This was a pretty ordinary book. I read it some months after seeing the movie and it is distinguished by being one of the few books I have ever read where the movie was superior. This is especially damming when one considers that I found the movie a very light chick flick.

One indication of a good book/ good author is when, after a single quick sketch of character you then instantly recognise a character as soon as they appear in the narrative. In this book the opposite occurs and a third in I still could neither picture nor identify two of the main characters (The dog breeder and Bernadette) upon them being named in the text.

I must imagine that this book made it to publication entirely due to the face that the title includes "Jane Austin" because there is nothing else to recommend it. I did not find it actively badly written, inconsistent or a travesty, it was just.... bland. Like boiled white rice with nothing added, you keep waiting for the curry or at least the salt to make an appearance on the table and it never does.

I wanted to like this, because Jane Austen, but sadly it was almost painfully boring.

I'm instinctively wary of genetic engineering, but Karen Fowler may have produced a literary equivalent of the elusive Super Tomato. "The Jane Austen Book Club" is modern chick lit spliced with genes from 19th-century romantic comedy. In fact, Fowler has so craftily designed this new novel to appeal to smart, middle-aged, book-buying women that one regards its demographic precision cynically. I'm sorry to report that it's delightful.

Her leisurely story revolves around the monthly meetings of six people - five women and one man - who gather to discuss Jane Austen's domestic romances. You don't have to know Austen's work to enjoy it, but if you've read them, you'll catch all kinds of witty parallels with the lives of these modern fans.

I wouldn't normally recommend this, but start with the appendix. Fowler's breezy summary of Austen's novels at the back is a good refresher for anyone who finds the details of "Mansfield Park" blurring with "Northanger Abbey."

And there are 20 irresistible pages of quotations about Austen's work from critics and authors over the past 200 years, including some wry comments by Austen herself. Writing about "Emma," for instance, she notes that her old friend Mr. Fowle "read only the first & last Chapters, because he had heard it was not interesting." Mark Twain fumes, "Every time I read 'Pride & Prejudice' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone." An early 20th-century critic observes that "the reputation of Jane Austen is surrounded by cohorts of defenders who are ready to do murder for their sacred cause. They are nearly all fanatics."

Not all the members of the Jane Austen Book Club in this novel are equally fanatic, but they're all equally engaging:

1. Their leader, Jocelyn, is a dog breeder who, like Austen, never married but approaches the affairs of others with the same deliberate planning she brings to the kennel. The friends she chooses for this group "suspect a hidden agenda, but who," they wonder, "would put Jane Austen to an evil purpose?"

2. At 67, Bernadette is the oldest member and, alas, the most talkative. She considers her countless marriages proof of her devotion to the institution.

3. Purdie is the only one married at the opening of the book, and she's shocked to discover her fidelity tested by the hunky students in her high school French class.

4. Sylvia is trying to hate the cad who abandoned her after 32 years of marriage, but she's not having much success.

5. Allegra, Sylvia's lesbian daughter, is struggling to forgive a lover who betrayed her, and she's succeeding too well.

6. Grigg, the eligible bachelor (despite an alarming interest in science fiction), has been recruited to the group as a new partner for Sylvia, but fans of "Emma" can already guess how those plans go awry.

As in Austen's novels, nothing much happens in this story, and yet everything happens. The chapters rotate through these six characters as they meet throughout the year, but while their meetings provide the skeleton, they're not really the meat of the book; in at least one chapter, we never even make it to the monthly meeting. Some of my favorite parts, though, are Fowler's dead-on portrayal of book-club talk and the silent dialogue that rages beneath everyone's efforts to be appreciative and encouraging (no matter how boring or harebrained so-and-so's comments are.)

Although Fowler has a charming voice all her own, she's managed to pick up Austen's wry accent as she recounts the sad, funny, touching, and constantly entertaining experiences that have shaped these six readers. Much of the gritty details of modern life, of course, don't appear in Austen's fiction, and Sylvia notes that a person could be seriously misled by treating her novels as a road map of what's ahead. (One chapter, in fact, begins with "a partial list of things not found in the books of Jane Austen: locked-room murders, spies, cats....") But even though Fowler has a thoroughly modern sense of contemporary sensibilities, she's equally devoted to those old-fashioned ideals that virtue will eventually be recognized, love will finally prevail, and despair that threatens to settle in permanently can be dissolved by genuine affection.

