Tag: Jane Austen

Random

Podcast Procrastination

Geoff W

2015 04-09 Lynda PodcastingI know you are desperately waiting for the fifth episode (what?!) of Come Read with Me, but you have a few more weeks to wait! I’m editing away and it will be released on time (Apr. 30). I don’t have a book post this week as I’m still trekking through The Witching Hour so I wanted to talk a bit about podcasting technology. Last week I wrote about reading technology and how simple it can be and it couldn’t be further from the complexities of podcast editing.

In general it takes me a VERY long time to edit an episode of Come Read With Me. Most of this time is because of procrastination, but a lot of it is because I’m very slow at editing and I wasn’t even editing HALF of what I’ve learned you can edit!

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Book Group, Books, The Classics Club

Book 339: Emma – Jane Austen

Geoff W

For book two of our Jane Austen Book Club, my friends and I decided to conquer Emma. It has always been my least favorite of the six and reading Deresiewicz’s A Jane Austen Education both confirmed that and helped me get around this problem. His talking about Emma and it’s belief in the importance of every day trivialities, as well as Margaret Drabble’s excellent introduction led me to think about the book differently.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still boring as anything in most points, but Austen wrote it this way. According tot Drabble, Austen wrote this novel in such excruciating detail in direct response to the detractors of her previously published novel Mansfield Park, which I love. Drabble says, “This is domestic realism almost with a vengeance.” (xix) AND it is! The hyper focus on every detail, the incredibly limited scope of setting, characters and even conversation topics is overwhelmingly mundane. It is an assault on the senses, and as a fellow JABC member said “i’m diagnosing myself with ’emma-induced narcolepsy.'” (Thanks, Dalton!)

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Updates

February Recap 2015

Geoff W

2015 02-15 King of the SnowAnother month gone. I know they say the years go by faster the older you get, but this is getting ridiculous. Maybe I was just too busy, or maybe I just don’t have a grasp on time with so much snow covering everything, but 2015 is 1/6th of the way over and I’ve no idea what happened.

February was a rough month personally and professionally. It’s never a good sign when one aspect of your life drains into the other aspect in negative ways, and I honestly couldn’t tell you which bled into which more, but either way it was just a gross month. But that being said I did have an excellent last weekend of the month when I went skiing with my sister and a bunch of friends for a belated birthday and Christmas present! (See photos below.) The photo directly above is of me in South Boston standing on a snow bank. I could touch the One Way sign and was taller than the street light. Thankfully, snow is starting to melt, but we’re LESS THAN TWO INCHES from the all time record (107.9) and I can’t help but think, “Bring it on!”

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Books

Book 334: Northanger Abbey (The Austen Project #2) – Val McDermid

Geoff W

The great part about The Austen Project, is I can read them in any order I want! Just like Austen’s original books 😀 I decided to read this one as we just read the original Northanger Abbey for Jane Austen Book Club and I loved it. The not so great part is reading this one made me wonder if I would have enjoyed Austen when she was originally published. I say this not as a commentary on the writer, whose skills were amazing and the ending had me in hysterics on the T, but as a commentary on holding up a mirror to young adult society today. The summary of the novel, might not have made me read this if I wasn’t aware of the original, but McDermid drew me in pretty quickly.

The whole premise of the project is around the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s novels contemporary authors are retelling her stories in the modern age. We’ve all seen modern adaptations of classics like “Clueless” (Emma) and “10 Things I Hate About You” (Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew), but this is more along the lines of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Boooo!) or Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (YAY!!!!) in that the story is verbatim with minor changes. In this case it’s brought into the 21st century and takes place in Edinburgh instead of Bath.

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Updates

January Recap 2015

Geoff W

2015 01-08 COLD in BostonGood grief! 1/12th of 2015 is already over and all I can think is where did it go. Mine started off super busy with one of my oldest friends weddings and me being sick for over a week. The middle portion just sort of happened and then the last week we had the sixth largest blizzard in Boston history (I was here for the fifth too!) and missed two days of work. And that doesn’t even account for the -20° and lower windchill we had earlier in the month! On the blogging front I finally did another Culture Corner post and have been waging a battle with WordPress for their ridiculous new changes.

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