Braver Than I Thought

I have been nostalgic of late and Charlotte's post Monday got me thinking about a book that meant something to me and still does. I'm talking about Monica McInerney's Family Baggage. This was the second of Monica's wonderful books that I read and although I related quite well to the first one I related even more to this one. Harriett, the main character, has a nervous breakdown after her parents die suddenly. She begins to doubt herself. I have self-doubt all the time. But a semi-mother figure to Harriett tells her to write down a list of things she can do. So Harriett does and she quite impressed with it. She keeps the list with her and reads it when she needs to do so.

I compiled my own list and was quite surprised with my accomplishments. I moved across the ocean to Wales without knowing anyone else there and lived for six months. I navigated through Europe quite well although I learned flying by the seat of your pants sometimes gives you a big wedgie. I am planning an international breast cancer fundraiser. I can cook Greek food. I am an expert in Victorian children's literature by female authors. I have originally cataloged an art collection.

There's more, but those are the basics. I actually think this is a great exercise for anyone to do. Because let's face it at one time or another we all have doubts about ourselves and where we are going.

What about you? What are your accomplishments? What brave thing did you do?

Happy birthday to me.

"If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling's whole life would have been entirely different."
-The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

Do you have a book that you swear influenced your life dramatically since you first read it? Or at least one that you can identify with the character? Mine was always L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle, which is really a fairy tale at it's heart. It is about a woman who at the start of the book is celebrating her twenty-ninth birthday. She is single, at the time where "the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man", and has always been rather shy and oppressed by her mother and her family. What was that? Shy and oppressed by her family? Ding! Ding! Ding! Of course this fed right into how I felt growing up.

But, she is told by a doctor whom she snuck out and visited on her birthday that she has a heart condition and only has a year to live. Valency realizes that she needs to escape her monochrome life and does it fantastically.

So, this is it. This is my twenty-ninth year, so it is my year to live big and tell people exactly what I think. Ok, maybe not exactly because sometimes a little tact goes a long way. Because, while I haven't been diagnosed with a heart condition that will leave me dead in a year's time, it might still be quite interesting to try to be bolder and more honest with everyone.

We'll give it a try.

Father of Our Country, Father of Our Book Theft Problem

I was never overly fond of George Washington. I don't know if it was the powdered wig, the wooden teeth or that whole cherry tree folklore. But I never found that the father of our country was really as great as everyone believed.

And now my belief has been proven. George Washington, who could not tell a lie, is now a known book thief.

Recently an article came out that said George Washington had not returned two books to a library in New York, which makes him a book thief. If you check out a book and never returned it the library world calls that legalized theft and although not a great deal has been done about it historically, it is a major problem and is costing our libraries millions.

Now I can't really hate George Washington for doing something that I too have done. I will say that a)I was eight and b)not only did I replace the book, I replaced it with two copies. So if some other enterprising eight-year-old could not be parted with The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle the library would not suffer. But I can and do actually hold this against The New York Society Library. Why? Because they have been quiet about it for so long.

This is the problem with library theft: NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT. If you ask librarians they will deny it exists. They look at it as a part of doing business. Although not a great deal of data has been collected on library book theft, the last known numbers for how much library book theft costs libraries a year was $2 billion. That's a lot of books or a lot of services that libraries provide. That number comes from a 1998 article. That's $2,619,891,819.88 according to an inflation calculator.....Wow is it just me or does that number look like a huge chunk of our library budgets?

Libraries need to not only talk about book theft, but they need to start doing something about it. I respect Terry LaTour from the Clarion University Libraries for the work he's done to prevent library book theft. When he came to Clarion it was a $30,000 a year problem and now it's not. Terry talks about book theft and he does something about it. As librarians we could learn from Terry and we should. Because people stealing books from libraries legally or illegally is a price libraries can't afford to ignore anymore.

Turn off the TV Week, or the joys of a small town

This is my weekly Tuesday post, coming on Wednesday as it is because last night my 'puter was misbehaving and I had to shut it down and walk away or it was going to get thrown against the brick wall. Next week, I promise a Tuesday, Tuesday post!

On to the joys of small town living! A local elementary school is celebrating Turn off the TV Week with nightly events in the school gym. Fun, exciting evenings of board games, races, dances... you get the picture I am sure - anything to get you away from the TV! Well, they kicked things off Monday with a book sale. You know me, never met a book I did not like and never could turn down an invitation to a book sale. Even one in the gym of an elementary school.

