Becoming Jane Austen. Me?

Recently, my husband and I were sitting in a dark movie theater waiting for the feature to start. We were subjected to that awful habit theaters have now of playing advertisements for niche T.V. shows that the average movie viewer has no intention of watching, outside of that second. Nevertheless, show them they do and so we found ourselves watching the trailer and  “backstage pass” features for the television version of Ten Things I Hate About You.

I was instantly horrified.

“Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave,” I muttered to my husband.

“What?”

Big sigh. Launch rant. “It’s just that the movie by the same name was supposed to be, it was, a retelling of Taming of the Shrew. How can you make a t.v. show about something that was over and done with after two acts? A movie is one thing but this, oh this is just gross. I can’t believe it. I—“

“That’s what people do, Pam; they retell stories.”

This would have gone on, on my side more than his as I was clearly more adamantly freaking out, but we were interrupted by a change of scene. An advertisement for something about an Austen or a Bronte (or was it a Darcy?) flashed across the screen. A little voice inside of my head said, “You’re not upset about that, now, are you?” It occurred to me, sitting there, that I was not the only one who saw her favorite stories rehashed over and over again.

It may be that I have very little interest in Austen and so I don’t defend the upheaval of her cannon. I was then, thankfully, distracted from two hours of fantastic Terminator fun by rolling criticisms in the back of my head.

Why haven’t I read Austen? I’ve read just about everything else. I once tried to read Mansfield Park but I still have the $1.29 left on my library balance as a result of forgetting the book existed for well over a month. Certainly if my beloved William is retold over and over, then there must be some merit in the only second most prolific subject of remakes.

It just isn’t my normal fare and I can’t find motivation to get into it (please see library fines). Lo and behold (please stop rolling your eyes, at least in front of me) the book bloggers (stop that!) have a solution. Stephanie of Stephanie’s Written Word has created The Everything Austen challenge.

Participants are asked to chose six Austen related media pieces to read or watch between July 2009 and January 2010. I thought it best to start with the originals so I’m going to go with three starters and three spin offs.

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Emma
3. Mansfield Park
4. Pride, Prejudice and Zombies by Sean Grahame-Smith
5. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
6. Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence

If you know me at all, you know that this will be the very definition of a challenge but I hope I’ll walk away from it a little bit more enlightened. I need a little romance in my reading life so why not consult the master? Wish me luck; here I go!