Happy New Year!
In December, I thought it would be nice to keep track of all the books I read for a year. I think this every year, and I always forget to do it. I finished a few books in January that I started in 2015, but I already forgot them... oh boy.
I'm ok with failing this early.
The best thing I've read so far this year is Among The Janeites, which takes a look at Janeites, that is, people who are obsessed with Jane Austen. Am I one of those people?
You bet I am.
I love Jane Austen. I honestly don't know why I was not a member of JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) before reading this book. Shame on me.
This book is fantastic, because it visits so many different facets of Jane Austen fandom. There are the people who dress up (having researched period dress in excruciating detail), who are scholars, who are radical theorists, who are swooning Colin Firth fans, who are writers, readers, old, young, the errant male fan, and everything in between. The bit about the husband-wife scholars who present history and theory as a comedy duo was hilarious and also contained extremely insightful literary criticism. It talks about reading Austen through her contemporary lens, modern feminist lens, historical lens, and so on. All with accessible language and amusing anecdotes.
The author is trying to walk this strange line where she encounters the various Jane Austen fanatics as an outside observer (a sense of "Look at these strange and obsessive people, how amazing!) when in fact, she also loves Jane Austen in her own way (giving the sense of an eager neophyte at the knee of knowledgable and passionate Masters). The second sense works wonderfully and draws me right into the book, but when I get the sense of the author being a raised-eyebrow tourist in someone else's nerdy obsession, I'm really turned off.
You're a nerd! Get over it. It's one thing to call someone a nerd with affection, to recognize and see someone's passion and honest, unfettered enjoyment in something and to delight in their happiness also. Even if it's not your thing. It's another thing to call someone a nerd with a sense of recoiling or dismissiveness when someone is "too much" into their chosen nerd-dom. I think the author tried to be pretty careful, and even when she talks about the really obsessive people there is a sense of fascination, but sometimes she really shows them as "others" rather than "fellows".
Guys, I love Jane Austen. I 100% want to dress up in period costume. I love being a nerd about lots of different things. I love being happy and excited about things that make me happy and excited. And I love when other people share things with me that make them happy and excited.
I hope that you, reading this, are a nerd. I hope you have something that you really love, and that you let yourself get really excited about it and that you don't feel bad about loving what you love.
I hope you read some good books and have good times in 2016.
