A Curious Statistical Anomaly

The Guardian has a short photo slideshow of the 10 best characters in Jane Austen’s novels chosen by Paula Byrne, who wrote The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things (HarperCollins, January 2013).

It’s an interesting mix of characters. I don’t really have a problem with the characters they chose but some was a bit sidetracked by the actors they chose or didn’t show who had portrayed those characters. For example, Mansfield Park has been made it to the screen (TV and movie) several times yet they showed the bookcover rather than Mrs. Norris — wonder why.

What your take on this. The link to the slideshow is:
10 Best Characters in Jane Austen’s Novels.

Opinions?

We got a late start and by the time we had breakfast and got ready to hit the panels, we’d missed the 10 am panel we wanted to see. Then in the lobby, we got into a conversation and missed the 11 am panel. But we did make it to the noon panel.

NOTE: The photos of the panelists were taken with available light from two or three rows back so are a bit grainy. I did some Photoshop work to get the panelists to stand out from the darkness. But hope you’ll get the idea of who was there. Panelist are always listed left to right from the audience point of view or as you look at the photo.

Noon: Unexamined Assumptions in SF.
Panel: Mikki Kendall, James L. Cambias (leader), Kenneth Schneyer, Darrell Schweitzer, Anil Menon.
Description: In a 2011 blog post, James Cambias complained of “[convention] attendees and panelists dusting off old, unexamined assumptions” in SF. For much of its history, SF developed a set of unexamined assumptions that became default conventions of the genre—that space exploration will move systematically outward from the moon to the planets, that the explorers will be cisgender heterosexual American or European males, that aliens will fight us in (peculiarly two-dimensional) space battles, and so on. 21st-century SF has made some notable efforts to roast these chestnuts, but it has its own set of assumptions, which this panel will mercilessly dissect and offer alternatives to.

Some questions were raised and dealt with such as: Why would you have clone slaves when born people are certainly cheaper. Why would any alien want to come all the way to Earth when whatever the book/movie/whatever gives as a reason could certainly be found in their own solar system? Schweitzer suggest the only reason would be if people of Earth tasted good making us alien sushi.

There was also a lot of talk about the economics of SF and fantasy and how they seldom, if ever, seem to apply. Why is a post apocalyptic society uniform? Shouldn’t they all be varied by which small group survived with their culture attached but changed for the harsher environment?

The thought was raised that in many SF stories they could just as easily take place without space. Why doesn’t any SF story show how we got from here to, say, the Star Trek universe where everything is peacefully one Earth government and a kind and benevolent Federation? Does the expectations of the audience fashion the story?

1:00 PM. The Autopsy, Postmortem Changes, and Decomposition: A Primer for Writers.
Speaker: Laura Knight.
Description: What happens after we die? Despite the incredible surge in popularity of forensic science in popular media, many myths and misunderstandings continue to surround the autopsy, and postmortem changes like rigor mortis and subsequent decomposition are often misrepresented. Further, medical examiners and coroners have often been depicted as insensitive and crude, eating a sandwich in one hand while wielding a bloody scalpel in the other. Dr. Laura Knight, a forensic pathologist and medical examiner, will present actual autopsy photographs, along with a non-sensational narrative description of the autopsy process and a detailed explanation of the changes to the body after death.

Dr. Knight gave an enlightening and tight presentation that actually fit in the time allotted and allowed for a short Q&A. She had a slide show to accompany her talk. She began with the difference between Coroners and Medical Examiners (M.E.), the training required for an M.E., then she went over how an actual autopsy is performed (the sequence, the standard items that are looked for, and some of the problems that arise).

The room was very warm and the pictures rather graphic. A couple of people had to leave during the talk. If any author is writing a crime story and needs to have a forensic autopsy as part of the discover of the cause of death, they would find this topic extremely helpful — It’s not like seen on CSI Anywhere.

2:00 PM. The City and the Strange.
Panel: Howard Waldrop. Ellen Kushner, Stacy Hill, Leah Bobet, Amanda Downum, Lila Garrott (leader).
Description: In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs writes, “By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance trilogy demonstrates that epic-feeling fantasy can still take place entirely within the confines of a single city. Fictional metropolises such as Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris, China Miéville’s New Crobuzon, and Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest are entire worlds in themselves, and the fantasy cities of Lankmar and Ankh-Morkpork shine as centers of intrigue and adventure. In what other works, and other ways, can cities be stand-ins for the lengthy traveling quest of Tolkienesque fantasy?