While it was nothing fancy, or big, I love just being able to look over the tables of books, pick them up, flip through them, read a page here - a paragraph there. And I walked away with a bag of books for $1.75. You will be pleased to learn that they were not all for me.

I love buying books for others, mostly it ends up being my friends and family. Especially when they are as crazy about books as I, such as my father. Or for children. I have some dear friends who are 3 years of age and almost 5 years of age. I have imparted my love of books most especially to the nearly 5 year old girl. She loves her library. And I am now adding some dictionaries to her collection! (please see previous post by self) They had a beautiful hard bound My Fun With Words book. Which is basically a first picture type dictionary with easy to comprehend definitions. I also found a Children's Dictionary which may be a bit above them now, but will definitely come in handy later. They even had books I remembered from my childhood like Amelia Bedelia! No holy grails were found here, but treasures none the less.

And, tell me, is there anything better than buying books for children? The sheer delight on their little faces as they turn the pages of a new book just cannot be surpassed. Unless, perhaps, it is by the delight on my face as the new treasure is shared with me!

We're all in search of Holy Grails.

Long ago (we are thinking about five years ago), I attended a book sale at the Boston Public Library with a friend who cited her interest in looking for her "holy grail" of books. I can't remember the title of the book, but I finally realized what I should call my ultimate book finds when I go used book shopping: Holy Grails.

And guess what? Just the other week I managed to find one! And a few crown jewels. I have to say that there must have been someone in the DC area who collects just what I do, and I managed to get there at the right time to find them. My interest in book collecting stems back to when I was perhaps in my early teens, if that, and I discovered a previously unknown book to me by Frances Hodgson Burnett called T. Tembaron at my local library's book sale. Up until that point, I had no idea that she had written anything other than A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and Little Lord Fauntleroy, which are the ones you can typically find in print at bookstores. That started a lifetime of collecting the works of Burnett and other children's authors. Little by little, I am finding them all across the world (as I have found them in Wales and Scotland in addition to the United States). My main collecting focus is, oddly enough, Victorian children's literature, especially that with a moralistic bent, and books of facts.

So, I came full circle the other day when I stumbled across a first edition of the book, T. Tembaron, but this time with a dust cover. It might not be in the best shape, but it is all mine!

Then, in the "collectible children's literature" section, I came across a first edition of Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard, of which I actually own two softcover copies because I almost wore out the first so I thought it best to buy another when I saw it. I loved that book growing up. It's a retelling of the Tam Lin story, only set during the reign of Queen Mary (and into Queen Elizabeth). I only wish that Pope had written more than two novels. From what I read somewhere, she had a brilliant idea for a fourth book, but was stuck on the third, and then she died. Alas!

Finally, the Holy Grail (in minor) was a first edition of a Sally Watson book. It wasn't from the series that I am most fond of (her Scotland series), but this was the first time in all of my years of searching that I found one of her books in a used book sale of any type. So exciting!

To top it off, I found an 1833 copy of Cobb's Expositor, or Sequel to the Spelling-Book which has poetry written in the blank pages. Poetry! I love old books that has writing in it. It makes me happy.

What do you love to collect? Do you have any "holy grails" waiting to be found?

Ruined by an English Professor

When I was in college I took a course in mythology taught by the amazing and sometimes harsh, but always wonderful Carolyn Hares-Stryker. We had a love/hate relationship although now that I'm not her student it seems to be a better relationship. One of my favorite sections of this year long course was her section on Victorian children's literature written by women. I loved this portion at the time and still do. I reread our textbook "Forbidden Journeys" quite frequently even though I always thought it sounded like a porn novel.

The problem is Carolyn Hares-Stryker ruined Victorian children's literature by women for me. Because I no longer read it as just a nice story. There's quite a bit hidden in those tales. The one that always stands out for me is "Speaking Likenesses" by Christina Rossetti.

It's the story of a little girl and her birthday. She goes on a wild amazing journey, but I think it's really quite dark. Instead of being a fantasy I think it's really the story of what it is like to grow up and become a woman in Victorian society. How much pressure there is and how much censure and how much it just sucks to be a woman. To be the meek, mild-mannered miss who must bear children and maintain a household.

