Welcome to my blog! I am a wife and mom from Pennsylvania who also happens to write. I have been writing for 25 years, fourteen of those for smalltown newspapers in rural Pennsylvania and upstate New York. I'm a homeschool mom, a cozy mystery writer, a photographer, a wife, and a mom of two. I blog a little bit about a lot of things here on the blog. You can also find me on Instagram.
This week has been crazy weatherwise here in the east of the U.S.
First, we had a fairly major storm Saturday and Sunday. That left about five inches of snow on the ground for us.
Monday the weather still wasn’t great and the snow stayed around. On Tuesday, there was more snow and freezing rain and then it turned to all rain and flash flooding was predicted. Luckily there was no major flash flooding or flooding at all and the snow is still on the ground.
The high winds we got were scary but didn’t cause damage in our immediate area, which is a surprise considering all the dead ash trees we have around us. There was a lot of damage in other counties around us, however.
The kids enjoyed playing in the snow and my youngest was sad when it melted. There are rumors she will have more snow to play in before the month is out, however.
Maybe even before next week is out.
Moving on to last week’s traffic jam reboot link up, Thrifting World had the most clicked post. Actually, she had two posts that tied for the most clicked.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or from years ago even.
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
This month Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching movie adaptations of Jane Austen books.
First up is Sense and Sensibility.
Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen movie adaptation I ever watched. I started it, thinking I’d hate it but ended up falling in love with it.
I’ve now watched it three or four times.
I’ve decided to “live blog” this one as I watch it, similar to how I wrote about Persuasion and again I will not provide spoilers in case you’ve never seen the movie or read the book.
Erin joked that last week’s post was like a Mystery Science Theater 3000 post and I liked that comparison so consider this a blog version of Myster Science Theater or Rifftrax.
Before I start I will relay a couple paragraphs from Wikipedia about the basic plot of the book and film:
“It tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor (age 19) and Marianne (age 16½) as they come of age. They have an older half-brother, John, and a younger sister, Margaret (age 13).
The novel follows the three Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother as they are forced to leave the family estate at Norland Park and move to Barton Cottage, a modest home on the property of distant relative Sir John Middleton. There Elinor and Marianne experience love, romance, and heartbreak. The novel is set probably between 1792 and 1797 in Sussex, West England.”
So the movie opens with a man dying and he wants his second family taken care of and asks his son, John, to take care of his second wife and three daughters.
We know right away that the promise the son makes to his father on his father’s deathbed will not be kept because he already looks swarmy.
Op, yep. Swarmy to the core and his wife is even worse. She has the most evil ideas and a very pinched face. It’s no surprise her name is Fanny.
As we get to the young ladies who have been left behind, Marianne is playing a very sad song on the piano and we will be introduced to the humor injected into the film by Emma Thompson and her perfectly timed sarcasm and whit.
She asks Marianne to play something different because the music is making their mother weep even more over the death of their father.
Marianne tries a different song but it’s even more depressing than the first.
“I meant something less mournful, dearest,” Emma’s character (Elinor) quips from the other room.
It’s so funny to watch a family mourning yet feeling a bit like you want to giggle over the behavior of Marianne and the over dramatic mother who is flustered because they are being kicked out of their home by the cold and heartless half-brother and his wife.
It was an awful time, though – where men inherited everything and daughters were kicked out of their homes. These women will go from wealth to poverty very quickly which will be a shock to them but in some ways, I think they will be better off poor, without the stuck up rules of the rich back then.
Oh. Hugh Grant in his prime. Hello. Playing Edward Ferrars, Fanny’s brother.
Good grief those high collars look ridiculous, though.
He’s so polite. Unlike his sister. Odd how they were both raised in the same family and he is so much nicer.
Gemma Jones, Elizabeth Spriggs, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, James Fleet, Greg Wise
And he and Elinor – well, I promised no spoilers but, well, the fact they get along so well is certainly making Edward’s evil sister very, very upset. It’s making Elinor’s mother hopeful because she’d love to get her house back again or at least a very nice house.
Honestly, they’re both a bit conniving. The whole idea back then that men could only marry those who were in their “class” is so disgusting and annoying. I love that Jane knew that and instead writes about marrying for love and not prestige.
Barton Cottage. Sigh. It’s so cute. So much nicer than those big, drafty mansions. Well, then again, they are shivering and grabbing extra blankets in the cottage to show how drafty it was as well.