The panelists talked about some of the differences between real cities and made up cities. Made up cities must have a feeling to the reading of a history of culture and they need to work. Real cities are not homogenous they have small pockets or neighborhoods that vary from those neighborhoods that surround them. It was agreed that some of this information could be supplied via impressions rather than specific information.

Someone on the panel said they remembered a quote that, I paraphrase from my notes, “the city is where you go to meet people you don’t know and aren’t related to.”

Further discussion centered on hidden world cities or 2nd world cities in fantasy and the city as a wilderness or unknown territory as much as the country setting could be unknown territory.

3:00 PM. Theories of Reading and Their Potential Insights into Fantastika.
Panel: Shira Daemon, Eric M. Van, Gayle Surrette, John H. Stevens (leader/speaker), Suzy McKee Charnas, Rick Wilber, Kate Nepveu.
Description: We talk about reading at Readercon every year, but we rarely talk about our understanding of reading as a mental process of cultural practice. John H. Stevens will summarize some recent theories of reading from neurological, psychological, anthropological, and literary perspectives, followed by a discussion about what these ideas might be able to tell us about how we engage, interpret, and codify fantastic literature. In what ways is fantastika read like any other sort of text, and in what ways might we read (and write?) it differently?

I was on this panel but as with the other panelist, just got to listen to John’s presentation from a front row seat. The top photo above were the three of us to the left of John Stevens from the audience point of view and the smaller photo are the panelists to the right of Stevens. Unfortunately, Suzy McKee Charnas was directly behind Stevens from where my husband was sitting so doesn’t show in the photo.

John’s talk took up the entire time for the panel since there were several questions from the audience. His material is fascinating and he’s writing a book on the topic covering theories of reading from several different disciplines — anthropology, sociology, and neurology. He’s also been blogging about his research and musing on SF Signal in his column The Bellowing Ogre.

Visit to the Book Dealers Room:
One of the wonderful things about Readercon is that they have only book sellers in their Dealers’ Room. Unfortunately, even though I review books, I also buy a goodly number of books. I also love looking at the covers of books that I’ve only see the advanced reader copy of — and most of the time with no cover art.

Then we met friends for dinner and catching up on what panels they went to while at Readercon.

8:00 PM. Critical Fictions & Other Fabulous Beasts; or, Learning to Read and Write All Over Again.
Speaker: Henry Wessells.
Description: You think you know how to read? This look at critical fictions and other modes of reading/writing will suggest that it might be time to learn it all over again. The critical fiction is a piece of fiction or poetry where form (story) and content (critical function) are inseparable, a work of art that explicitly declares itself as a critique of another work of literature and explicitly makes use of that earlier source text. Henry Wessells will cover the precursors, techniques, and current practitioners of the critical fiction, and tell you why. Is it literary mash-up for people who shudder at Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Come find out. See the suggested reading list at http://criticalfiction.net/readinglist.html.

I was excited by the topic description but rather disappointed in the actual lecture. The room was warm and Mr. Wessells read several poems and a short story, as well as an introduction to a book. The introduction he read might have been more interesting if it had been pared down to the part essential to forming a definition of ‘critical fiction’ rather than so centered on the one author and book. I totally fail to see the difference between critical fiction, homages, and pastiches. When asked about this he said it depended on the author’s intent, guess that’s a great reason to read the introductions and forwards to books and stories — to get a heads up from the author.

I plan to check out the link to the suggested reading list, since I’m sure that my failure to grasp what Wessells was more on my side than his due to the hour and the temperature of the room. Any one interested in the topic based on the description should check out the site listed in the description.

We then called it a night but on the way to our room got folded into a conversation in the lobby — thus another late night for us.

The start of a whole new day. Managed to get down to the Book Shop to open on time. We moved one of our bookshelves in order to help get traffic to our table when authors are doing signings. We’re right next to the autograph tables and when the lines get long they block off our table because we’re closer and we become inaccessible. Moving one bookcase seemed to ease the press so even if the lines were longer we still got customers. Of course this move was aided by the author close to us moving his chair closer to the other author’s chair so they could talk and none of the rest of the day’s authors moved it back to center on that table.

But still business so far is far less than it was last year but the conversation about books, reading, the rise of ebooks, and other topics has been entertaining, enlightening, and fun. If tomorrow doesn’t improve in sales we’re not even going to break even this year with the travel and hotel costs.

