a few who aren’t so well loved (like Frank Churchill). Best for diehard “Emma” fans, this tribute novel about the still “handsome, clever and rich” Miss Woodhouse as married lady is loads of fun.
Jane Austen in Hollywood
by
Sayre Greenfield
Linda Troost
Please forgive another slightly scholarly book on our list – since Troost and Greenfield have collected 13 essays about film adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, we hoped you might not mind. Since this book came out in 1998, the most recent adaptions (“Becoming Jane,” e.g.) are not included, but the essays that are inside will be great fodder for book groups, especially those that choose to read an Austen book and see the movie at the same time.
Jane Austen Ruined My Life
by Beth Pattillo
If you don’t believe there’s such a thing as “smart chick lit,” take a look at Beth Pattillo’s crackling novel about an American professor whose disillusionment with what she sees as Austen’s “happily ever after” endings leads her to take a holiday in England. The fun begins when Emma Grant is sent on a sort of scavenger hunt by a new elderly friend – and eventually reconnects with an old friend who just happens to also be an eminently eligible bachelor.
Jane Austen's Guide to Dating
by Lauren Henderson
It might seem cheeky to think of Jane Austen’s Regency rules as applicable to today’s singles scene – but isn’t “Don’t Fall for Superficial Qualities” an eternal truth? Lauren Henderson also offers some Cosmo-magazine-style quizzes so you can learn which Austen character you most resemble. Don’t laugh; these could be helpful when your own personal Mark Darcy rides down the bridle path so that you can learn how best to lead him down the bridal path…
Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure
by Emma Campbell Webster
Have you been tempted, while reading “Pride and Prejudice,” to consider the consequences if Lizzie Bennet acted differently? Emma Campbell Webster’s “Lost in Austen” allows you the delicious fun of making your own decisions about what an Austen heroine might do (all choices accurate to the era, of course!). Along the way, you might learn a thing or three about how easily a misstep could derail a lady’s life in Austen’s time – being mistaken for a different class could have disastrous consequences.
So You Think You Know Jane Austen?: A Literary Quizbook
by
Deirdre Le Faye
John Sutherland
Organized by novel and divided into different levels (“Level One – Brass Tacks,” “Level Two – Factual But Tricky,” “Level Three – Very Tricky, and Occasionally Deductive”), this lighthearted yet accurate quizbook will delight constant readers of Jane Austen’s oeuvre. Its best payoff may not be perfect scores on each quiz, but how eager you’ll be to go back and re-read your favorite books after remembering a forgotten detail or contemplating an idea you’d never considered.
The Jane Austen Book Club
by Karen Joy Fowler
Fowler’s big bestseller isn’t necessarily all about Jane Austen and her world; it’s really about a contemporary book group and its growth. However, leaving it off of our list would feel wrong, since it was definitely the upsurge in Austenmania that inspired so many real-life book clubs. Why do we love to discuss Jane Austen in book clubs? Because Dear Jane covers that most important thing for many women: relationships and their power shifts over time and through changes in fortune.
The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World
by Margaret Sullivan
You needn’t be a re-enactor in an Empire waist to appreciate the mores and manners one finds in Jane Austen novels. Margaret Sullivan has collected tidbits on everything from fish forks to riding habits to calling cards in this elegant little tome. While some of the dicta are dated (few of us “drop in” at an estate these days), others about thank-you notes and eating seasonally will stand today’s proper lady in good stead. And really, “flattering a gentleman’s vanity” is still a good tip for flirting.
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen
by Syrie James
Any woman who has ever loved Mr. Darcy might have wished for her own – so why wouldn’t Jane Austen have, too? Syrie James gives Miss Austen a Mr. Ashford in this unexpectedly delicate and moving story of Jane, her sister, and her mother in the years after they left Steventon and moved to Bath. Jane meets Frederick Ashford on a trip to Lyme, and they have several encounters…but will their relationship ever culminate in marriage? Inquiring readers will have to finish the book to find out the whole story.