COMPULSIVELY MR. DARCY BY NINA BENNETON - BOOK REVIEW

It is always the same old story between them.  At first glance things never work properly between Darcy and Elizabeth. They never hit it off in fact, neither when he is a wealthy British philanthropist and she is an  idealist American doctor volunteering in a poor country like Vietnam.

In Nina Benneton's story, Elizabeth can’t understand the reason for the reverence Darcy gets from all the people around him:

 “It ‘s hard to be intimidated by a guy who faints at the sight of blood” ,  she thinks at first, after their awkward, catastrophic meeting in the emergency room  of the hospital where she’s been asked to treat injured Charles Bingley, Darcy’s best friend .

Furthermore, why is this Darcy so hysterically worried for his friend? And why are the two men  keenly supporting Mr and Mrs Hurst’s application for an adoption, when the married couple themselves don’t seem so truly interested ? 

Elizabeth has her own suspicions. All funnily wrong, actually. Nonetheless,  that is what gives start to an amusing series of misconceptions,  misunderstandings and misadventures which will lead the reader, fatally as well as predictably,  to the highly longed for  rewarding happy ending.

LOVELY JANEITES - ELI MURTON, ON BECOMING JANE

Eli Murton worked at both the Leicester Haymarket and Pheonix Theatre before training at GSA. After graduating she toured with Quantum Theatre and played Mrs Nightingale in Nightingale the Musical. Eli took a break from acting in 2002 when she had her first baby. She now has 3 boys but crow bars her work around them. She is a regular actor for Lynchpin’s Scriptease events. Eli has also recently finished filming a short film for L7 productions entitled The Volunteers. For Artifice: Mrs Bellmour in The Way to Keep Him & Jane Austen in Reading Histories & Drawing Pullets.




Reading Histories and Drawing Pullets (the play by Kate Napier in which I play Jane Austen) was originally meant to be an adaptation of Sense and Sensibility to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of its publication. However, Kate, never one to opt for the easy route, began to work through Jane’s early writings and a wholly different play emerged and instead Jane takes the audience on through almost a Masterclass on writing the perfect Austen novel.  I was cast as Jane fairly early on and once in receipt of the script, and I’m being totally honest here, I was scared witless! A lot of my lines are taken directly from Jane’s letters and you begin to see that she was a far cry from the demure, bonneted spinster, popular culture would have you believe. She had a biting wit and, in some of her surviving letters to Cassandra and Anna the sarcasm and cattiness is hilarious. Despite this, I went into the early rehearsals, back straight, doing

FIFTH ANNUAL JANE AUSTEN FESTIVAL, LOUISVILLE, KY - YOU'VE GOT AN INVITATION!

The 5^th Annual Jane Austen Festival will take place July 21 & 22, 2012 at Historic Locust Grove, a circa 1790 Georgian home and farm just six miles from downtown Louisville, KY.

FALLING FOR MR DARCY BY KARALYNNE MACKRORY - GIVEAWAY WINNER

Posting just briefly to make one of the readers of My Jane Austen Book Club very happy. Who's going to win this lovely adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?

The lucky winner of Falling for Mr Darcy, picked via random.org,  is Mariam!

Many thanks to Karalynne Mackrory and her publishers for the interview and the copy to give away!

LOVELY JANEITES - ALEXA SCHNEE, REDISCOVERING AUSTEN

Alexa Schnee is a young, very young, talented writer. She has recently re-discovered Jane Austen and wants to share her new enthusiasm. Alexa has always wanted to be a writer. She loves the smell of the bookstore, because nothing in the world smells exactly like it. When she isn’t writing, she’s murdering some musical instrument or hitting the road. She will never, ever like maths and will always love dancing in the Montana rain. She is currently attending Sarah Lawrence College near New York City.

I took a Jane Austen course at my school, Sarah Lawrence College, this last semester. I loved diving into Austen’s work—mostly Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and, of course, Pride and Prejudice. But when we came to the Minor Works, I found I was a bit unprepared to discuss these writings. We get a glimpse at a young Austen—an Austen uncolored by life experience and publication. We can almost imagine her standing in front of her family in her parlor acting out scenes and skits she had written. We can see her parents laughing at her satirical wit, her early observances of the ridiculous, her

ALL ROADS LEAD TO AUSTEN BY AMY ELIZABETH SMITH - GIVEAWAY WINNER

This is the book you should take with you on holiday for the right fix of Austen - inspired non fiction. A travel book full of amusing anecdotes, real experiences, interesting meetings and a lot of Jane Austen! Amy Elizabeth Smith has given Janeites a new perspective on their beloved writer's novels and a cross-cultural approach to those familiar tales.

