The all Jane Austen, all the time blog post

(ok, not really, I promise)

So today's title comes from the movie (and possibly the book, I can't remember) The Jane Austen Book Club.  Lest I be accused of not giving credit where credit is due.  

I spend a lot of my time in bookstores, being a lover of reading and having to literally walk right past a Barnes & Noble on my way home (which I really needed in addition to my eBay habit and my Amazon habit.  Crap).  An ever increasing number of the books I see in my perusals are some variation on a Jane Austen theme, and many of them even have Jane Austen in the title.  To date I have purposely avoided these books, because I figure they will simply be fluffy stupid things that I will hate reading and I will just get mad that the book was even published in the first place.

Anyway.  Yesterday I was at B&N trying to use up the rest of my birthday gift card and I bought this book from the clearance shelf called Jane Austen in Scarsdale or: Love, Death, and the SATs.  I know.  Not a promising title, right?  Yea, I'm pretty sure it will be exactly the kind of book I described above, but here's why I bought it.  It's the only one of these I've seen that's based on Persuasion, which is my favorite Jane Austen book.  I feel like it's generally overlooked, which is unfortunate.  Everyone likes Pride & Prejudice or Emma or Sense and Sensibility (I like them too, don't get me wrong) and those are the ones that generally get adapted or "expanded" upon (have you seen all those books that are supposedly about Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy after they get married?  Ugh.).  As for me, I've always identified more with Persuasion, I'm a big fan of the whole second chance, fixing the mistakes of your youth, etc.  If you haven't read it, check it out.



So, I bought the book because it was $4 and even if it's terrible it'll keep me distracted on the subway.  I'll let you know.


My other story for the day is about this jacka** sitting next to HG and I at this restauarant on Tuesday.  I can't believe I forgot about him the other day, but it came back to me in full force today.  So we're sitting there, enjoying the nice evening and enjoying the patio atmosphere and after a fashion this really loud, abrasive sound comes up behind us.  It was this guy, shouting to his friends repeatedly that he couldn't see them.  He yelled it every time they waved to him.  It was like this:


wave
"No, I can't see you!"
wave
"Nope, still can't see you!" 


At that time I was thinking to myself, "oh geez, this guy is super loud and really obnoxious.  I really hope he's not coming here."


Well, obviously he was coming to eat at the same place.  With a big group of people.  Who had apparently been drinking for the last 4 hours.  They sat at the table next to us and this guy was seriously so loud that I couldn't hear myself talking, let alone HG.  They ordered like 4 pitchers of sangria (because clearly their level of drunk at 6:00 on a Tuesday was not drunk enough) and kept getting louder and louder, and louder.


And then they pulled out a deck of cards.  At a restaurant.  To play drinking games.  I don't know the game they were playing, but our friend Loud Guy was in charge apparently and he was trying to keep everyone honest.  It went something like this:


"Hey.  Hey that's two points.  Hey you got two points.  OH YOU HAVE TO DRINK!  Pick a partner and you both have to drink.  I'm going to explain the rules.  I have the same card as you.  Oh I have to drink. Oh man.  Oh hey let's play Euchre.  No, you can play with 8 people!  Everyone wants to play!  Everyone knows how to play!  WE'RE PLAYING!"

It was at this point that I turned to HG and said, "um, it's time to go before I turn around and punch this guy in his face.  Seriously."

And on that note, I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!