Book Review: Sense and Sensibility

(Borrowed from the Jackson Heights Library.) After viewing a recent Netflix adaptation of Persuasion, I got the hankering to return to Jane Austen and continue to read the 100 books that the BBC says I should before I die. I'm up to 40 or so. After reading Austen's first published work, I appreciated Emma Thompson's 1995 screenplay adaptation all the more. Thompson crafted cinematic scenes detailing conflict and action. The book is an entirely different experience with most of the action conveyed through verbose 19th century dialogue and narration. I had to go back and re-read several passages to straighten out the relations of step-siblings, cousins, mothers- and fathers-in-law, etc. One especially confusing element was that apparently in 1811 England, the term step-mother and mother-in-law were interchangeable. Given the number of second marriages in the book, it grew quite confusing as to who was related to who, who was married to who and who was whose son or daughter or only married to their mother or father. In any event, the complex courtships and disappointments of the Dashwood sisters were absorbing. Austen's theme of common sense at odds with overly emotional responses to life (or sensibility as it was termed then) is powerfully delivered as Elinor and Marianne deal with misfortune in strikingly different ways. A subtler and deeper novel than Pride and Prejudice. 

Welcome to David Desk 2

Stupid scumsucking Google screwed up my account and I had to start another blog. It said my account had not been activated and it would to send a verification email to me. "Whadda mean it wasn't activated?" I screamed at my laptop. "I had been using it constantly." Well, the email I had used to set it up doesn't really work well. So I entered my work email and it said I couldn't use that to access the account. So I had to create a whole new blog using my work email. I don't understand it either, but I'll figure it out.

Fortunately I can still access the earlier blog, I just can't update it because it won't let me. The last blog was on Doctor Who and Buck Rogers. I haven't written anything for weeks--since the end of April--because I've been so busy going to shows at the end of the theatre season. I didn't even finish setting down my reactions to the last four episodes of The Amazing Race: Unfinished Business. I was pissed Zev and Justin were eliminated just before the final three were set. It was all due to Zev's lack of rhythm in the samba challenge which set them back. They thought they could make up the time by selling bikinis when everyone else was making those cocktails. I felt badly for them, especially since they had to have their hairy chests waxed and all that crying.

In other news, two weekends ago, my friend Diane visited upstate and we went to a book sale at the local library. I found a BBC Radio recording of King Lear with an all-star cast including John Gielgud as King Lear, Judi Dench as Goneril, Eileen Atkins as Regan, Emma Thompson as Cordelia, Kenneth Branagh as Edmund, Keith Michell as Kent, Richard Briers as Gloucester, Michael Williams (Dame Judi's husband) as the fool and  Derek Jacobi--whom I'd just seen as Lear at BAM in a magnificent performance--Bernard Cribbins, Nicholas Grace, Bob Hoskins, all played tiny parts. we listened to it on the drive back. It was only $2. I also found a recording of Emma Thompson reading Howards End and Julie Harris reading the Diary of Anne Frank.

I will try to get back to the first blog, but this will suffice for the moment. Remember the blog on Technology and Me: A Horror Story? This is another example of that strained relationship.