11:00 AM: Book Design and Typography in the Digital Era.
Panelists: Neil Clarke, Ken Liu, Erin Kissane, David G. Shaw (leader), and Alicia Verlager.
Description: Design and typography can heighten the experience of reading a written work; in the case of poetry, typesetting can be crucial to comprehension and interpretation. eReaders can change font sizes with the press of a button, making books far more accessible to people who have visual limitations or just their own ideas about how a book should look. What happens when these worthy goals are at odds? Will the future bring us more flexible book design, much as website design with CSS has become more flexible as browser customization becomes more common? Or will we see the book equivalent of Flash websites where the designer’s vision is strictly enforced.

Ken Liu gave a quick history of the book from scroll to codex. First there was the scroll but you didn’t have random access to it — you always had to roll and unroll the entire thing to find what you wanted. With a codex or book you could go right to the page. More of the development of the book driven by the desire to print the bible and get access quickly to the parts you wanted.

China also had the scroll and they went to whirlwind books. These books were still more scroll-like but the bottom layer was a long scroll page and the top was a slightly shorter one and so forth. When unrolled completely the shorter layers curled up looking like whirls. This was developed for a dictionary and it was a way to solve the random access problem.

Now we have the ebook which handles the random access aspect quite well to search for an item but the return to the section you were reading is not always easily or correctly handled.

They talked about design issues and the conversion problems of print to ebook. For newer books you still have the electronic file and that makes conversions a bit easier but for older books the scan, OCR, run through converter formula that many places are using create awful books, making those who run into these badly converted/formatted books think all the books are like that. There was general agreement that more quality control for editing the OCR’d book and cleaning up HTML needed to be added. It’s mostly the small publishers doing this and the larger publishers are watching and learning from them.

Verlanger, who is blind, and has a technology blog where she writes about accessibility issues with technology among other tech-topics, spoke about the problems of back code which make the books inaccessible simply because they can’t be read by the programs used to translate text into speech. Scanners on the lowest quality setting sometimes create files where the images are not even identified as images by the OCR programs and weird groupings of letters are are added into the text/speech confusing the listener. Also DRM came up, in that a lot of the programs DRM for PDF and other formats identify the text-to-speech programs as illegal pirating software and do not allow the access at all.

Many issues were discussed and if you were interested in book design and conversions to ebooks and their utility this was a panel with a wealth of information for the audience.

Then it was back to the Book Shop and our table for an hour.

1:00 PM: Urban (Fantasy) Renewal.
Participants: Toni L.P. Kelner, Craig Laurance Gidney, Leah Bobet (leader), Ellen Datlow, and John Clute.
Description: The term “urban fantasy” has encompassed the work of Charles Williams, a contemporary of Tolkien who sometimes situated his fantasy in London or suburban settings as opposed to a pastoral secondary world; the novels and short stories of Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, or Robin Hobb (as Megan Lindholm); the phantasmagoric cities of China Mié or Jeff VanderMeer; and most recently, the magical noir of Jim Butcher and Charlaine Harris. Is it possible to reclaim “urban fantasy” as a useful critical term? Rather than wring our hands at how it no longer means what it did, can we use it to examine what these very different writers have in common, and to what degree they reflect different eras’ anxieties around and interests in the urban?

John Clute read a definition that he’d put together for his Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It was a good one and quite long and I couldn’t write it all down. One part I remember and I’m pretty sure it’s from this section was that the city is so much a part of the story and the characters environment that it’s just “the city” — any big metropolitan city but usually London, NY, Paris…

There was also some talk about urban fantasy that wasn’t contemporary but most felt that modern readers expected urban fantasy to be contemporary rather than set in the distant past.

The panelists also tossed around the term rural fantasy, suburban fantasy, and paranormal romance and how it differed from urban fantasy. Urban fantasy and paranormal romance differ in how central to the story the search for a mate is. In urban fantasy, you may find your mate but it’s not the central core of the story while in paranormal romance it is the central to the story.

An interesting panel with some very interesting views on labels and these labels in particular.

Worked with Hyperion at the SFRevu table until closing at 6:00 PM. We then had an hour until my panel at 7.

7:00 PM: The One Right Form of a Story.
Panelists: John Langan, Meghan McCarron, Gayle Surrette (leader), Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen, and Judith Berman.
Description: Quoth Mark Twain: “There are some books that refuse to be written…. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written– it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.” Anyone who has adapted a fairy tale for a poem or developed a short story into a novel might disagree, yet many authors have also spent years chasing stories that evade capture until they’re approached in just the right way. What makes some stories easy-going and others stubborn? Is the insistence on a story “telling itself” a red herring? And what does “form” really mean here?

