Friday Bookblogging: It's Summertime, and the Reading is Easy Edition

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to an article directed at teens on how to beat summer boredom: what better way than to hang out with Jane Austen?

So, when you’re not out enjoying the sunshine or sleeping in (or working hard), you can combat boredom with some summer reading. To help you in your quest for good reading, here are some of my favorite books that I’d like to reread this summer:

[. . .]

“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen. This book follows the lively and sassy Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with her slimy, love-struck cousin, her obnoxious younger sisters, her clueless mother, her association with a certain Mr. Darcy and her prejudices against him. There are many excellent lines to quote if you’re looking to practice your British accent. For example, “Those who do not complain are never pitied,” “Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all,” and “Shelves in the closet. Happy thought indeed!”

(Erm…that last bit wasn’t from the book.)

Two new Austen-related books have hit the bookstores this week. Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine’s Guide to Life and Love by Patrice Hannon and Captain Wentworth’s Diary by Amanda Grange. We will be reposting our review of the former shortly (and opening a contest to win a copy) and posting a brand-new review of the latter next week.

Another new book that has caused some controversy among Janeites is Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer’s So Odd A Mixture: Along the Autistic Spectrum in Pride and Prejudice, which uses various characters in P&P to illustrate different forms and degrees of autism. Ellen Moody blogged about the book and made what we thought an excellent point about looking to modern science to explain the behavior of fictional characters.

The use of the term is an imposition and a confusing one. Where does it come from? For a start, Bottomer is a speech pathologist: the very term shows how she has been trained to regard language—as signs of illness. It may be a case of to a person with a hammer (and theories about that hammer which make it all important) many things look like a nail—or it may be that she genuinely analyses aspects of Austen’s characters which many in our society are taught to be (and are by training and disposition) uncomfortable with.

More broadly, sickness is in the eye of the beholder, and that which we label sickness is something that deviates from the norm.

Thanks to Alert Janeite Tony A. for the link.