A life of books . . .
This is one of the best Jane Austen adaptations I’ve read in a long time, maybe Iâm just moving toward only wanting to read YA adaptations but honestly it made me laugh and similarly to The Season I read back in November I read it pretty much in one sitting. Basically, this book did for Pride and Prejudice what Clueless (IMDb link) did for Emma.
Seriously, if you donât believe me just go look at the number of Austen adaptations/modernizations that I’ve read here. I’ll wait.
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
That counts as a review right?
There’s no real reason to review this book – I mean I loved it, but I also loved the YouTube series – see below for a link GO WATCH IT NOW! There’s a link to the playlist at the end of this post. Seriously, forget my review go get sucked into the drama that is Pride and Prejudice reimagined as a master’s thesis project in the form of a vlog: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I mean it was the FIRST digital series to win an Emmy. AN EMMY peopleâthat’s like legit.
Continue reading “Book 517: The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet – Bernie Su and Kate Rorick”
I promise I’m trying to find things that aren’t just Jane Austen related, but I guess when I read so much Jane Austen and love so much of what is produced around her it’s inevitable. I have a decent balance this week between Jane Austen and non-Jane Austen. I think it’s 50/50 this week.
I’ve been trying to make an effort recently (which I’ve made before) to read more long-form pieces (including book reviews). A lot of these pieces end up coming from The New Yorker and I noticed they spell any word that has a double vowel like coöperate or reĂ«lect with a diaeresis, NOT an umlaut. This is a great brief article from The New Yorker about why the uses diaresesâin essence to signal to non-English speakers that the word is co-operate and not coop-erate. Continue reading “Bookish Things August 2017”
What can I say about this?* It was a great refresher and a fun way to dip my toes into the BrontĂ«’s work again without having to commit to a longer read of the entire novel. I talked about the pros of illustrated classics when I read the Marvel Illustrated Jane Austen works (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Northanger Abbey) and again when I read is when I read the Manga Classics Emma, so there’s not much point in rehashing those.
Overall, the adapters and artist did a great job on the adaptation. There were a couple of things that I was like uh that definitely wasn’t in the book, i.e. positioning of characters and character interactions. I guess it just has to do with making the stories more accessible to wider audiences.
Recommendation: I still prefer the Marvel Illustrated style, but since they didn’t deign the BrontĂ«’s important enough to adapt before they shuttered, this is a pretty good option. They’re a quick refresher on the classics and if they do the job right, which so far both the Manga Classics and the Marvel Illustrated have) they’ll make you want to (re)read the originals!
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in return for my honest opinion, no additional goods or money were exchanged.
I have finally made up for lost time. The downside is I’ve read them all now đ The upside is that I now want to turn around and re-read them, but I will wait a bit. It’s not like I don’t have a full shelf of Austen fan-fiction waiting on me, or that I still get to read Pride and Prejudice for Jane Austen Book Group this year.
With Marvel Illustrated’s Jane Austen books, this was the third and final illustration style. I’m not sure which is my favorite because they were all unique and each had their own drawbacks, so maybe I don’t need to pick one. I will say Marvel Illustrated and Butler got it right with all of the covers except Northanger Abbey. Which is even stranger because the cover I like the most, from Sense & Sensibility doesn’t look like the illustration style inside!? It probably doesn’t hurt that the illustration cover for #4 makes me think of Wuthering Heights instead, or at least the idea of the BrontĂ« sisters on the moors. The rest of the covers are more representative of Liew’s illustration style.
Continue reading “Book 393: Sense & Sensibility (Marvel Illustrated) – Nancy Butler and Sonny Liew”