This was one of the easiest panel I’ve ever moderated. From the first question the panelists just played off one another, building on or suggesting ideas until I opened it for questions. Each shared experiences where the story didn’t work and wouldn’t come together as they imagined it until they found the core or the character that the story was about. That form was when all the pieces fit because the creative and intellectual side worked together and the writer found the thread the story wove around. (This is my comprehension of the discussion and I was avidly listening but also concentrating on seeing that everyone got a chance to contribute.)

8:00 PM: I’ve Fallen (Behind) and I Can’t Get (Caught) Up
Panelists: Michael Dirda, Jennifer Pelland, Craig Laurance Gidney, Don D’Ammassa, and Rick Wilber.
Description: In a recent blog post for NPR, Linda Holmes wrote, “Statistically speaking, you will die having missed almost everything…. There are really only two responses if you want to feel like you’re well-read, or well-versed in music, or whatever the case may be: culling or surrender.” How do you choose among the millions of books that you could be reading? Do you organize your “to read” books or are all your books “to read” books? How useful are books reviews, Amazon recommendations, Goodreads, LibraryThing, etc.? How do you budget your limited reading time? And how do you cope with the knowledge that you will never read everything you want to?

In other words — how do you pick what to read in your TO-BE-READ (TBR) pile when it’s larger than any one person, no matter how fast they read, can read in a lifetime?

D’Ammassa has an actual written schedule of when he reads (3 hours every morning and another 3 hours before bed). I can’t imagine being that organized but maybe it’s something to strive for.

Dirda said he hasn’t read for pleasure in years. Just about every book he reads, he writes about. That’s at least two books a week. He also said he’s a slow reader because he moves his lips when he reads. (I have a little person in my head who reads me the books — in other words I can’t read any faster than a person could read the book aloud. I was so happy to learn that Michael Dirda has a similar tic that slowed his reading down.)

All of the panelists stated that they read at different speeds for different types of books — dense text or non-fiction being slower than other books.

Time is always a problem. Dirda said he’d given up TV and movie watching. Other said they read on their long commutes to and from work and missed that reading time when they changed jobs to one closer with less travel time. Airplane trips are great reading times with few interruptions. Pelland said she got a lot of reading done in the Laundromat because there wasn’t anything else to do there while the machines ran.

The issue of ebooks was raised. They avoid the stacks of books but putting them on the drive of the machine and the device was easy to carry and handle rather than hauling around lots of books to read. Also, they avoided the appearance of hoarding.

In many ways this was a slight variation in the Bookaholics Annonomous panel that Readercon usually has during the convention. As someone who could insulate her house with the books she plans to read someday — I appreciated the issues raised and the ideas tossed out by the panelists and the audience.

We got in late yesterday for Readercon 22 — too late to setup in the Book Shop and too tired to attend any of the Thursday evening events. Instead we got our luggage and personal items out of the car, checked in to the hotel and crashed.

Friday morning. The hotel has a Starbucks in the lobby, so getting something for breakfast was simple. Then shower and look over my notes for my first panel at noon. Then at 10 a.m. we got our registration material and began to unpack the car to set up our table in the Book Shop (usually called the Dealers’ Room in most conventions except Readercon only has books sellers in the room no jewelry or other fannish items — it is a convention for readers).

A bit before noon, I stopped into the Green Room to check if the other panelists were available — no luck on that one.

12:00 PM And They Lived Happily Ever After, Until they Died: Retelling Russian Folktales.
Panelist: Patricia McKillip, Gayle Surrette (leader).
Description: Ekaterina Sedia’s The Secret Histories of Moscow, Catherynne M. Valente’s http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0765326302/ampedesistud-20/” target=”_blank”>Deathless, Patricia McKillip’s In the Forests of Serre… it appears we’re in the middle of a renewed interest in fairy tale retellings–and specifically, postmodern, genre-challenging fairy tale retellings–based in the folklore of Russia. Is there a specific element to Russian stories that makes them particularly fit for contemporary adaption?

Originally there were going to be other people on the panel but they dropped out. Patricia McKillip had written two books using elements of Russian folktales. I’d hoped to moderate a panel and ask questions about the subject matter that I thought would give a chance for the authors to discuss their works and how they used the tales — which Patricia did, talking about her view of Baba Yaga and Koschei the Deathless that was very interesting. However, I’d only crammed for three days on the tales and, faced with just me and Patricia on the panel, most of that knowledge fell out my ears.