Sir John offers the women the cottage. He is Mrs. Dashwood’s eccentric cousin with an even more eccentric wife.Yes, Sir JohnOr as I remember him – Siegfried Farnon from the original All Creatures Great and Small show from the 1980s or 70s. Whichever. I used to watch it on PBS with my mom.
Or as I remember him – Siegfried Farnon from the original All Creatures Great and Small show from the 1980s or 70s. Whichever. I used to watch it on PBS with my mom.
Ah. Colonel Brandon. Strangely attractive even though I’ve never had a thing for Alan Rickman.
Not sure how I feel about him looking at Kate Winslet. He’s probably old enough in real life to be her father. He’s probably supposed to be younger in the movie. Or not. Who knows. It was a different time.
The cinematography and scenery in this movie is so beautiful – like most of the Jane Austen movies. Sweeping landscapes and towering Victorian mansions, beautiful dresses, handsome men and women.
Enter another handsome character – John Willoughby. Alas, he might not be as dashing as we think. We will have to watch and see.
Hugh Laurie. I totally forgot he was in this. He’s the guy who played House and the man who my son says is weird to hear with an English accent and that he thinks that Hugh’s English accent is actually fake.
I can’t figure this Willoughby out. He seems so delightful and interested and invested in the family, not just Marianne, but … there’s something just not right. He wants Marianne and her family yet – I won’t say. You’ll have to watch the movie.
Again, though, the rules of class and who you could and could not date back then were just ridiculous.
Poor Elinor. She is the only stable one in the whole family it seems. Holding it all together.
Everyone around her seems completely crazy.
Lucy Steele. She breezes in and just adds to the crazy. You’ll see. Completely delusional.
I pretty much want to throttle Marianne through this entire movie.
Robert Ferrars. Eek. That is all.
Were people really this uptight in the 1700s or just the British? I know they weren’t always uptight but these period dramas just make them so…proper. I’m drawn to the characters who aren’t very proper in these movies.
Elinor seems proper in some ways, but real in others.
There are a lot of confusing twists and turns in this one.
A couple people need a good slap across the face.
One needs a right shake and wake up call, but she’s young so I’ll try to cut her some slack. Plus, there are a couple of scenes where my heart just melts for poor Marianne. She had such high hopes and fell so hard only to be rejected in such a public way.
An aside – get Colonel Brandon some blasted blankets too! He’s an old man! He could catch his death. My goodness.
Alan Rickman was such a good actor too. At one point when Marianne finally notices him – his expression from hesitant to touching. Sigh. Just swoon-worthy.
I won’t spoil the ending so I will wander off here for a bit to discuss the history of the book and some behind-the-scenes of the making of the movie.
The book was published in 1811 and was Austen’s first novel. It was not published under her name but instead, the title page simply read: written by “a lady.”
It was published in three volumes to begin with and the cost to publish them cost more than a third of Austen’s annual household income. She paid for the books to be published and barely made a profit off them. She made $178 on the 750 publications sold, which would be about $6,358 today. As a self-published author myself, I certainly feel her pain and relate/
I did not know until this week that the screenplay for the movie was written by Emma Thompson and she won an Oscar and Golden Globe for it. She was 35 at the time the film was made.
According to Wikipedia, Thompson spent five years between other projects working on the screenplay. Thompson had never written a screenplay before so many studios were not interested in taking on the project. Showing a bit of a novice writer she was, she almost lost the entire project in a computer failure.
From Wikipedia, “As Thompson mentioned on the BBC program QI in 2009, at one point in the writing process a computer failure almost lost the entire work. In panic Thompson called fellow actor and close friend Stephen Fry, the host of QI and a self-professed “geek”. After seven hours, Fry was able to recover the documents from the device while Thompson had tea with Hugh Laurie who was at Fry’s house at the time.”
The film was directed by Ang Lee, a Taiwanese director and Lindsay Doran, the producer, chose him because of his past films about complex families. He was not familiar with Jane Austen at all.
In an interview, Lee said, “I thought they were crazy: I was brought up in Taiwan, what do I know about 19th-century England? About halfway through the script, it started to make sense why they chose me. In my films, I’ve been trying to mix social satire and family drama. I realized that all along I had been trying to do Jane Austen without knowing it. Jane Austen was my destiny. I just had to overcome the cultural barrier.”
In case anyone is wondering about Thompson’s age compared to how old Elinor was supposed to be, that was a concern brought up by Thompson herself. For one, she wanted Natasha Richardson and her sister Joely to be cast as the sisters, not herself, but Lee and the studio wanted Thompson because she was becoming well known as an actress.
