Love, Jane

What better way to express admiration and affection for Jane Austen than to celebrate her legacy with tea, family and a nice game of “Jane-pardy”. That’s Jeopardy with a Jane theme for those of you who missed it.

Zarrin, our go-to Janexpert, brought a challenging game of Jane-pardy to Plaza and the group who gathered to share favorite scenes and characters from Austen novels.

Four teams competed for the title of “All Knowing Jane-iacs of the Universe!” and a copy of The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler. And those questions were hard. Especially the marriage ones.  Zarrin made it tougher by putting a time limit on answering and letting teams steal any other team’s questions. Team Ellen won by a narrow margin.

Most of the attendees brought relatives. Mothers brought daughters; granddaughters brought grandmothers; new moms brought their cousins. All had read at least one Jane Austen novel and happily gabbed about other favorite books, the KCPT series of Jane Austen programming on Sunday nights and which literary continuations of Jane’s beloved characters served their mistress well.

One mother said she hoped she was passing her fancy for Jane’s books on to the next generation. However, her daughter wasn’t listening as she was busily flipping through Suspense and Sensibility by Carrie Bebris, a Mr and Mrs Darcy mystery.

After a quick discussion of all the versions of Pride & Prejudice available on DVD someone joked that the new refrain for the “single woman in want of a mate” will be “Someday, my Darcy will come.”

It’s a truth universally acknowledged: A reader in want of a good book, must be looking for Jane Austen.