Luckily, two young women in the front row of the audience were Russian and willing to add their experience with the culture and stories. About half the audience had read The Secret History of Moscow and half had read Deathless with some overlap of the two groups. Opening the topic up to the audience for comments and questions produced an interesting discussion of the differences between Western fairy tales and folk tales (Grimm and Anderson) and Russian folk and fairy tales. The discussion ranged from how folk tales were a way to teach young children how to behave in the world and what to expect, to how the differences between and strict top down governmental structure (Tzar or Communism) and a more general representational government could change expectations of what behavior would increase your chance of survival. Is seems many Russian folk tales are about endurance while western ones are about moving up socially or becoming a success/gaining treasure.

It’s always hard to judge how a panel I’m on goes, but I feel that this one actually worked better because of the audience participation and the sharing of knowledge that occurred. I know that I learned a lot that will have me thinking in new ways as I read through the many Russian fairy/folk tales that I found on Project Gutenberg.

After the panel, I rejoined Hyperion at the SFRevu table in the Book Shop to help finish the setup. The Book Shop opened today at 3:00 PM and closed at 7:00 PM.

3:00 PM Global Climatology for Worldbuilders. Lecture by Gwendolyn Clare.
Description: The major patterns of global climate here on Earth–including atmospheric and ocean currents–can be directly derived from basic physics principles. These patterns, along with the location and shape of continents, let us predict the types of ecosystems found anywhere on the globe. After the talk, we’ll brainstorm different ways to alter the global climate system to suit our fictional needs.

I go to the science for writers programs as much as I can, and a good 80% of time, they’re pretty much worthless to me. This one was quite solidly in the 20% of goldmine territory.

Ms. Clare started off the discussion by asking the audience what things they thought most strongly influenced the climate. Several answers were offered up, but as one might expect, the biggest factor is simply the sun. There are dozens of other factors that modify and complicate climate, but the sun is the alpha point that starts the whole thing. Without an energy source, there’s no climate worth speaking of.

With just a couple of simple slides, I now actually understand what causes tropical rainforests zones, the desert bands, not to mention the coriolis affect, and why it bends the way it does where it does. There are times when information, which has been fuzzy and vague for a long time, suddenly clicks into clarity like finally getting a proper pair of glasses. This was one of those times.

More slides clearly showed sample causes for major warming and cooling periods over the last hundred million years or so, ranging from volcanoes, and particularly effective carbon dioxide eating planet, and the random actions of plate tetonics.

The last part of the talk centered around the audience calling out modifications to planets (rings, size, different stars, rotation speeds, different proportions of water to land, lack of plate tectonics, and my own very minor offering of blasting open the isthmus of Panama to rework some of the Atlantic currents) and what kind of modifications to climate these changes would inflict.

Lots to think about, and lots of new things to do more research on.

5:00 PM Feeling Very Post-Slipstream.
Panelists: Leah Bobet, Paul Di Filippo, Elizabeth Hand, Chris N. Brown (leader), F. Brett Cox.
Discription: Bruce Sterling’s definition of “slipstream” was based in the experience of living in the (late) 20th century. Now we’re in the (early) 21st, and present/near-future-set works like Mira Grant’s Feed and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition are starting to evoke a distinctly 21st-century sensibility with frank discussions of fear, anger, religion, security, and ever-present cameras. The only terms we have for these books right now is “post-911”. We can do better. What do we call books that leave you feeling angry, scared, and angry about being scared?

I was a bit late for the panel and when I got there Elizabeth Hand was saying that she didn’t like labels; that (and I’m really paraphrasing here) they tended to keep people out or putting up as many barriers as they were supposed to help by putting things in boxes. When she reviewed for the science fiction magazines, she could use terms that when she wrote for the popular press she needed to explain those same terms.

The discussion continued and it was fairly agreed that some terms gained traction and some didn’t. Some that gained traction were: Slipstream, Cyberpunk, and now Steampunk. Steampunk is also a fashion and culture so it’s more than a literary subgenre.

Someone said that slipstream sort of pulls the rug out from under the readers expectations. Another panelist asked what would you call the post-slipstream writing if the rug is already pulled out from under the reader.

Also mentioned that slipstream was about the feeling of strangeness when reading the story. Similar to horror, it’s the feeling you get when reading it that determines its place or label.

Discussion turned to a narrative and the failure of the narrative. For many, especially young college age students, Bin Laden is the only bad guy they know about. In movies and books, when a bad thing happens it’s solved in a month. It took ten years to find Bin Laden for 9/11. In disaster films, the disaster happens and everything is worked out and solved within the movie (or book) in a relatively short period of time. Then there’s Katrina and here we are years later and the area still hasn’t recovered fully and we’ve had even more disasters (tornado, floods, drought, etc.). The narrative has failed to match the reality.