Thompson finally agreed but they increased Elinor’s age to 27 instead of 19 to make the idea she was a spinster more believable to modern audiences.
I think the very ending is very fitting and serves a certain person right. If you’ve seen it let me know what you think in the comments.
In case you are interested, here is Emma accepting her Golden Globe for the film.
And here you can watch the making of the film:
If you have YouTube Prime you can also watch the full movie here:
If you want to read Erin’s impression of the movie, you can read her post on her blog.
Up next week we will be watching the 2005 edition of Pride & Prejudice.
Have you seen this version of Sense and Sensibility? What did you think of it?
I am finally joining up with Marsha in the Middle’s 10 on 10 today. I have forgotten to do it every other month, but here I am to talk about ten things I want to accomplish, learn, master, or create this year or in the future. I don’t know if it has to be this year but, in the future, at least.
So here we go:
1. I want to learn more about taking photos with film and developing it myself.
I have taken photographs for years, starting out in film when I was in high school. I didn’t know enough about film back then to know what I was doing. I simply took the photographs and then took them to be developed at a drug store like Rite Aid or CVS. When I worked in newspapers in college, we had a staff photographer who would develop all the film and refused to teach me how to do it when I asked.
All I knew was there was a rotating door that spun him into some dark room and he developed film until one day he didn’t anymore because we either took the photographs to Rite Aid or we started using digital cameras.
To this day, he is one of the best photographers I have ever seen, but back then he could be a real jerk to the newbies. I still wish he’d slowed down and taught me more about film photography.
2. I want to learn to cook better.
I can cook fine to make dinner for The Husband and kids, but I really want to learn more about how to cook different dishes and how to bake. Our oven has been broken for a couple of years now but we hope to have it fixed soon so that will help some of my efforts to become a better cook. I have learned more about cooking in an electric frying pan, an air fryer, and an Instapot without the oven, though.
3. I want to create a book of my dad’s writings and my grandfather’s poems and I hope to do that this year.
I already have the poems and all I have to do is typeset (old newspaper word) them into the computer and get them ready for publication. Wish me luck. My grandfather wrote poems about anything and everything. My dad writes little pieces of prose and I’d love to put them in the book as well and give it to my dad for Father’s Day.
My maternal grandmother was also a writer and poet so her work will be next on my list.
4. I want to be able to finish this book I am writing now.
I am really struggling with my latest manuscript and it is one hundred percent my fault. I agreed to join a multi-author project where there were all these rules about what I could write and how for the book I am contributing. In my own defense, there weren’t that many rules when I agreed to do it. All I knew was the book had to be written in the 1990s and it had to be a certain word length and there would be a cookbook involved that would tie all the books in the series together.
Once I signed on even more rules were thrown in and I was stuck because pulling out of the project meant leaving the other authors hanging. So I am plodding forward and asking God for help because this is not how I usually write my novels. I have my own ideas of how I want the story to go, who I want the characters to be and what the plot will be. The story is my own. In this instance, it does not feel like it is my own. Pray for me.
5. Start a clean fiction book club either online or in person
I would really love to start a book club for clean fiction either in person or online. We’d choose one book, read it for the month, and then discuss it at the end of the month. This would be easy to do, I just don’t seem to be able to slow down and do it.
6. To move forward and not hold on to the hurts of my past.
This one will not be easy for me. I have a lot of hurts from the past that I am holding on to. Almost all of them were betrayals and abandonment by people who were close to me at one time (not my parents so, no, this isn’t a therapy session. Ha!). I want to let all of that go and hold on to my word for the year – onward.
By onward I mean I want to go, “yes, I was hurt, but no I won’t react like I usually do and retreat away from that person or life. I won’t purposely ignore a person if they reach out, even if they hurt me. That doesn’t, however, mean I will fully trust them or open myself up to a friendship or relationship with them but I want to say, “That happened. They hurt me. Move on and let them live their life without me sitting and seething inside about how they hurt me.”
It will be hard for me because I put up walls very fast and behind those walls I ruminate about the hurt I’ve been inflicted. For years and years. I hope to let that go this year and in future years – or at least keep working on doing so.
7. Start a podcast with Erin and not be afraid of public speaking.
So this is actually two but they go hand in hand. Erin and I from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs want to start a podcast and ramble about whatever we ramble about. We are both trying to be brave and not only offer ourselves and others an escape from the stresses of life but maybe find ways to earn extra income for our families. How will we do that through a podcast? I have no idea. Maybe we can tell people about my books and Erin’s journals and books and who knows. The avenues to reach our goals are wide open, we just have to take them.
