Ask an English Professor / Wanderlust Book Club - Austenland

Hi, it’s Vanessa, your ENLIGHTENMENT host.

I love to travel, and read books about other amazing places I love and would love to visit. I’m hoping there are other travelers, both active and armchair, who feel the same. So for us, here is the Wanderlust Book Club, which alternates every month with the (books about the Golden State we live in).

Along with the book, I invite a special guest to each club meeting, someone who is an expert or very connected to the theme of the book and can answer our questions about the topic. So even if you haven’t finished / opened the book, you can still be part of the conversation.
In honor of Jane Austen, who would have turned 250 years old this December, I picked a book that’s not by her (there are so many good ones, so how to decide?) but rather about her and the impact she’s had on literature, romance, relationships and culture.

Austenland by Shannon Hale is about a Jane Austen fantasy camp for women, a Disneyland for Mark Darcy fans. (The 2007 novel was turned into a 2013 film starring Keri Russell). While it may not stand up to Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility as a classic novel, it’s a great book to use for a talk about Jane Austen, the woman, the writer, the legend, the pop culture icon.

Along with discussing the book, I’m inviting an English professor who teaches a course on Jane Austen and other 19th-century literary legends to come talk about it with us.

Below is the book description. Join me at the Sierra 2 Center for a great talk about a great read.

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Jane is a young New York woman who never seems to find the right man—perhaps because of her secret obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. When a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-obsessed women, however, Jane's fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined. Is this total immersion in a fake Austenland enough to make Jane kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own?

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