The Point Wasn't For Her To Get Married
Ella Strauss on the novels of Jane Austen
On the Pod This Week:
Last week when I talked to my mom about how books have influenced her travels, I started thinking that I want to also talk to my daughter about her recent experience studying the novels of Jane Austen while studying in England. So today’s episode is another Strauss Family affair, because I’m so lucky to be talking to my daughter Ella. Ella and I spent all of her last semester texting each other our wildly different opinions about Jane Austen; but unlike Ella, I never actually studied her in college. At least, not in any way that I can remember. My love of Jane Austen comes purely from my heart and from watching Colin Firth jump in the lake in his undershirt in the BBC adaptation. Ella’s understanding comes from real academics, and it has been so fun talking to her about what she learned, what she liked, and what she didn’t like. And as usual, no conversation with my daughter would be complete without a digression into a conversation about Harry Styles. We take pop culture very seriously around here.
Show Notes:
1st Annual Kids/YA Episode when Ella told me about Kate Atkinson
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
Here comes the smolder – from “Tangled”
Derek Zoolander’s “Blue Steel”
Here is the Mr. Darcy hand flex scene that all the kids are weirdly obsessed with
The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Julie’s Current Read:
Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume
Judy Blume is having a moment right now, with a documentary, a movie of her most popular book, and her continued subjection to, and vocal opposition to, book bans. If you are a Gen Xer like me, Judy Blume has always been a beloved auntie who taught us everything our moms were too buttoned up to say. I’m on a tear through all of her books right now, loving each one more than the last.
Julie’s Current Listen:
I ditched A Court of Wings and Ruins (and set off a civil war in my Instagram stories) because I got bored. The fairy wars and political intrigues were just not holding my attention.
So I moved on to Drowning by T.J. Newman. This book is the June pick for Thrillers by the Book Club and the premise is a doozy: A plane crashes right after takeoff and sinks to the ocean floor with twelve passengers trapped inside. They only have a few hours of oxygen and the race-against-time rescue begins. The pacing is so heart pounding I’m even willing to overlook some of the most eye rolling plot machinations. (The mother of a little girl on board just happens to be a world-renowned deep sea diver? Sure, Jan!) It’s a short book, about an eight-hour listen on audio (though I sped it up a bit and got through it in six while working in the garden all afternoon.)
Julie’s Current Obsession:
Something about the combination of Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne is so damn funny to me; I can never resist them. I usually get very annoyed by the whole shlubby-dude-who-lands-a-hot-woman trope that happens over and over again in movies and television shows. In “Platonic,” they are best friends who have reconnected after a long estrangement, and their chemistry feels authentic.
Every time Joe and I talk to Mark and Liz, we all bemoan the fact that we don’t live closer to each other so we can hang out in real life. Mark and I work together and speak almost daily, but watching this show is making me realize it’s probably for the best that we live a continent apart. Joe and Liz, our respective partners, have grown-up desk jobs, and in general are more adultier adults than Mark and me. After watching Platonic, I am now 100% sure that if we lived near each other we would wind up blind drunk during daylight hours and causing chaos everywhere we went.
The season isn’t complete yet, so I can only speak for the episodes released so far, but they are very funny, and I am optimistic that they will land the plane!
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