8. Reading more of the Bible and recording the verses I read.
I have started a yearly Bible verse reading project and I really hope to stick with it throughout the year. I want to get up in the mornings and read my verse and write it down in my journal to work on memorizing scripture and taking in what the verses really mean. How to apply them to my life, in other words.
Right now I am using a list I found on Instagram, which Erin shared with me and hopefully, I can use a list from the same account throughout the year. So far, I only have January’s list.
9. Master how to write a novel quickly.
This goes along with my other writing goals but I really do want to learn how to quickly write a novel and plot better. Right now I write most of my novels by the seat of my pants and in the writing world that is known as “pantsing.” I really hope to be able to plot a bit better in the future and bring the stories together a little faster so I can hit the deadlines I set for myself. As an indie author, I set my own deadlines for most of my books (except the book I mentioned above where deadlines were set for me.)
10. Travel more and have more experiences outside my house.
I suffer from some chronic health issues and sometimes crippling anxiety so I really would love to travel more and have some more experiences outside of my house and immediate area at some point in my life. Erin and I have discussed meeting each other halfway so we can actually meet each other in person so that is a goal for me. I also want to get over my fear of having a “spell” in public because that is one thing (along with time and money) that holds me back.
I do have vertigo and weakness spells a lot and that seems to go with whatever autoimmune issues I have (doctors haven’t really diagnosed me with anything because they just think I’m crazy and pretty much tell me so and offer me antidepressants.). I want to be able to manage them and the crazy anxiety symptoms that come as well, so I can travel further and just live a little more.
So this was my 10 on the 10th for the month. How about you? Do you have accomplishments you want to reach? Things you want to master or conquer? Let me know in the comments and if you want to join in on Marsha’s 10 on 10, find her link up here: https://marshainthemiddle.com/10-on-the-10th-january-2024/
If I didn’t highlight your link, please know that Erin and I still appreciate you linking up and taking part and helping us make Christmas 2023 comfy and cozy. I hope you will participate in our other link-ups throughout the year.
I hope we make this an annual tradition. Focusing on comfy and cozy books, movies, and events really creates a magical and calming atmosphere for the Christmas season and I really needed that this year.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Yesterday we were hit by a snowstorm that wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be but still brought about five inches of snow and cold. It was our first bigger snowstorm. Little Miss had a wonderful time sledding down the hill behind the house even after it got dark. We are grateful for a very bright light in our backyard.
We are also grateful for a bright streetlight because the kids decided to slide down our driveway and across our street around 10 at night. They had a blast.
It was too dark for photos but Zooma the Wonder Dog also had a blast. As I have mentioned before on my blog, she loves to jump up and catch snowballs that are thrown for her.
The snowstorm is set to continue today so we are hunkering down. I don’t know if we will get much more snow but the roads are supposed to be fairly messy and it is very, very cold out there right now.
Little Miss enjoyed playing in the snow much of yesterday and again today with her dad before he has to go to a second, part-time, job he recently started.
What I’ve Been Reading
This past week I finished two books – a Christian romance, Southern Snow by B.R. Goodwin, and a non-Christian mystery called How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin.
If you like squeaky-clean books with a Christian message and romance you will like Southern Snow.
If you don’t mind some language and a very good mystery (like could not put the book down good) then you want How To Solve Your Own Murder but that one doesn’t come out until March 26 so go pre-order it.
You could also be like me and like both of them. Southern Snow is out now and on Kindle Unlimited if you have a membership to that.
This week I will be continuing Little Women, Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson, and listening to A Tall of Two Cities on Audible.
Dysfunction Junction will be out on February 6. Here is a description:
When three women receive an unexpected phone call that leaves them reeling, they have no other choice but to reckon with a lifetime of memories they’ve long tried to bury. Only in facing the past will they find their path forward.
Frances Mae Livingston’s firm grip of her family’s destructive history makes her hold her husband and four children even closer. But she’s losing bits of herself while proving to everybody and her mama that she’s enough. There’s no way she’ll repeat her mama’s mistakes, even if it kills her.
Annabelle McMillan didn’t have trouble kicking the Eastern North Carolina dust off her feet. The tough part was replanting herself in familiar soil. Now she’s blending her old life with her new husband, stepson, and unborn child. And battling old memories of abandonment and new fears of rejection.
