Tag: Jane Austen

(All Hail) Creation · DISCUSS.

A Bullet-Point Decade

FrancescaLeave a comment

Inspired by Maggie Steifvater, I have compiled an out-of-order list of things that have happened to me this decade. I’m going out later so I’ll probably get emotionally introspective initially while I’m washing my hair and then while I’m varying degrees of tipsy; I think a list is good for stating unequivocally that things happened, regardless of how we felt about them at the time.

  • Wrote one novel, a dozen or more short stories and a number of fan fictions that we will be leaving in this decade
  • Visited 6 or 9 countries (thereabouts? Does France count if you’re driving through it)
  • Discovered that Pilates is actually a great idea
  • Passed all my GCSEs and about 80% of my A Levels
  • Scrambled up a set of steps at an ancient Cambodian temple using both my arms like a spider and promptly almost fell to my death because a tourist laughed at me and I lost concentration
  • Saw My Chemical Romance play twice; mourned My Chemical Romance; rejoiced at the return of My Chemical Romance
  • Wrote 685 posts on this site
  • Broke at least one toe
  • Met one of my best friends and reconnected with multiple old ones to the extent that this decade feels more friend-y than the previous
  • Met Judith Kerr, an author who illustrated my formative years; she was lovely
  • Meditated for 192 hours, apparently
  • Met Maggie Stiefvater, an author who is illustrating my current years; she was lovely
  • Actually met a tonne of authors (Stephen Chbosky, Adam Silvera, Becky Albertalli), all actual gems
  • Dyed my hair multiple rainbow colours and forgot to take photos almost every time
  • Learnt to drive
  • Burnt the skin off part of my right arm with Tiger Balm
  • Said goodbye to two of my aforementioned best friends and two grandparents
  • Read some Jane Austen
  • Became self employed
  • Learnt to make curry
  • Did more physio sessions than I can count
  • Got 3 ear piercings
  • Tried to read The Iliad twice, twice put it down for another day because god Homer have you heard of a line break
  • Figured out how the London Underground maps work
  • Learnt what tarot cards are
  • Diagnosed with IBS; found a fix for IBS that I’m tentatively excited about
  • Learnt to hula hoop

I started this decade at 14 and am ending it at 24, which seems like more years than actually fit into a decade. The next one will be incomparable in a lot of ways, although I fully plan to increase the novel count and would quite like to hula hoop more.

Let me know your bullet points – we should all have at least 10 when you think about it – and look after yourselves in the next decade. Happy new year!

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Books · December 2015 · Patreon Reviews

Review: ‘Persuasion’, Jane Austen

FrancescaLeave a comment

If you are aware of Jane Austen’s work, you may have noticed a trend of intelligent women, social comedy and weddings. I will not be spoiling this particular novel by saying that Persuasion is no exception.

Turns out I have a reading list, and, weirdly, quite a bit of what I’ve read so far is on it. I thought Persuasion was too, but it turns out that it was actually Sense and Sensibility. I’ll do that one too.

Persuasion starts with the lovely if socially-ambitious Elliot family, whose daughter Anne is the main character. Eight years before the novel starts, Anne was persuaded by well-meaning relatives to abandon her engagement with a lowly (read: neither rich nor titled) gentleman named Frederick Wentworth.

When we meet her, Anne is 27 and basically preparing for life as a spinster. Because who would marry a 27-year old god look at those wrinkles. Within a chapter or two, Anne’s family have been forced to move to Bath and rent out the family home to an Admiral, because they have approached their finances with the air of ‘spend for the person you want to be, not the person you are’. Some things never change, huh.

But wait. Who should be acquainted with the Admiral and his family but Frederick, whom Anne has never really stopped loving despite trampling on his socially-inferior heart… What’s more, has Frederick been bumming around these past eight years claiming benefits? No, he joined the navy and rose to the rank of Captain.

I think that is a big deal.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Anne spends the next few hundred pages despairing of her hypochondriac sister, her accident-prone in-laws and her mangy cousin, and tries not to freak out about how hot Frederick still is. Which is hot. Plus he knows how to drive boats across the Atlantic wearing a funny hat. (That’s not a direct quote.)

Do they get married? Does the mangy cousin stop being mangy? Will I have to read the novel again, as I did Pride and Prejudice, to fully absorb Austen’s sharp humour? Should you read this novel if you’re a fan of that Colin Firth Mr Darcy scene which isn’t even in that novel?

Oh, the literary questions.

 

My previous reviews are here; you can support my work on Patreon every time I review here.

August 2013 · Complaints · DISCUSS. · Fuckin' Idiots · Government and Politics · Internet · Newspapers · School *choke* · THE WORLD *head in hands*

A Moment of Holden Caulfield-Inspired Newspaper-Founded Moaning

FrancescaLeave a comment

This article is an interesting read, whether you’re a Government and Politics student or not.

Okay, it’s mostly interesting if you’re a Politics student. Especially if, like me, you’ve had a teacher who taught the political parties topic with enough scepticism and class discussion that the students made up their own mind about which party is better.

Or rather, which party was better, since these days they’re all kind of centre-ish and led by middle-aged white men.

Anyway, no offence to the journalist’s peers, but if they let an exam board influence their political views, they are not good politics students people. I’ve not noticed that Edexcel is biased against Tories (and trust me, my class was about 97% Conservative last September, and if anyone’s going to pounce on exam boards’ biases, it’s going to be my Politics class). I’ll keep an eye out if I get back on the course next year though. Maybe write a nice letter to the people at Edexcel, and mention everything else idiotic they’ve done while I’m at it.

I’m getting off-track and angry about the wrong thing for a change. Incidentally, I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t indulged in a bit of break time Gove-bashing, Labour-member or not. Ah ha, concentrate on bashing journalists, Francesca.

Which brings me to this. It’s a Daily effing Mail piece about how Jane Austen doesn’t deserve to be on banknotes because she died a virgin and was obsessed with money or something. Apparently Austen was “boring, nasty and superficial”… sounds like a certain tabloid-based brand of toilet paper.

You know what, if I was going to write fiction for a living, I’d go into journalism. I really would.