Welcome to our new home and thank you for visiting!
I hope to soon have the non-writing life under better control and not be so horribly scattered and stretched a wee bit thin. But hey! The Riskies have done our thing and ported our blogger blog to WordPress and our very own domain. I say “we” but I really mean Risky Elena, who did all the work.
Big loud HUZZAH for Elena!
So, aside from welcoming you to our new digs, I want to talk about Jane Austen. Like most readers of this blog, I am not alone in having read Jane early in life. I read everything, naturally, including Austen’s work. I re-read P&P several times. The Darcy grovel scene was among my favorites. I discovered, later in life, that I continued to appreciate Austen throughout my life, and that has not been true of many books.
Though I adore P&P, I think Persuasion might just be one of my favorite Austen novels. Even now, I so very much identify with Anne and her travails with family and love. Austen is a master of the showing us the woman whose quality goes unappreciated by those closest to her. I’ve often wondered if Austen herself fell into that category. Depended upon, vital to the functioning of the family, and completely dismissed. It’s a familiar theme for women.
Austen, as we all know, was the master of longing. Oh, Elizabeth and Darcy, the longed for so much! She shows us how her characters navigate all that longing and end up happy. As a young girl, having read so much Fantasy where the women either died or just didn’t matter except in their domestic or sexual capacities, it was a revelation to read stories where the female mattered.
Thank goodness we have her stories!
Giveaway!
I have a hardback copy of Persuasion up for grabs. Leave a comment to be in the running for this giveaway. You can say anything, but it would be awesome if you completed this phrase:
Pink, my dear, is
Rules: No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. You must leave your comment by midnight Pacific on Sunday December 16. International OK. Winner picked at random.
