Sorry for the delay dear readers. My blogger.com page froze for a few hours while I tried to learn to reacquaint myself with my inner calm. I went to my special happy place, which is a combination of Brady Bunch and Dallas in which J.R., Sue Ellen, Mike and Carol are all sitting around trying to have a conversation with one another and each couple if totally horrified by the other. It's like my own little version of The Jetsons Meets the Flintstones.
Here I am wearing a smile that says, "Consumerism can be fun." Yes dear readers, my parents instilled those truly important lessons in me early. And I'm really not kidding with that one. When I was a child and I had trouble falling asleep, did my Mother tell me to count sheep? No she didn't dear readers. She told me to close my eyes and think about all of the stuff I was going to put on birthday list.
And, because I didn't want you to have to muddle through another day without the chapter and page count, here it is:
For the week:
CHAPTERS - 181
PAGES - 1,839
For the year so far:
CHAPTERS - 5,294
PAGES - 66,096
Today's book, "In her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen presents us with the subtle portraits of two contrasting but equally compelling heroines. For sensible Elinor Dashwood and her impetuous younger sister Marianne the prospect of marrying the men they love appears remote. In a world ruled by money and self-interest, the Dashwood sisters have neither fortune nor connections. Concerned for others and for social proprieties, Elinor is ill-equipped to compete with self-centered fortune-hunters like Lucy Steele, while Marianne's unswerving belief in the truth of her own feelings makes her more dangerously susceptible to the designs of unscrupulous men. Through her heroines' parallel experiences of love, loss, and hope, Jane Austen offers a powerful analysis of the ways in which women's lives were shaped by the claustrophobic society in which they had to survive."
I've always had a great deal of difficult deciding which of Jane Austen's novels is my favorite. I often debate back and forth - but then in the end I come back to the sisterlyness (which is so clearly not a word, but it's my blog so I'm using it anyway) of today's book. I love a good sister story. Is there anything better than having a sister? I just don't think so. I feel very sorry for those who don't have a sister - in fact, I often think of it as a disability (I call it the sisterly impaired.) I look at those people and think about what a bleak existence that woman must be leading. But then I remind myself that since I'm not at drama camp I should probably rein it in a little bit.
I think that another reason why I enjoy this book - beyond the sisterlyness of it - is that I have always seen a little too much of myself in Elinor, and my sister of course is Marianne. I'm emotionally repressed and she just throws it right out there. I do this all the time - where I read/watch something about sisters and then try to figure out who we are in the book. I've decided also that we are Julia and Suzanne Sugarbaker, but I leave it up to you to guess which one of us is which - a game that my dear readers who don't know us might have trouble with. But come on dear readers, don't you like a challenge?
Favorite line, "He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed." - Well of course it doesn't make him ill-disposed Jane. What were you thinking. Some of my favorite people are cold hearted and rather selfish. (On a side note: Am I the only person who finds themselves talking to the author as if he/she is in the room? And I the only one who is undeterred if the author in question has been dead for several hundred years?)