Jane Austen doesn't need a publicist, of course, and book clubs probably don't need any encouragement, but Fowler has written a testament to the happy marriage of literature and friendship, and that's always something to embrace.

Book clubs multiply
Although stores and publishers court book clubs in ever more inventive ways, there are no good statistics about the number of Americans who gather periodically in homes and libraries to talk about what they've read. Even Robert Putnam, who managed to track the status of all kinds of social groups in "Bowling Alone," confessed that when it comes to book clubs, "the numbers are a bit uncertain."

Oprah, still the most powerful bestseller maker in America, counts about 200,000 members in her online book club (www.oprah.com). Houghton Mifflin published 700,000 copies of Carson McCullers's "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" in response to Oprah's announcement last week that it's her next choice.

Yahoo lists more than 1,200 reading-group categories, from the general ("People who like books") to the specific ("Sistahs who reside in the L.A. area.").

Each month, 100,000 visitors come to The Book Report Network looking for information about how to start, maintain, and even feed a book club (www.readinggroupguides.com). The site's main attraction is a collection of more than 1,300 reading guides, mostly supplied by publishers and authors.

Some publishers now bind these guides into their trade paperbacks when they sense the hardback has inspired major book-club interest (e.g. "The Red Tent"). Remember, though, these guides are written by people who really want you to like and recommend their books.

Ten years ago, Rachel Jacobsohn literally wrote the book on reading groups: "The Reading Group Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Start Your Own Book Club" (Hyperion, revised 1998). She's a professional facilitator with 30 years of experience who leads 16 book clubs a month in the Chicago area and conducts workshops for book-club leaders around the country. (You can contact her at [email protected].) Pressed to estimate the number of people involved in book clubs in America, Ms. Jacobsohn suggests 7 to 8 million.

As the founder and president of the Association of Book Group Readers and Leaders, she says beginning facilitators make about $40 to $50 a session, but experienced leaders charge up to $500 on the East and West Coasts.

Jacobsohn writes a newsletter called "Reverberations" for about 1,000 member groups ($20 a year). And she's on the advisory board of BookMuse, where you can find discussion guides, author blogs, tips for group leaders, and suggestions for further reading. Access to most of their material costs $35 a year (www.bookmuse.com).

While Jacobsohn sees some value in the discussion guides that publishers supply, she doesn't let them outline the range of discussion. "People come together to share independent thinking about a book. That's the magic of the original goal."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0427/p1...

I bought this in a train station with the deliberate aim of reading a puff book. I was not expecting a masterpiece, but this was absolute crap. I kept reading on the off chance that it might improve– it did not. The only redeeming quality of this book is that it is a really fast read (since it's fluff).

العمل يتوازا فيه خطين : قصص جين أوستن و حيوات عضوات و أعضاء نادي قراء جين أوستن و بين الخطين تقاطع و تداخل يتماشى مع شخصيات العمل و شخصيات قصص أوستن.
كتلة من المشاعر المختلفة و المتنوعة منحت طابعا عاطفيا للعمل ككل جعلته بنفس روح أعمال جين أوستن

I’m convinced the first thing Jane Austen is going to do on the Day of Resurrection is hire a lawyer and sue the philistines who have commandeered her name and characters. However, this book is beneath her notice. A more clichéd combination of unfulfilled women could hardly be conceived: a middle-aged woman who’s just been left by her husband; her lesbian daughter who falls easily and unhappily in love; a spinster who breeds dogs; a dissatisfied French teacher in an unhappy marriage; and finally, the six-times divorced earth mother who brings them all together for six months of Jane Austen book clubbing. They’re joined by some computer guy named Grigg, if that’s even a name, who probably was supposed to add a bit of male perspective and — surprise! — a love interest, but the book is so poorly written that he’s virtually indiscernible from the women. Their “discussions” are banal, the correspondence to their personal lives contrived, and the characters themselves both irritating and supremely boring, which I suppose must be some sort of an accomplishment. Normally I like reading about losers and rejects (A Confederacy of Dunces, my journals), but these people and their self-created angst grated on my nerves. I borrowed this on cd from the library and found myself skipping ahead because I simply couldn’t take any more of their inane conversations. And, I'm shocked — shocked! — to report that skipping parts of the story didn't really detract from its overall flow.