At this point, Elizabeth Hand piped up with, “What would you call that, Failstream?” The audience and the other panelists liked the term and congratulated her for coining it. She tried to say she was joking but they insisted she own the term. Once the panel opened up for comments and discussion with the audience — failstream was used for the first time. (Guess she’s stuck with coining a new term when she doesn’t care for labels — too bad the term is so apt).

Then it was back to help Hyperion in the Book Shop until closing. Then the inevitable search for food (note breakfast muffin and coffee and only water until 7 PM when we ate) and now writing up the day and off to bed and to face Saturday when I have a 7 PM panel on The One Right Form of a Story.

If you’re reading this and you were at the Russian Fairy Tale panel, I’d love to hear your impressions and comments. If you just have comments and weren’t at the panel or even Readercon — leave a comment.

Only Mr. Darcy Will Do by Kara Louise. Sourcebooks Landmark. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4103-1. Pages 368. Trade Paperback. ($14.99 / Amazon: $10.19, Kindle $9.68). Originally published as Something Like Regret.

Only Mr. Darcy Will Do is a “what if” book building on the characters and somewhat on the plot of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In this instance, the author, Kara Louise, chose to diverge shortly after Darcy’s horrendously inappropriate proposal to Elizabeth and her curt and hurtful refusal. Darcy writes Elizabeth a letter detailing his involvement with Mr. Wickham and explaining his reasons for separating Mr. Bingley and Jane. Elizabeth returns to Longbourn from Rosings just as she did in the original work. That’s when things change. Mr. Bennet falls ill. Elizabeth doesn’t go on the trip with her Aunt and Uncle Gardner. And more importantly, when Mr. Bennet dies, Lydia is called back from Brighton before she can elope with Mr. Wickham.

The death of Mr. Bennet means that the Collin’s inherit Longbourn. Elizabeth persuades her mother to move in with her sister, Mrs. Phillips, and her husband. Jane moves in with the Gardiners in London to help with their children. Elizabeth takes a position as a governess with Mr. and Mrs. Willstone to care for their daughter Emily — a very precocious six-year-old. The stage is now set and the story spins out from this point.

The Willstones live in London which allows Elizabeth to visit the Gardiners and Jane on her Sunday’s off. They also travel in the similar social circles as the Darcys and Bingley. Mrs. Willstone’s sister Miss Rosalyn Matthews comes to visit the family and for some of the London social season. It was a chance invitation that brought Miss Darcy and Mr. Bingley to the Willstones on a day when Emily had been asked to sing for their guests while Elizabeth played the piano for her. Bingley’s surprise was genuine and sincere. However, since Elizabeth and Rosalyn were becoming friends it also led to Rosalyn confessing her admiration and respect for Mr. Darcy and her hope that she could secure his love.

As you can imagine this throws Elizabeth into a quandary as now she has realizes just how much she misjudged Darcy and somewhat regrets her refusal of his offer of marriage. She’s now a governess and if Rosalyn and the Willstones begin to entertain the Darcys, it will be painful for her as her first encounter with Darcy shows.

How will things turn out? Will Elizabeth’s change in circumstances prohibit Mr. Darcy once again asking for her hand in marriage? Will she have to stand by and watch as Rosalyn vies for his attention and regard? Does he even still care for Elizabeth?

Those of us who are fans of the book have definite ideas about how the questions should be answered. But will the author oblige? You’ll need to read the book to find out how or if she manages to have our two favorite characters interact.

Kara Louise is very respectful of Austen’s characters and the feel of the story as well as the interactions of the characters are believable while following naturally from the new story line. There are also no sex scenes, just plenty of romance and witty dialogue. The writing is such that you could believe that if Austen had been a bit more romantic and less pragmatic, she could have written this story.

Once again I was enchanted by characters I admire and enjoy reading about and by Louise’s style, wit, humor, and story telling.

If you enjoy Pride and Prejudice variations as much as the follow-ons, you really need to read Only Mr. Darcy Will Do by Kara Louise, unless of course you’ve already read it when it was published as Something Like Regret.

If you have read this book, I’m anxious to hear what you thought of it — please leave a comment.

Mr. Darcy’s Obsession by Abigail Reynolds. Sourcebooks Landmark, ISBN: 978-1-4022-4092-8. Pages: 346. Published: October 2010. List Price: $14.99 (Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle: $9.68). Cover images ©Bridgeman Art Library; NinaMalyna / Fotolia.com.

