Crystal > Recent Status Updates

Both of the main characters are horrible people

Yeah this is like reading the script from a Hallmark movie

Like parents, authors have no business attempting to relive their glories or redeem their sins through the lives of their creations.

I swear if something happens to Nayimathun, 😡🤬

Helena Kelly wilfully ignores the contributions of the evangelical William Wilberforce and his friends to the abolishment of slavery in the British Empire solely because it doesn't fit her narrative

And now we're just disregarding what Jane herself wrote about Mansfield Park 🤔

Lord Mansfield.'

How is this a connection? I sincerely doubt Jane Austen had anything to do with this adaptation

'Jane met Elizabeth Murray several times. Elizabeth had married, becoming Lady Finch-Hatton and a Kentish neighbor of Jane's brother Edward. The Finch-Hattons also owned Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire, where the 1999 adaptation of Mansfield Park was filmed. Kirby Hall is entirely the wrong period to have served as a model for "spacious, modern-built" Mansfield Park, but it's another connection between the book and -

'Mansfield Park really isn't like James other books. Even the title is a departure from her normal practice: from her childhood onward she tended to pick for hertitles either names (The Beautiful Cassandra, Frederic and Elfrida, Susan) or set phrases (Love and Freindship, First Impressions, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice).'

Are we supposed to forget Northanger Abbey?

When something doesn't fit Kelly's narrative it is unsubstantiated and insubstantial but if it does fit her argument she'll ignore everything but what she feels fits. Ugh

Helena Kelly keeps insisting that we're not reading Jane Austen the way Jane Austen intended but it seems more likely that what she means is we're not reading Jane Austen the way Helena Kelly intends

The leaps in her argument that Colonel Brandon's given name is William are astonishing. I doubt Simone Biles could make those leaps

She's doing a bit better at defending her thesis with Sense & Sensibility

'If you want to read Jane as she wanted to be read...' that's a bold claim from someone who's admitted that there's little we actually know about Jane. Makes me wonder if this is about Jane Austen or the writer reading her own modern ideas into Jane

I think we have to be careful not to fill in ideas about people when we know little about them. They are more our ideas than those of our subjects, I think

Love love love love love Mel Brooks! ❤️

I love Almost Famous (and the music!) and Daisy Jones & The Six!

'The Bible teaches that God is holy, which by definition means He can't have any unity with sin. Theologian Wayne Grudem writes, "God's holiness means He is separated from sin and devoted to seeking His own honor." ... If we are all sinners, and God is separated from sin, that means He's separated from us.'

Cleopatra's mother was also Cleopatra and she was Greek. Little things like this bother me because it feels like it's rewriting history

'A complacent man would eventually neglect the Lord, because he would depend upon HaShem's promise and not HaShem Himself.'

A few days ago, this book could go on and on and I'd be fine. Now? It's dragging

I just started this today and I'm just about half way through and I. Am. Loving. It! I adore the music from this time period. I sometimes think I was born in the wrong era.

I'm not suggesting people ignore him, but should we be giving him this kind of attention?

I wonder what he thinks of the publicity he's received from books and articles and webpages dedicated to him. Does he enjoy knowing that people are obsessed with him?

I was lucky enough to get an ARC of this book. I enjoyed The Alice Network as it showed me a side of WWII that I didn't know- to my shame. This book has an intriguing premise and I can't wait to dig in!