LET'S PLAY THE GAME! JANE AUSTEN'S ROGUES & ROMANCE ON FACEBOOK

You read about its forthcoming release here at My Jane Austen Book Club when they published a Press Pack in February. At first it was due to release in March but, evidently,  it took longer.  Now it is here! BBC Worldwide Digital Entertainment & Legacy Games have brought Jane Austen and her famously social world to Facebook for the first time with Jane Austen’s Rogues and Romance, a new hidden-object social game. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy have escaped from the pages of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and live again in this fantastical romp through Austen’s six novels.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW & GIVEAWAY - KARALYNNE MACKRORY, FALLING FOR MR DARCY

Karalynne MacKrory

Dear friends and Janeites, 

I'm glad to introduce a new Austen-inspired author and her recently published variation of Pride and Prejudice: Karalynne Mackrory and "Falling for Mr Darcy". Have a look at the giveaway details below this post if you want  a chance to win the book!

If I say Mr. Darcy, what is the first image that comes to your mind? Colin Firth? Matthew MacFadyen? Laurence Olivier?

Would you understand what I meant if I said Colin MacFadyen?  Or Matthew Firth?  I don’t know about Laurence Olivier.  He was before I even knew about Jane Austen.  I am one of those people who read her books before actually seeing any of the movies.  But when I did see the movies I could not help but love Colin Firth in his gold-hued clingy pants at Pemberley – walking with Elizabeth after their surprise encounter – or Matthew MacFadyen in his heated, angry almost-kiss during the proposal scene.  Hmm... scrumptious.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... AMY ELIZABETH SMITH - GIVEAWAY OF "ALL ROADS LEAD TO AUSTEN"

Amy Elizabeth Smith has an undergraduate degree in music and a masters and PhD in English. She teaches writing and literature (including a course on Jane Austen) at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She loves travelling, dancing, classic cinema, and watching squirrel videos on YouTube.

With a suitcase full of Jane Austen novels in Spanish, Amy Elizabeth Smith set off on a yearlong Latin American adventure: a travelling book club with Jane. In six unique, unforgettable countries, she gathered book-loving new friends— taxi drivers and teachers, poets and politicians— to read Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice.

All Roads lead to Austen is an interesting account of those experiences and of how she met her “Seῆor Darcy”...

Leave your comment + your e-mail address, add the country you live in and you can have a chance to win this new interesting Austen-dedicated travel book. The giveaway is open worldwide and ends  on June  16th.

CHARLOTTE BY KAREN AMINADRA - GIVEAWAY WINNER

Another lovely meeting here at My Jane Austen Book Club, with a  new Austen author: Karen Aminadra. She was my guest last week and kindly answered some questions for an interview (HERE). Are you ready to discover who the lucky winner of her just released continuation of Pride and Prejudice, CHARLOTTE?

WINNERS OF THE MAN WHO LOVED JANE AUSTEN BY SALLY SMITH O'ROURKE

Happy to be here with you, though just quickly, to announce the names of the two lucky winners of The Man Who Loved Jane Austen by Sally Smith O'Rourke. This giveaway contest was linked to the author guest post, Jane Austen & Romance.

MEET KAREN AMINADRA AND GET A CHANCE TO WIN HER "CHARLOTTE" , A CONTINUATION OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Karen Aminadra (pronounced Amin-ah-dra) is an author and an English language teacher who lives in Northamptonshire, England with her husband. She was born in London and grew up in Hertfordshire 'the land of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice'. She has travelled and worked all over the world including South America, Russia and Europe. 

She writes Jane Austen Continuation Novels, and other Fiction Novels with a good helping of historical romance, crime and mystery. She loves to read, loves English history, and Georgian architecture. Meet her and get a chance to win an e-book copy of her Pride and Prejudice continuation: Charlotte.

Hello Karen and welcome to My JA  Book Club! I’m glad to have you as my guest both as a colleague ( a teacher like me!) and as a Janeite. My first question is : How did you come to write a sequel to Pride and Prejudice focused  on Charlotte’s married life to Mr Collins?