Mr. Darcy’s Obsession by Abigail Reynolds is definitely a What if story.  The divergence point for this what if story occurs when Elizabeth Bennet is visiting Charlotte near Rosings.  Elizabeth receives word that her father is very ill before Mr. Darcy gets a chance to give his horrendously inept proposal.  She rushes home and not long after Mr. Bennet dies, Mr. Collins takes possession of Longbourn. Elizabeth is now out of reach and Mr. Bingley never gets a second chance with Jane Bennet.

Months have passed and Mr. Darcy has not forgotten Elizabeth. Bingley opted to bury his disappointment in work and left London to become actively involved in his businesses.  While visiting Darcy, Bingley tells him that he met Elizabeth Bennet near Kew Gardens.  He goes further and tells Darcy that she’s living with her aunt and uncle in Cheapside caring for their children and that Jane married a milliner shortly before her father died and the rest of the family are living with Mrs. Bennet’s sister in her apartment.

After Bingley leaves, Darcy can’t forget that Elizabeth is in London and he determines to see her – at least from a distance.  Well, a distance isn’t good enough and soon with the help of a street urchin in the neighborhood that he hires to spy for him, he manages to meet her on her daily walk and resume their acquaintance. On these walks he learns that while time may have past, his heart is as much taken with her as it ever was.

Of course, nothing is going to go smoothly because while the characters are the same, Elizabeth Bennet’s situation is more reduced now than it was when they first met.  Darcy begins to realize that just because someone is born into privilege and wealth doesn’t necessarily make them worth knowing.  He begins to truly see the behavior of his family as they inform him who Georgianna will marry with no consideration for her feelings or well-being.  Finally, he begins to evaluate his own beliefs and assumptions about class and realizes that the person, not the rank, is what is important.  It’s not an easy change for him and essentially this conversion runs throughout the book as a secondary plot thread — though truth to be told, without this thread Darcy would have to walk away from all that he loves and holds dear.

Meanwhile the story, because of the changes caused by the divergence from the original Pride and Prejudice, follows along with the same major plot points occurring with minor variations. The changed circumstances of Elizabeth and her family members and Jane’s marriage mean that there are other social obligations and entanglements. These are dealt with in a manner that makes the story flow smoothly and, more importantly, believably from the divergence point to the ending without seeming forced.

Darcy isn’t the only one questioning his beliefs and his assumptions.  Bingley also has changed as he’s lost Jane and it’s only in losing any hope of marriage to her that he realizes that he’s often followed the advice of others rather than trusting his own heart. Bingley also sees his level of society with a more critical eye and doesn’t like what’s revealed. As for Elizabeth, she has found a strength to maintain her dignity, humor, and concern for other even though she’s had to do things that she’d never been brought up to do.

Reynolds maintains the inner integrity of the Austen characters.  You may find the characters in changed circumstances but you’ll recognize them.  They act pretty much as you expect with the givens of the new situation in which they find themselves. There are no modern sensibilities imposed on them, they are as you’d expect them to be.  Reynolds has given us an excellent retelling of the tale with this single divergence point playing out to its inevitable conclusion.

Don’t hesitate to purchase Mr. Darcy’s Obsession, Reynolds has managed to remain true to atmosphere and language of the original work while taking a path that Austen didn’t.  While not in the Gothic tradition, Mr. Darcy’s Obsession has much of the dark broodiness and biting criticism of a Gothic but lightened with humor and hope — making it a satisfying and compelling novel that you’ll wish to read over and over again.

Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister by C. Allyn Pierson. Sourcebooks Landmark. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4038-6. 448 pages. Trade Paperback. List $14.99 (Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle: $9.99) Previously published in 2008 as And This Our Life.

Darcy and Elizabeth are married and settling into their life together. Georgianna is elated to finally have a sister to talk to and confide in. However, Georgianna’s coming out this season and she’s nervous, terrified, and feeling very insecure. Like any seventeen-year-old, she acts out by snapping at people – in other words not being as polite as possible — which has everyone concerned as she’s normally so compliant.

C. Allyn Pierson’s Georgianna is complex and multifaceted. Told from Georgianna’s point of view, Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister gives us a chance to actually get to know Georgianna who had so small a part in Pride and Prejudice. She’s shy, unsure of her judgment after her misstep with Wickham, sick of being treated as a child, yet afraid to stand up for herself. On the other hand, Georgianna is intelligent and often underestimated by those around her which leaves a lot of room for an author to build a story.