Dr. Charlotte Winters has built a career around helping others sort through their emotional baggage. She’s also spent a lifetime refusing to unpack her own. So what if Charlotte doesn’t recall all that her mama did to her and what her daddy didn’t do for her? Her only mission is to help others help themselves…until the women from her past and the man in her future undo her well-sewn life.
At the junction of healed and hurting, broken and whole, and past and present, three women wrestle with their inability to forgive and forget in this riveting Southern family drama about sisterhood from award-winning author Robin W. Pearson.
I am also putting together a list of books I want to read this winter – including a collection of stories by Agatha Christie that I planned to read last winter but never got to. I hope to share that tomorrow or another day on the blog. It won’t be a big list because I am a slow reader. The Husband is reading John Connolly books.
The Boy and I have set A Tale of Two Cities aside for right now as we start a non-fiction book for history called Lost Names by Richard Kim, which I have started and have been swept up in. I also decided I wanted to read/listen to A Tale of Two Cities first so I can guide him when he reads it.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched a lot of cozy mysteries – Poirot (with David Suchet) and Miss Scarlet and The Duke (which I am pretty much binge watching now).
What I’m Writing
If you’re new here you might not know that I write fiction books. Yes, I am an indie author and some readers do not read indie authors. That doesn’t offend me. I get it. I don’t even read a lot of indie authors.
There are a lot of not very good indie authors out there and a handful of good ones. That’s my honest opinion, even though I am an indie author.
Am I a good indie author? I’m a decent one, maybe, but recently questioned it when I put out a book that I had somehow switched two chapters on and then published the stinking book.
Oh my word I was so humiliated when I discovered it two weeks later. How did I do it? Well, it has to do with my new formatting software and how it’s very easy to move things around. So easy that two chapters were transposed without me even realizing I did it. I did not second check things before I uploaded it to Amazon because I had uploaded it before and it was fine. This time I had only made a minor change with a typo I somehow missed correcting after my editors gave it back so I didn’t think I needed to check it. Well, I learned my lesson the hard way.
Anyhow, this week I am working on a new book called Cassie that will be part of a multi-author project. It doesn’t come out until August so I have plenty of time but writing this one has been a struggle. I will admit that I now wish I had not joined a project that had so many rules with it that were provided by someone else and not myself. I will not be doing another project like this ever, but I feel this one is pushing me creatively and that’s a good thing.
I hope to have Cassie complete by the end of February, the beginning of March. After that, I hope to start a new Gladwynn Mysteries book and I think this time around I will share it here on the blog more than I did with the last book. I plan to move my books out of Kindle Unlimited so I can share and sell them anywhere I want. I will be doing that in the spring.
If you want to learn more about my books and what they are about, you can click HERE.
What I’m Listening To
Right now I am listening to A Tale of Two Cities on Audible.
Photos from Last Week
Here are some photos from our snowstorm:
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
The fire is crackling in the woodstove and vegetable soup is cooking in the Instapot.
Outside snowflakes are falling softly at a fairly fast clip and the forecasters say we will have up to nine inches by the time this Nor’easter is done.
I started this blog post a bit ago but kept getting interrupted by lighting the fire, cutting up the potatoes for the soup while listening to a couple of lovely Christmas stories by L.M. Montgomery on Audible (no, this is not a paid ad), and chatting with my parents, brother, and a couple of friends. It was almost like life got in the way of my blog. Like – what?
(If you’re new here I’m typically sarcastic and snarky.)
Today I wanted to take the time to thank anyone who stopped by my blog in 2023 and left me comments or encouragement. It is very much appreciated.
I write a lot about – well, nothing.
Ha!
But people seem to need to focus on a bit of nothing these days so I am okay with writing mainly about nothing.
I wrote a lot about movies in 2023. I wrote about books and family outings and a bit about family history.
I wrote about my fiction books that I am working on and shared some of them. (They are currently on sale and links are at the top and side of the page. Commercial over.).
I wrote less about my Christian walk, not because I’m not still doing it, but because I was struggling with life part of the time and didn’t feel like I should be writing about it while I was trying to figure it all out. That’s pretty silly, I know. As Christians we should be talking about our journey no matter where we are because we never know who we will help along the way. I hope to fix that a bit in 2024.
I enjoyed meeting a ton of new bloggers this past year, which was the best thing about blogging in 2023.
I hope to “meet” even more in 2024. The only thing about meeting new bloggers is I have a hard time keeping up with everyone’s blogs and leaving comments. Sometimes I will read posts but run out of time to comment or fall asleep in the middle of commenting and thing I already did. Maybe I should meet less bloggers this year then. Ha.