I obviously did not follow this path, but others have. There's one illustration in general that always gets me and it is the picture above. Most critiques I have read about it say it is a man who is trying to take advantage of the little girl and that the black cat is a symbol of man's lust because it has a kitten in its mouth.

I cry foul! Or at least bull-pucky. The monster looks like a giant vagina. Am I the only one who sees this? And a male cat could care less about kittens. I think this is the big monster of womanhood out to get a little girl who is growing older. This giant vagina is out to say "Hey you're about to get cramps every month and a monthly friend as well as being able to bear children, which hurts and all sorts of other great presents because you're a woman."

I want to write about paper about this, but I need to do some more research first.

Do you have a childhood story that isn't really all fantasy and fairytales that sticks with you?

What do you think this monster represents?

Who Ruined Your Life?

There's a book out called "Jane Austen Ruined My Life" now I haven't read this entire book, but I know there's a sequel called "Mr Darcy Broke My Heart." And although my heart was not broken by Mr. Darcy, I most definitely have had my heart broken by a fictional man because we all know the best men exist in literary fiction.

This character is none other than Daniel Sullivan from Liza Palmer's "Seeing Me Naked". Now do I want Daniel to have a happy ending? The answer is of course! He's a great guy, but I just wish he could find that happy ending with me instead of Elisabeth Page. Just to let Daniel know some of my good qualities: I am now a steadfast Jayhawks fan for no other reason than he fictionally played on their team. I watch UCLA games because fictionally he is an assistant coach. I'm learning to debone a chicken because he seems to find that an attractive trait to in a woman. I read a lot and my family while crazy is not nearly as crazy as Elisabeth's. On the other side I do have a really crappy ex-boyfriend who is practically a Will (that W-I-L-L for those of you who can't spell) and he's probably damaged me as much as Will (W-I-L-L) damaged Elisabeth. So perhaps I'm not all that great of a catch.

But I will openly admit that from now on when I date I am definitely doing a Daniel litmus test and a Will litmus test. If you pass the Daniel test I'll probably try a few more dates and see where it leads. If you pass the Will litmus test then good-bye and please don't let the door hit you on your way out or mind me running as fast as I can from you while screaming "Stay away! He's a Will! I repeat He's a Will!" Maybe I should start a Facebook page and post pictures of Wills so women will be forewarned.

To sum it up Liza Palmer ruined my life because she wrote an amazing male character that I have lost my heart to.

So which literary character broke your heart because he ended up with the heroine instead of with you? Or what traits do you look for in a man that you've read about in literary fiction? Do you have your own form of the Daniel/Will litmus test?

Apologies and Admissions

So, I missed my scheduled post last week, and I wish I could say it was due to losing track of time while hanging at the Algonquin. Needless to say, that is not the case. It just ended up being "one of those" weeks. To sum it up, mail order pharmacies are supposed to be *more* convenient! But then I spent the weekend with cousins in Plano, TX, and spent a great evening with an old college friend while I was there.

Enough with the excuses! And on with the post! I have been thinking lately about my "book habits." Depending upon your point of view, I seem to have some bad ones. First of all, I cannot seem to read books in a linear fashion. That is to say - one at a time. I just cannot do it. I think I have at least 6 books going at the moment. Do you think that makes me just a touch schizophrenic? I enjoy them all, but one never knows what sort of mood one might be in. This evening - perhaps a novel... tomorrow noon - perhaps Greek tragedy... tomorrow evening - perhaps biography... et cetera. And so the list of "currently readings" looks something like this:

• First Democracy
• Prometheus Bound
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• The Iliad and The Odyssey, a Biography
• The Portable Dorothy Parker (yes, I know, slightly self-serving)
• A Modern Mephistopheles
• et cetera

Secondly, (and I must say that this is one of my better book habits!) I always have a book with me. I keep one in my purse (the reason I cannot have too small of a purse) at all times. You never know when you might have some time to read. I also keep several in my car at all times. Fahrenheit 451, for example, is always in the back seat. And a pocket Oxford English Dictionary is always under my driver's seat. You never know when you might need one, and I think of it as a sort of protector, or guardian angel, if you will.

