And so....

I know I haven't posted very much lately. I have had a really bad cold. I caught it on Christmas day and haven't been able to get rid of it. Pretty much all I have done is sit around in my new penguin pajamas and read my Jane Austen book, feeling miserable. Anyway, I think I'm finally getting a little better.

I re-read two of Jane Austen's lesser known books Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park in the last week. It has been years since I read either of them and, since there aren't any good movie adaptations of them, I had forgotten most of the story lines of each. From what I remembered of the last time I read them, I didn't really like Northanger Abbey, but Mansfield Park had been one of my favorite Austen works. After reading them this time, I changed my mind. I actually liked Northanger Abbey very much. I think it was one of Austen's earlier works, not as complicated or detailed as her others, but I enjoyed it a lot. I still liked Mansfield Park and still consider it among my three favorites, but I was really disappointed in the "hero" of the story, Edmund Bertram. It's not that I expect "heroes" to be perfect -- Mr. Darcy is my favorite and he had plenty of flaws -- but by the end of the story Edmund didn't seem to be much different than the men who had been given shallow characters in order to make his brilliance stand out. And yet, he was supposed to be just as wonderful and brilliant at the end of the book as at the beginning. I wasn't impressed.

Anyway, for the next three months, PBS is broadcasting a Jane Austen series. Masterpiece Theatre has come out with several new movies -- Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, and Miss Austen Regrets, a biopic. They are suppose to air on your local PBS stations every Sunday for the next few months, but when I checked my local listings, I wasn't sure if that was the case here or not. I'm really looking forward to seeing adaptations of the books I just read. Maybe Edmund will seem better in a movie than he did in the book!