As I write I am looking out at my neighbor’s front lawn and it’s weird how sad it looks now that the husband took all the Christmas decorations he had up down. I know it was time and I’m sure their electric bill will appreciate them not being up any more, but his wife and I both said how much we miss them. She managed to get him to leave up some of the sparkling rainbow lights at least so there is a nice sparkle for right now over there.
What can I say? Our house always looks pretty depressing in the winter without all the green on the trees and the flowers out so I am sure it isn’t fun for them to look at our house either.
Our Christmas decorations are now down too and I told The Husband I need to figure out ways to decorate the house for all seasons like people I follow on here and YouTube.
Yesterday we went to pick up groceries and also some pizza and wings for my dad, whose 80th birthday was yesterday.
We ate some lunch with him and my mom and then came home to put up our groceries and get ready for the storm.
Today I’ve been goofing off, as I mentioned above, but after I post this, I think I will watch some more Miss Scarlet and The Duke and read another chapter of Little Women. With a blanket, of course.
We usually visit my parents on Sundays but it looks like we might be stuck inside tomorrow as well since getting out of my driveway in icy or snowy weather is not easy at all.
That means more reading and writing time for me.
Oh and while I am thinking of it – I’ve actually purchased a tea other than peppermint to try and it’s not too bad – it is a ginger, turmeric, and orange tea. Ginger is great for digestion and turmeric can be great for inflammation and aches and pains.
I missed the deadline to put this post up because I got caught up in a book I’ve been reading. It is an ARC by Kristen Perrin called How to Solve Your Own Murder. It comes out March 26 and you’re going to want to get a copy. I usually schedule the post but earlier in the day I was either reading or thinking a lot about what to do for my dad’s 80th birthday tomorrow and completely forgot I hadn’t scheduled it. Oh well. I can’t always be on top of everything, I suppose (she said this sarcastically, knowing full well she’s barely ever on top of anything.)
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or from years ago even.
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
I’ve already mentioned here that I have not read any Jane Austen books but I have watched Jane Austen movie adaptations.
This month I will be watching three of those adaptations with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs but this week I watched Persuasion by myself to kick off Jane Austen January. If you want to get in on the movie-watching action or share posts about Jane in any capacity, you can add links at the link up, which you can find at the top of the page.
Today, I thought I’d offer you a little bit of a blow-by-blow of my thoughts as I watched the 2007 version of Persuasion but without spoilers. In other words, I will not share the ending of the film, even though it should be obvious how it ends because it is based on a Jane Austen book.
As the movie starts I can tell there are going to be a lot of close-ups on the actress who plays the main character – Anne Elliot (Sally Hawkins) and she will provide us many drawn-out contemplative and heartbroken expressions.
I also realize she’s the mom from the live-action Paddington movies. I realize this because she reminds me very much of the wife of a former pastor of mine and because my daughter loves the Paddington books and movies and we just watched Paddington 2 two weeks ago.
I already like the main character, though I do wish she had some more lines and less lackluster expressions. (Luckily – this changes later.)
Oh my, her father and sister are — how shall I put this? Horrid.
They are horrid.
Wait. Isn’t that the guy who was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I only watched a couple of times) and Jonathan Creek and a bunch of other stuff I probably saw him in but can’t remember.
I don’t stop to look his name up but later my husband tells me his name is Anthony Head. I promptly forget what he told me and two hours later I look it up again.
Here are some exclamations I made each time the man opened his mouth as Sir Walter Elliot: “Wow.” “Okay then.” “Well, he’s certainly a jerk.” “Good. Leave her behind because who would want to be with you anyhow?” “Yikes. Pompous much?”
The sister, Elizabeth, deserves a lot of the same exclamations and she receives those and a couple of “yikes.”
Now the father and sister are leaving and their house will be rented out by someone who is not a nobleman but a mere commoner, as Sir Walter Stucky Up Face says. That makes him very sour indeed.
Our main character is being left behind – not of her own will, of course – to stay with her hypochondriac sister Mary Musgrove. Lord have mercy, this woman is a piece of work.
We’ve already heard before Anne stayed behind that the house that Anne grew up in but will not be able to stay in because her father has leased it out to commoners will be visited by a Captain Frederick Wentworth (Rupert Penry-Jones – what a very British name, eh?)