Which leads directly into, possibly, my worst book habit. I am addicted to dictionaries. Yes, it is true. You read correctly. Dictionaries. I love them. All sorts of dictionaries. I own many. I have the two volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the Oxford Latin Dictionary, a more portable Latin dictionary, Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, the "Middle Liddell," my Pocket OED in my car, and the list goes on. I recently purchased a few more during the Oxford University Press Spring Sale! (Definitely dangerous in itself!) I got the New American Oxford Dictionary, a dictionary of Allusions, and a dictionary of Etymology. I think you get the picture. I even own a Spanish-English dictionary even though I have never been good at learning conversational languages and do not know Spanish.

Time for my last admission of the evening. I covet my father's full 20 volume 2nd edition Oxford English Dictionary. It is the only thing I truly want to inherit one day. Covet here, is honestly the only word to fully convey my feelings about this dictionary. I covet it. I want it for my own. I want to be able to pull down volume after volume and page through it. The etymologies, the first known uses.....

I believe I have revealed enough of myself for my first post. Perhaps too much even...

...if I scared away any would-be-devotees, I apologies. Please stick around and give me another chance!

Now Jane, if you could see the world...

The world is wide, I will find my way in it.

If there is one thing that I prize from modern day feminism, that would have to be my independence. I am able to do things that I would have never been able to do if I lived back in the nineteenth century. Granted, I'm not a rocket scientist, but, had my dreams been in that direction, I would have been able to go to school and study to become one. Miraculous indeed!

Needless to say, when my friend responded to a quiz that, in her opinion, the literary character I most resembled was Jane Eyre, I was quite pleased with the response. And it wasn't because I had this brooding man with a crazy wife in my future outlook. Rather, it was my independent nature that convinced her that Jane was my kind of a girl. Actually, Lucy Snowe from Villette is also someone worth emulating, even if she doesn't get the happy ending that Jane had. At least she had a few years of happiness.

I may not be a teacher or a governess, but, I have always had to expand my horizons and go to new locations to find employment. It was something I knew I was going to have to do, and something that I wanted all along. Where I go, I start off knowing nobody, so it is always a grand adventure; scary at times, but also sometimes so much fun. You never know what to expect, and I love that I'm able to do such a thing.

I will not be the girl, who gets asked how it feels
to be trotting along at the genius's heels.
I will not be the girl who requires a man to get by.

But, at what price did I win this freedom to choose my life's path? I did give up being close to my family. I always thought that I was a curious mix of "Jo" and "Beth" from Little Women in that as much as I do like to be out on my own, I tend to cling to things that mean home. I've also probably just ruined myself for ever getting married. As much as I may want to, I am no so used to being out on my own that the thought of having someone else there that relies on me somewhat terrifying.

I guess I'm not as balanced as I thought I was! So, what do you prefer? To live your life independently? Or do you need to be around people? Adventures? Or stay at home?

A Day Late and A Dollar Short

Yesterday was my day to post, but I missed it because I had a bad day and just couldn't bring myself to post. So I am making up for it today. I hope you don't mind. (My bad day consisted of learning that come August 1, 2010 I will be officially unemployed.....if anyone knows of a librarian or museum job in the DC area please let me know!)

A friend of mine recently asked me to compose a reading list for his 10-year-old sister. A task I have been happily applying myself to perhaps a little too vigorously since I'm annotating the list and providing ISBN numbers and prices. Overkill? Perhaps, but since he probably hasn't read a lot of these books I thought he might like to know what they are actually about instead of buying based on title.

I was trying to find recently published books that were like the great books from my childhood. The only problem I'm finding is that almost everything published today is some sort of fantasy novel. Don't get me wrong, I love fantasy. You can read anyone of my books and see that, but I like to think that I and writers of my day did fantasy a little differently than it is done now.

Harry Potter obviously caused this craze although there were magic books before its existence. Just like Twilight helped fuel the paranormal craze. But if you look at books like The Railway Children and The Secret Garden you will see a different kind of fantasy. A fantasy that Disney can't really build a theme park for. It's the fantasy of a child's imagination. And that has no limits and no bounds.

What draws me most to The Railway Children and to The Secret Garden is the children's imagination. They think things and then they become magical. Not because they really are magical but because they have a secret special meaning for the children involved. I was trying to explain this to my uncle once. The reason why I find Victorian children's literature fascinating and as I was describing it he said "Honey, the reason you love that so much is because that's what you were like when you were a child. You imagined all sorts of secret worlds." And he's right. I remember playing this one game with my little brother and his best friend where my little brother was a whale and his best friend and I researchers on a boat that could talk to the whale. It was our own thing. Our own magic world where we could talk to animals.

