Falling Headlong Into Another World...

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Find it at http://tiny.cc/JAusten

If I'm a Jane Austen fan, it's as an admiring bystander of the language, customs, and history of the Regency/Napoleonic era more so than as a Janeite or romantic.  So, as I flipped the pages of Cindy Jones' book, My Jane Austen Summer, trying to decide whether or not to add it to my already lofty stack of books, I was braced to bolt and run at the first sign of words like swoon or limpid or cerulean orbs.  I needn't have worried.  I was hijacked and hooked anyway -- how'd that happen?

Blame Lily, Jones' overwhelmed-by-life's-harsh-realities heroine, who is fired for reading novels on the job, rather than fulfilling the banal tasks of her cul-de-sac career of routing payroll tax deposits.  Getting fired for reading on the job -- oh yes, once upon a time, it could've happened to me.

Even today, whether reading a book I like or viewing a fav film, I fall headlong into another world, mesmerised to the exclusion of all else.  My tumble into escapism now, though, is not to avoid the quotidian, but to ride point on a Quixotic search for inspiration, lionhearted answers, and ballsy challenges.  I finger the last few pages of a book, willing the word-weaving to become a never-ending story.  Marginalia and bookmarks bristle from every edge of my books.  With films, I maintain a special list of titles, The Think Tank, my go-to for drenching my senses in "otherness".

I return from these excursions refreshed, ferocious, inspired.  I'm stronger; I'm intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally well-fed, and after the first jolting bounce, I welcome the return to earth.  Bring it on, world.  I'm ready!

Albeit by a different route -- a journey occasioned and accompanied by Jane Austen herself -- Lily re-invents her life.  Don't read My Jane Austen Summer expecting full-force fan fiction or a self-improvement guide.  Do read it expecting a fast, funny, and sometimes quirky romp through a cast of characters who bear uncanny resemblance to people you know.  Casting the movie 15 years ago, I would want Meg Ryan as Lily.  Today --.  I'll get back to you on that.

As the illustration at the top of this post details,

Jane-ites, Quixotes, avid readers, & admiring bystanders

can spend a relaxed evening with author Cindy Jones

on 27th March 2012.

.

Come, bring your questions

-- keep your pinky up, refreshments will be served! --

and tune your attitude to Adventure.

See you on the patio, amigos!