I don't know if it was a product of going to school in Miami where nothing ever seemed like it was anywhere else, but I never read Austen or Dickens or any of the Brits in high school. Instead we read Hugo, Cervantes, and the Russians my sophomore year. Junior year was American Lit-- Twain, Hawthorne, Steinbeck, Hemingway, AKA Dead White Guys. Senior year was read what you like, so I read Betty Smith (I like Maggie-Now so much better than Tree Grows in Brooklyn), Anne Rivers Siddons, and read a lot of drama-- Neal Simon, Tennesee Williams, Shakespeare.
Didn't really read many Brit authors until I got to college, actually.
Every time I try to read Austen, I doze off. After 20 years of trying, I think I should quit.
I loved Hardy, though.
So many otherwise right-minded people who don't love Austen. You all make me sad.
What Dana said, also she is the example of marrying for practicality rather than love. Austen was very good at showing the limited prospects for women in her society, and I love the irony of the fact that she was writing these novels about romance and finding a husband so that she essentially never had to make the choices her female characters are forced to make.
I might like her with zombies. Just not solo.
Senior year was read what you like, so I read Betty Smith (I like Maggie-Now so much better than Tree Grows in Brooklyn), Anne Rivers Siddons, and read a lot of drama
Wow. I used to love Siddons, but I can't imagine reading her for school. I feel like now she writes the same book over and over, too. I loved
Fox's Earth,
though -- all that Southern gothic family drama.
Senior year we read
The Color Purple, Waiting For Godot,
Albee's
American Dream,
and I forgot what else, although I read
On the Road
for my research paper. Or that might have been junior year, and
Tess
might have been sophomore year. Huh. I think we read some Shakespeare senior year, too.
Wow, the years pass, and I can't remember shit.
Senior year was Anna K, Madame Bovine, A Doll's House, Things Fall Apart, and some other stuff.
Yeah, Siddons has been writing the same book over and over, but the one I read and fell in love with was Heartbreak Hotel. That is such a magnificent book and so different from all of her others, except maybe Downtown. Ironically, my two favorites.
My favorite book of hers was the one (I'm pretty sure) published first, if not written first --
The House Next Door.
Really chilling psychological horror with a great couple, great characters, and fabulous writing. Totally unlike anything else she's ever done. It was the one they made a TV movie of with Colin Ferguson and Lara Flynn Boyle, which was impossible to watch without screaming, "The Botox! Oh my god, the Botox!" about Boyle.
Actually, her first published book was a book of essays she'd done as a journo called John Chancellor Makes Me Cry in 1973, I think? And I'm pretty sure that Heartbreak Hotel came next, in '75 or '76. It was after that that she went the Southern gothic route for a good bit before turning to the Southern women's fic, which really is where she started sounding like she was writing the same book over and over.
