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Dear readers, we’ve spent the last several weeks in a haze of mostly exactly what we wanted to read and it was glorious.  We invite you to join us in continuing that, as in February, we’ll be using Virtual Book Club for talking about a book that we’re very much looking forward to rereading, in all of it’s 800 page glory, House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by our beloved Sarah J. Maas.  Join us on Friday, February 11 at 7:30 p.m. CST, so we’ll all be ready before House of Sky and Breath comes out a few short (or oh so long) days later.  Sign up here so you get the link, and if you can’t attend but would be interested in a conversation around House of Sky and Breath, drop us a comment to let us know.  Oh, and for you planner types, in April, we’re going to read and discuss When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole, so put it on your TBR now!

Sometimes there is nothing like a good classic, and I find the in between times of the holidays and early in the year to be a fantastic time to dig into a story with a slower pace, and language requiring full attention, which feels impossible during the slalom of the first several weeks of December.  That, darling readers, is when I reread Persuasion by Jane Austen.  Somehow I missed reading Austen until a few years ago, when I rediscovered reading as an important part of my life.  That is when I first read it, along with most of Austen’s other works, so it was a delight that I could only remember the main plot points and got to revisit Anne and her hot mess family for this second chance romance novel.  

I typed out several lines about the plot of Persuasion, and then deleted them.  Ashley will covers the plot well below, but for now, it’s a second chance romance.  Try #1 clearly didn’t end in that HEA, therefore, our couple needs another go.  In the telling of the second try, we get Anne’s family dynamics in detail (and hot mess might be kind), and how said second chance comes to be, which is connected to the family drama, as they tend to be in a novel.  Also I want to mention an oversight in our reading plans – I’ll be trying to find the opportunity to pull in a retelling from Captain Wentworth’s point of view, as I do thoroughly enjoy a dual POV romance novel (and am SO excited about next week’s), and am confident there’s a good retelling from the good Captain out there waiting for me.  

I have so many warm fuzzy feelings about Persuasion and I know I’m not doing them justice (at least partially because me and my bad memory need to get back on our regular writing schedule and have not yet done so).  I adore a good train wreck of a novel, likely because it makes me feel better about my (perceived) train wrecks (yes, I’m an enneagram 6).  I appreciate mature characters who’ve done the work to find themselves and be true to who they are, which is very much Anne, and from what we know of him, also Captain Wentworth.  I find stories centering around family loyalty, how people change, and yet don’t, and duty very interesting.  Although Persuasion is more than 200 years old, like most of Austen’s works, the themes hold true to human nature.  For the evergreen themes, the calm, yet still snarky, writing, and the general escapism, I’m giving Persuasion four solid stars.  It wasn’t life changing, but it was a great experience, and I’m confident I’ll reread it again, and also continue to watch and rewatch on screen as well. 

What’s a book that you really enjoy but can’t really explain why?

~Nikki  

It should come as no surprise to you, darling readers, that this is the first time I am reading Jane Austen’s last completed novel, Persuasion. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so, I like it more than Pride and Prejudice. It is the third of Austen’s five completed novels that I have read, but I can confidently state that I remember NOTHING about Northanger Abbey – as I read it in high school, twenty years ago. (Gross.) Like Northanger Abbey, Persuasion was published six months after Austen’s death in 1817. Even though I liked Persuasion better than Pride and Prejudice, it is still not more than a three star, meets expectation title.

My feelings about Persuasion run a little deeper because we have 27 year old Anne Elliot getting her second chance at love and marriage with her first and only love, Frederick Wentworth, a Captain in the Navy. They come into contact again because Anne’s father’s lack of good financial habits forces him to lease out their country estate to pay off the debts he has accrued. Kellynch Hall is rented to Admiral Croft and his wife, the sister of our hero. I find Austen’s commentary on Anne’s family – her father as “a spendthrift baronet,” her selfish and prideful elder sister Elizabeeth, and her temperamental and needy younger sister Mary – extremely enlightening. Since Anne is our heroine, we experience the story through her point of view, if not her voice, and from this narration Anne seems to be the most forgiving, steadfast, and self-aware of the Elliots. It is almost as if Anne has gone through years of therapy in order to achieve her zen-like acceptance of her family and contentment at her place in it. She is the most relatable of the lot even though she is slow at figuring out all the hints Wentworth gives about his true feelings towards her. It is no surprise her prideful family refused Anne their blessing to marry a young naval officer at the age of 19 but gives their blessing after she is 27 and both sides have had a reversal of fortune. 

I still have little love for the cadence of Austen’s language and I purposefully read Persuasion without actively reading anything else at the same time (not my usual MO), so that I could keep my focus. That language, however, allows for this GLORIOUS passage:

He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him “poor Richard,” been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.

“Poor Richard” is called out as being nothing more than a dick. Classic move, Austen. Pure genius.

What classic literary works have you read as an adult that have pleasantly surprised you?

~Ashley

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