I feel that some of that is missing from today's children's literature. It's based so much on creating a world that's so unlike our world that we're missing and our children are missing the magic in everyday things. How just a small change like talking to animals can make such a big difference. We don't need entire worlds where everything is magical. We just need a little change in our everyday lives. It not only helps us appreciate what we have, but makes us a little magical just by using our imaginations.

So if anyone has any great books they think a 10-year-old should read please list them below. Or let me know what you think of the fantasy craze in literature today.

Finding Old Friends In New Books

Last week's post turned out differently than I had anticipated. I was actually going to give an example of a Chick Lit character getting it all and as I worked out my post I realized something about it: Although I was discussing the second book in the series the first book, which I was using as a set up, was an old friend in disguise. In fact I felt that the book was Persuasion with a few tweaks for modern times and an ending where the heroine didn't get it all, but almost got it all.

The book I'm talking about is Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin. I had an affinity for this book even before I realize it was Persuasion. I relate quite a bit to the lead character and the fact that we share the same first name and same middle initial makes her seem all the more real to me.

The plot is slightly different. Rachel does turn Dex down, but not for marriage and not because of a family friend urged her to do so. Rachel turns Dex down because she feels she does not deserve him, but her best friend Darcy does. But fate is mysterious and Rachel and Dex start dating secretly even though Dex is marrying Darcy at the end of the summer. I am not one for cheating. I truly despise it, but Emily Giffin is amazing in making the read sympathize with Rachel. I think it is because Darcy is quite the handful and an obnoxious friend. But Dex and Rachel make it work in the end and Darcy is history. So Rachel doesn't get it all because her lifelong friendship with Darcy. So her ending is bittersweet.

My problem was with the second book where a very unlikeable Darcy does end up getting a great guy and a happy ending. But I digress. I love finding books I love that have bits of other books I love. It's like a scavenger hunt where you find one piece of a book in another and then keep searching for it in other places. It's like turning the corner and running into a friend you haven't seen for sometime. It made me want to read Persuasion over again.

But instead of reading Persuasion over again I got trapped in another book. I downloaded One Night in Boston for free on my Kindle. It is everything a writer shouldn't do with a classic plot. It's contrived and I could see everything coming from a mile away. All the old cliches were there and I really didn't like it. I didn't even finish it. Instead I should have reread Persuasion, which is what I'm doing now.

Do any of you have a book plot that you love? One that you look for or will automatically buy a book if it's similar? Persuasion is mine. I love to see what other people do with it.

What's your favorite plot? Who first introduced you to it and who do you think did it best?

Just a whisper away, waiting for me.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step in getting it fixed, right? So, I have a problem. Sometimes I suffer from a lack of attention span late at night. I want to read a book, but instead, I find myself sitting in front of one of my many bookshelves, looking over my books, but rarely finding one to settle down and read outright. Instead, I find myself pulling a book off the shelf, paging through until I find a familiar passage, read it, and then move onto the next book; trolling through the pages for my favorite lines. Wash, rinse, and repeat. I could have read a good portion of one book in full by the time I’m done with my ritual, but, would I be more satisfied?

I have a favorite passage in Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. In it Mr. Rochester is talking to Thursday Next about how he lives his life. He is a book character, and so only exists within those few hundred pages. He is brought forth, a fully grown man, in the first scenes where he stumbles across Jane Eyre, and continues on his existence until he loses Jane after the interrupted wedding scene (in Fforde’s version of England in 1986, Jane does not come back to Thornfield in Jane Eyre). His Mr. Rochester remarks that he often travels back and forth to his favorite times spent getting to know Jane Eyre, but he also must go to the times of heartbreak as well, if only to gain additional appreciation of the good times.

I know that there is no way to travel back and forth in my life, such things are not possible for mere humans, and yet, when I scan my bookshelves, I am traveling. Back sometimes, to that former girl-child I was, and perhaps even forward, as I age and grow, knowing my ever familiar favorite books are there to assist me with each new chapter of my own life, and finding new books to enrich me. Because, while not being able to travel about in books, I have found the next best thing. Re-reading through my favorite passages can take me back to where I was when I first read the novel (either in a physical place or where I was mentally), or when I was re-reading it and the passage first struck me. I seek to find certain books and chapters that inform my life and remind me of ways I can improve myself or give me hope for better things to come.