It is expected that young girls will be engaged by the end of their first season and if not then certainly by the end of the second. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a teenage girl. Many of the young men in society are always short of money and Georgianna has 30,000 pounds to bring to a marriage. She knows that she’ll need to be very aware that many of the young men who will court her will be only interested in her dowry. To identify those who care more for her than her money will be a skill she’ll have to learn to develop and quickly.

What only Georgianna knows is that she’s already decided who she wants to marry, she just needs him to see her as an adult and realize that now is the time to act. In the process of helping Georgianna, Elizabeth also is trained to be presented at court. She and Darcy hope that Elizabeth sharing the training will help Georgianna, and being presented at court might help Elizabeth’s standing with the ton since Lady Catherine has not been reticent in her opinion of Elizabeth.

There are also several side plots that are set in motion and people go off to adventures that are not detailed in this book; hopefully they’ll be covered in later works by Pierson. For example, Mr. Darcy is sent to France by the King to retrieve some embarrassing items and Col. Fitzwilliam is helping uncover a group that is selling arms to France. Each of these tales would make interesting reading.

Eventually, all the various threads come together in a satisfying conclusion that leaves us believing that this is the Georgianna that Miss Austen meant us to get to know. Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister is an excellent addition to the growing list of Pride and Prejudice follow-ons.

Darcy’s Voyage: A Tale of Uncharted Love on the Open Seas by Kara Louise. Sourcebooks Landmark. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4102-4. 512 pages. Trade Paperback. List: $14.99 (Amazon:  $10.19 / Kindle: $9.68). Previously published as Pemberly’s Promise in 2007).

Kara Louise has written a beautifully retold Pride and Prejudice beginning with Darcy and Elizabeth meeting when she was returning home to Longbourn by Post and Darcy, whose coach had a mechanical problem, was forced to take the Post to the first stop and there change to another carriage that was being sent from Pemberly.  Darcy of course immediately made a less than desirable impression when he nearly knocked her down as he raced to the carriage door.  He apologized and actually tried to make conversation — surprisingly they found literature a topic on which to converse and challenge each other and the two hour ride passed pleasantly.  They never learned each other’s name but remembered fondly the other person long after the event.

Fast forward two years and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner and their children have traveled to America for Mr. Gardiner’s business.  They write and invite Elizabeth to join them in New York City to help with the children and enjoy the sights.  Elizabeth is excited to have the opportunity to travel and looks forward to the trip.  Mr. Darcy on the other hand doesn’t look forward to his trip to America where he’ll join Georgianna in New York City and bring her home from where she’s been visiting with Mrs. Annesley’s and her family.  Naturally, they are sailing on the same ship, Pemberly’s Promise (and I’m sure clever readers will realize just who owns the ship based solely on its name).

While Darcy tries desperately to remain aloof, the single women on the ship are speaking to him without introduction – all except Elizabeth Bennet.  He notices that she walks the deck early every morning and soon joins her.  Eventually, they begin to converse and find that they both look forward to their daily conversations.  It’s from Elizabeth that Darcy learns about the illness among the steerage passengers.  Her walks are the only breaks she takes from caring for her fellow passengers.

Elizabeth becomes seriously ill and Darcy knows he has the only empty bed on board.  The only solution is to be married by Captain Wendell and then annul the marriage when he returns to England.  It’s the only way to ensure her reputation remains intact.  He gives his pledge that it will be a purely platonic relationship. Elizabeth reluctantly agrees, as does the captain.  However, sometime during the voyage they fall in love, only they don’t realize it.  Separated on docking in New York and not knowing where Elizabeth lives, Darcy has no way to find her until he returns to England.

With this alternative beginning, Louise manages to maintain the emotional appeal and tone of the original Pride and Prejudice.   There are a few events from the original story line that take place earlier but once Bingley leases Netherfield, the original story is on track, except for a few key elements, and the story unfolds much as it did originally.

In other variations,  the variation causes such divergence from the original storyline that the author ends up having existing characters doing very uncharacteristic things in order to force events to unfold as expected.  Louise, on the other hand, manages to seamlessly weave this new relationship into the original story line by not forcing things to play out exactly as they did in Pride and Prejudice but as they would if this variation had occurred.

You’ll find some of our favorite scenes and dialogue included, but some of the dialogue may be uttered in similar, but different, circumstances and by other characters. I found it amusing to hear the same lines from someone else’s mouth but it didn’t take away from the story or my enjoyment.

This variation was a pleasure to read.  Louise honors the characters and the story of Pride and Prejudice and yet makes it new, exciting, and just as endearing. I highly recommend Darcy’s Voyage if you enjoy variations of the theme of Pride and Prejudice. I’d also mention that this book is appropriate for all ages.