Cue yet another long, shocked yet subdued expression by Anne. Alas, she has met him before we learn as she talks to her godmother. It isn’t a spoiler to say that the captain wanted to marry dear Anne but her father and godmother forbade it.
Oh, Anne’s mother is dead, by the way. Just figured that out.
Is this sister for real? She’s sick? Now come on. Really?
Oh. I see. She’s only sick when she feels like it and not when fancy-dancy people come to visit and want her to go see other fancy-dancy people.
Listen, lady, your kid just fell out of a tree. Don’t you think that is more important than some fancy dinner?
Anne doesn’t think the dinner is more important. She’s staying home with your kid and cares more about your kid than you do.
Oh, so we learn that he sisters didn’t know of the proposal once long ago from the captain but of course, this hypochondriac one wouldn’t have known since she only thinks of herself.
The captain is dreamy by the way.
I can see why Anne wanted to marry him.
Everyone has got to be clueless to miss the swoony looks they keep giving each other and how sad the captain looks as he looks at Anne.
Oh. They are clueless because they are so incredibly self-centered.
Seriously, 20 minutes in and all I can think is how awful and selfish all these people are.
All except Anne, of course.
Here is where I will cut off my internal dialogue and leave a screenshot of what I told Erin about my thoughts as the movie neared the end:
The novel Persuasion was originally written in 1817. There are at least four movie adaptations of the novel with the latest being last year. I have not heard good things about the latest. I’ve heard the best things about this adaptation.
The movie was part of three movies released in 2007 by ITV. The other movies were Mansfield Park and Northanger Abby. According to Wikipedia, Hawkins wasn’t sure about playing in the movie when asked but after re-reading some of Jane’s books, including Persuasion, she fell in love with her again after last having read her in high school. She even went as far as reading about Jane herself to learn more about the woman behind the book.
She told The Independent, “Jane was an incredible woman. She was only in her early forties when she died. I became convinced that Persuasion was about her own love life; Anne Elliot took the wrong advice and left the man who turned out to be the love of her life. She is the type of woman you’d like to be: reserved, refined, funny. I totally fell in love with her.”
This was Penry-Jones’ first period drama. In an interview, he said, “In modern drama, everything is so overt. In period drama it’s all held in. You have to find ways to show the feelings straining beneath the surface.”
(An aside by me: he did a remarkable job with this.)
I found it interesting when I read on Wikipedia that the costumes made for the movie, along with those used in Miss Austen Regrets (which Erin and I will watch at the end of the month) were eventually sold by the Jane Austen Centre at an auction. The costume designer, Andrea Galer allowed the items to be sold but said it was a hard thing to do because she had loved designing those costumes so much. The costumes were already on display at the Jane Austen Centre, which is located in Bath, England and focuses on Jane’s time in Bath and how it influenced her novels, including Persuasion. Galer sold them to encourage others to get in touch with the materials that used to make clothes since she used a lot of those to design the costumes.
I have to be honest that it felt a little weird to read that they were sold on Ebay of all places. I’m not sure who the proceeds benefited but I would guess the center.
Have you seen this version of Persuasion or the others? Which was your favorite? Have you read the book and what did you think of it?
Next week Erin and I will be watching Sense and Sensibility and will write about it on Thursday.
Here is our complete list:
Movies and the dates we will be writing about them:
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Welcome to my last Sunday Bookends for 2023. Crazy, isn’t it? Tomorrow it will be 2024.
2023 flew by for us in some ways and dragged in others.
This past week we ended the year with a lot of family time.
It was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my parents and two family days and a lot of relaxing together and watching movies.
Today and tomorrow will be more relaxing and then it will be back to school for the kids and I on Tuesday.
I wrote a bit about our last week in my post yesterday if you would like to catch up.
I was watching a video by Darling Desi on YouTube yesterday and she talked about how many years ago in our country we used to celebrate the Christmas season until January 6 and that we should give ourselves permission to do that if we want to. So this week I’m giving myself permission to continue celebrating Christmas with Christmas movies and books that I didn’t get to in the month of December.
I started watching It’s A Wonderful Life last night so I can watch some of my favorite scenes and before bed I read from a vintage Christmas book.
What I’m/We’re Reading
I didn’t read a ton on my break but I did read some. I finished Christmas in Abasorka Countyby Craig Johnson and made progress on Southern Snow by B.R. Goodwin.
The one by Craig Johnson is a small collection of short stories featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire from his Longmire Mysteries series.
