Meet Me At The Pump Room.

Hey Ladies,

It's that time of the month... we need to set up a meeting time. Like Catherine and Isabella, we'll meet up, dish all our gossip and share our personal commentaries to our joyful delight. (ha ha, that's why the club is called hot book GEEKS) I'm looking at October 24th which is a Saturday. Would it be easier to coordinate on a weekday? Please give me your thoughts for a day and time.

Also, here are some other discussion questions and ideas to ponder:

1) Compared to Austen's other works, and considering that Northanger Abbey was the first novel she sold (not the first published, just the first sold), how do you think it rates? Compared to Austen's older novels (Emma, Pride and Prejudice) is the plot as riveting? The romance as intriguing? The heroine and hero as like-able or as irritating?

2) Northanger Abbey was Austen's parody of sorts on the plethora of gothic novels popular at the time. The question is, is it anything deeper? In other words, what else is Austen trying to say or make a statement about?

3) Side stories: The love triangle of Isabella, James and Captain Tilney; Elanor's marriage to a viscount.

Ok, please leave comments as to the day and time that you think would be best.

Cheers,

Miranda

Memorable Words and the Lure of Escapist Fiction

Hello beautiful ladies!

Week one of October is down; how's Northanger Abbey coming? I know a few that are finished reading already, so I thought to keep everyone interested and involved we'd try something new.*

To get us started, I wanted to share one to my favorite lines from the book:

"Provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all."**

So for our first discussion this month, I've picked two topics to start with:

1) Your favorite line from Northanger Abbey (or fav line so far). If you don't have one you could share a fav line from another Austen book.

2) The idea of this quote- Escapist Fiction. Does that mean sparkly vampires to anyone else? I love me some sparkly vampires and shape-shifting wolves, don't get me wrong. I adore escapist fiction, but it does have a bad reputation in the literary world, and society in general too. Is there anything to gain from it? Is it deserving of a bad connotation? Does it have any value? What are your thoughts; inquiring minds want to know.

*To anyone that is interested and finishing Northanger early on in the month, there are at least two of us reading And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie if you want to read along on that one too.

**Sorry I don't know what page that's on as my copy is a full works copy and thus it's on page 818, but I think it should be on or around page 2.