Confession: Embarrassingly enough, I did watch the movie on dvd because it stars that dreamy Hugh Dancy (who, tragically, looks about half my age and body mass) and the movie was not nearly as bad as the book – extremely chick-flicky, but not downright dreadful.

I've read the (very) negative reviews of this (there are many) and I have to say, I think a lot of people just didn't get this book. They wanted it to be plot-driven and fun (as so many Austen take-offs are), but this book is much more character-driven and contemplative. I learned a lot about Jane Austen from it (especially from the back matter) and it was a great way to continue to explore her work. It's also so gratifying for me to read about people who live for and through literature. The characters all seemed real to me. I enjoyed their back stories, their foibles, the glimpses into their psyches. Though not the most enthralling novel, this contains many little everyday life stories that are memorable and full of meaning.

To explain my favorite part of the book, I'll have to go into spoiler territory. In the chapter where the club discusses Persuasion, Sylvia's husband writes her a great love letter. As you may know, the best thing about Persuasion is the love letter Wentworth sends to Anne in the end. Sigh. Is there anything better than a great love letter?

And, for fun, I decided who each character resembled in the world of Austen:

Prudie = Mrs. Bennet. You're not totally stupid, but you're super annoying and married to someone who's probably too good for you. Also, you are way too interested in young men.

Jocelyn = Elinor Dashwood. You're so together and sensible. But it seems like you're so worried about other people's happiness that you're going to let your own slip by the wayside.

Sylvia = Fanny Price. So annoying. You are not perfect! You try to be good and somehow end up making me really dislike you.

Allegra = Marianne Dashwood. Girl, you crazy. Even though you're the life of the party, you seem bound to end up with a dullsville mate.

Bernadette = Emma. I know Bernadette is old and Emma is young, but they both think they're the queen and we're the sorry people.

Grigg = Henry Tilney. So likable and clever with weird taste in women.

(You will notice only one of the characters from my favorite Austen novels, P&P and Persuasion, made it on the list. That's probably why the book got three stars instead of four.)

Too many characters and not nearly enough development. Listened to audio.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler... not utterly terrible, but not very good, either, in my opinion. The main thing that stuck out to me, throughout, was that the narrator was weird and the narrative jumped about in the most irritating way. It wasn't just that there were flashbacks -- I don't mind those, deployed correctly -- but there were flashbacks and then there were chapters in the present. And the narrator seemed to be a member of the book club, but an unnamed, invisible one. And for all that she closes it at the end with a neat little Austen quote, I didn't feel much closure. Not much happened with Prudie. Allegra and Corinne don't seem exactly suited. Bernadette has another husband, another happily ever after. Daniel and Sylvia are apparently back together with virtually no fuss. Jocelyn and Grigg, the same.

I also didn't really buy into the magic of Jane Austen. Or the theme of Jane Austen's books binding everything together. The members of the club didn't all really know each other, or meet up outside of the group, it seemed.

I did like the way Ursula Le Guin sneaked in there. I'd believe in the magic of her books, any day.

It wasn't really terribly interesting, really. Women being married, or in the process of divorce, or getting boyfriends. Yawn.

This is one of those stories I read before I retired and began reviewing every book I read. I do want to reread all those stories which I did not review but as time has slipped by and I haven't done so, I just want to mark all those stories as "read" so I have a record of the true number of books in the JAFF sub-genre I have read. I am using the average rating at this time as I do not remember how I rated this story back when I read it. If I ever get around to rereading it I will look at my rating to make sure it is true to my opinion. It was published in 2004 so that is most likely when I read it.

Onvan : The Jane Austen Book Club - Nevisande : Karen Joy Fowler - ISBN : 452286530 - ISBN13 : 9780452286535 - Dar 288 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2004

While the movie is a favorite, and I'm eager to watch it again, the book isn't all that great. The parts about the JA books that they read is interesting, and definitely makes me want to read all of the JA books again. However, the stories about the various members of the book club left me a little wanting. I think I wanted more character development, as I was kind of "bored" through much of the book.