If I could really time travel, however, I wonder if I would focus on those times I was happiest, or those that made me stretch and grow as a person. Our trials are engraved on us, and make us richer, but, thank goodness for those moments of lightness that keep us sane! If we are fortunate, perhaps those moments in our life are the same and we are happiest in the present. Either way, with a good book in hand, the road cannot be too bumpy (or slippy) ahead.

So, if you could pick a time or place in your life to go back to (or even to look forward to) where would it be? Or are you content in the moment?

Perhaps I'll be trolling my bookshelves tonight!

Princess vs. Maid

Recently I was watching the TV show "Parenthood." In this particular episode a little girl was playing the Princess and the Maid with her friend. One little girl was always the Princess and one little girl always the Maid. The mother wanted her little Maid to be the Princess. When they tried this it didn't go over well. The girl who was always the Princess staged a coup while she was the Maid and became the Princess. I have to wonder....is the little girl who plays the Maid more in tune with things and actually better off?

I think secretly we've all dreamed of becoming Princesses. I will not deny that I have actually looked at Princess Michael of Kent's family tree to see if she had an eligible son. Not because I want to be a Princess although it would have it's perks since I love to wear hats, but because Princess Michael of Kent would make an awesome mother-in-law. But do we set ourselves up to fail because we want to be the Princess?

Life is rarely like a fairy tale although some books would have us believe it is and maybe in our own way our personal love stories become fairy tales to us, but there's a harsh reality most fairy tales leave out unless you read the original Grimm fairy tales. History is full of Princesses who gave up quite a lot to either become queen or simply because of their birth. Think of King George and his six daughters....they had little freedom. Victoria took the crown and gave up little pieces of herself to become queen. She gave up even more when Albert died. And what about Queen Elizabeth II? She had to take on a role that killed her father, who was not meant to be king but became king because of love.

I get that the life of a Maid is not easy. But maybe playing the Maid is the smart little kid's choice. You can marry almost anyone you want....men have been known to marry maids. Your clothing was a lot less restrictive (imagine trying to have a quickie with all those petticoats) and you could move up in the world based on your own merit. You didn't have to marry up in the world like a Princess or a woman of the aristocracy.

People who know me, know that I did not live the life of a Princess or the life of a Maid. I took chances and actually flaunted my very bohemian lifestyle during a very conservative time. Most people had their own vices, but those were kept well hidden. I openly showed mine. I didn't live the life I was supposed to and didn't pretend to be the Princess and I think I was better off.

What do you think? Would you play the Princess or the Maid?

Didn't We Almost Have It All?

As I’ve been reading books lately especially the modern interpretations of Mrs. Radcliff which instead of gothic horror focuses on horror of horrors clothing, thinness, bad jobs and a lonely boyfriend free existence, I’ve noticed one thing: Chick Lit gives a woman everything.

Obviously we’re all looking for the happily ever after or HEA. It’s what we crave and it’s what we read these books for, but as I read about another woman who is a size six instead of a size four, lives in a big city and is trying to find her dream and somehow mysteriously meets that amazing man with a bank account that can buy her all the Prada she wants I think back to some of the classics where at the end of the book the heroine didn’t have it all, but almost had it all.

Can the modern day woman really relate to these women? Why are most of their dreams jobs in television or event planning or marketing and PR? Do modern day women yearn for Prada and Gucci and Versace? Do we want to read about these things because we want them or we know about them or because we are told that we should want them? What’s wrong with a story without all the flash and dash? Something like, well let’s face it, something like I would write. Great characters who have faults and even though most get the HEA let’s remember that not everything works out in the end.

Lizzie still has a vulgar mother and her sister Lydia is married to a wastrel. Anne gets Captain Wentworth after eight years of heart ache, but her family still looks at her as plain Anne. Emma gets Mr. Knightley, but instead of moving to Donwell Abbey she must stay with her father. Perfection doesn’t happen in an Austen novel. The hero and heroine don’t always get it all. They almost get it all.

And let’s face reality. That’s the way life goes. You don’t get it all, but if your really lucky a gem like Captain Wentworth comes along and well you almost get it all.