I should have Southern Snow finished this week. I am not taking so long to read it because it is bad. I just stopped reading it to read some other Christmassy-themed books like the collection of vintage Christmas stories, the Johnson one, and a few chapters of Little Women, which I am making my way through slowly. Southern Snow does feature Christmas but I believe it can be read any time of the year.
Early last week I started an ARC by Kristen Perrin called How To Solve Your Own Murder and I was hooked and am blazing through it.
For those who like clean reads – this is clean so far but I’m only on chapter 10. There has been one swear word and it could get worse as things get intense, but I’m not sure. In other words, if you usually read Christian or clean fiction like me – just be warned that this is not listed in those categories.
I’ve also started Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson, which is another ARC read. The book releases February 6.
In January I’m focusing on cozy like I did in December so I hope to read some more cozy mysteries, including The Cat Who Went Into The Closet which my husband ordered for me and a couple of Nancy Drew books.
I’m also reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens with The Boy for English.
Little Miss and I have been listening to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever but I’m trying to get her to let me read her The Borrowers at night before bed.
We will be back to reading a history-related book for school on Tuesday, but I’m not sure which one yet.
The Husband is reading John Connolly books because Connolly has just put up his entire catalog on Kindle Unlimited. If that isn’t a sign of things to come in the publishing industry I don’t know what is. That means his ebooks are exclusively only on Amazon and he’s a NY Times Best Seller. They cannot be purchased anywhere else for 90 days. Interesting.
Also interesting is that the book we downloaded, The Furries: A Charlie Park Book begins in the town my husband and I lived in for 20 years for me and more than 20 for him. It is the town he now drives through to go to his second job because the towns up there all run together. The Furries is actually two books in one and the first one that mentions the town is The Sisters Strange.
It’s so bizarre to see the town in the book because it is truly a tiny little area essentially in the middle of nowhere. There are about 3,200 people in the town he’s talking about and maybe 13,000 altogether in the three towns that run together. I may be off on that number – I didn’t check the census but it is definitely under 30,000 these days.
I’m very curious now to know how Connolly knew about it or his connection to the area. He even writes about the flood we went through there in 2011. Thankfully it did not hit our home since we were at a higher elevation but it did flood the historic and business district of the town. I was working for the newspaper at the time and took photographs of the destruction but almost forgot to take them because I was just standing on the hill looking down into the rest of the flooded town in shock.
I’d also love to know if any of his characters are based on any real-life residents. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they were. I don’t know that Connolly’s books are my cup of tea but after reading the first chapter I am hooked and if he goes back to Athens in this book, I know I will be trying to see which characters might be based on people I know from there.
In an interview with a Maine television station, Connolly said he wrote this mainly in lockdown during the pandemic so he was mainly in Ireland at the time (which is where he is originally from). This makes the book partly taking place in Athens that much more interesting to me. He also released the book in chapters like I have done on my blog. Maybe Mr. Connolly saw my blog and copied me. *wink* Ha. Ha.
What We watched/are Watching
I watched a ton of Christmas-themed shows and movies since I last posted a Sunday Bookends.
A Christmas Carol from 1938
White Christmas
Elf (for the second time)
Trading Christmas
A Biltmore Christmas
A Christmas Story
A half of The Man Invented Christmas (need to get back to it)
Half of Blithe Spirit (need to finish it when The Husband is home from work)
The Christmas special from last year of All Creatures Great and Small
The Little House on the Prairie Christmas special
A Christmas episode from M.A.S.H.
We also watched a couple other episodes of M.A.S.H., a couple episodes of Miss Scarlet and The Duke, the first episode of C.B. Strike (based on the books by Robert Gailbraith. I read the first one and enjoyed it even though it was dark and full of obscenities – just a warning for anyone who might try it), a lot of Newhart, Forgotten Way Farms, Darling Desi, Doctor Quinn Medicine Women, and The Pioneer Woman.
I probably watched some other things as well but it has been two weeks so I’m not sure.
What I’m Writing
I’m working on my book Cassie and blathered on about a bunch of movies and other stuff here on the blog.
Next week I will be writing about the movie Persuasion to kick off Jane Austen January. Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be starting buddy watches of movie adaptations of Jane movies January 11. We have started a link up that you can access through the menu at the top of my page.
I listened to Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon before and during Christmas week.
I have also been listening to a collection of audio productions of Jane Austen’s books on Audible and plan to start Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry on audible at some point, but probably not until February because I’ll be listening to the Jane Austen for Jane Austen January.
Photos from this week
Christmas:
Local light display:
Fun outing:
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
