Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that I am a sucker for a decent Austen retelling.

Jane of Austin by Hillary Manton Lodge

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Newsflash: I’ll pretty much read anything that is tangentially related to Jane Austen. Unofficial sequels. Modern retellings. Historical fiction. Whatever. Some of it works. A lot of it doesn’t. But I’m usually game to give it a go. I really enjoyed the books that were part of The Austen Project a few years ago. There was Emma, driving around her little town in a Mini Cooper. Cat and Henry, with lots of references to Twilight. Liz and Darcyand a dating reality show in Cincinatti. And […]

Just like Jane Austen, but with reality TV, Cross Fit, anorexia, and tons of premarital sex.

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Eligible is not a 5-star piece of literature. But I enjoyed the hell out of it. I could not put this sucker down. I’m sort of sad that I’m now caught up with all of the books thus far written for The Austen Project (see my previous reviews of Emma: A Modern Retelling, Northanger Abbey, and Sense & Sensibility) and this one is by far my favorite. Liz Bennet is in her late 30’s, living as a magazine editor in New York City, having an affair with the […]

A good book, but I still prefer the Lizzie Bennet Diaries

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3.5 stars I have mentioned more than once my immense fondness and love for the YouTube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I read the companion book about Lizzie, and the sequel of sorts, about Lydia. I was of the opinion that Pride and Prejudice had been modernised pretty successfully already. But as we have seen in the last few years with the many different iterations of Sherlock Holmes, in films, books and TV, a really good thing can inspire a lot of different interpretations. Eligible […]

Take one part Jane Austen and one part Shopaholic, then tweet it and post it to Facebook.

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I’m still waiting my turn to read Eligible…the library line is long and never-ending. But in the meantime, I picked up Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope, another entry in The Austen Project. And this one was my favorite so far. But does that mean that this one was the best that I’ve read? Not really. I think Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma is objectively better. But I enjoyed this one a whole lot more. It had scandal and swearing and sex and social media. The […]

I’m not sure how Jane would feel about all of the Twilight references.

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Until a few weeks ago (mentioned in ElCicco’s great review of Eligible), I hadn’t heard of The Austen Project. The gist of the project is to take Jane Austen’s novels, choose current authors, and have them modernize the story. And now I’m obsessed with making may way through all of the books rewritten thus far…I’ve already read Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma, and am on the library list for both Eligible and Joanna Trollope’s Sense & Sensibility. But I was lucky enough to find a copy of Val […]



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