سرگذشت هر نفر و اینکه چه طور زندگی هاشون با کتاب های جین پیچ خورده بودند رو خیلی خوب توضیح داده بود. اسامی شخصیت های فرعی داستان زیاد بود جوری که من تا آخر کتاب واقعا خسته شده بودم ! شخصیت جوسلین مورد علاقه ام بود و همزاد پنداری که با اما داشت رو دوست داشتم. من فیلمش رو اول دیدم و کسایی که دوست دارن میتونن فیلمشو رو هم ببینن!
به طور کلی یه کتاب مناسب برای دوستداران جین آستین

Good premise but story is lacking... very minimal connections to Austen. It felt like an occasional Austen quote was sprinkled here and there to remind the reader of the title... literally felt relieved to finish this one!

I was perusing movie trailers on my Mac last weekend and saw a cute title/trailer called The Jane Austen Book Club. The end of trailer announced, "Based on the best selling novel, The Jane Austen Book Club." I thought it would be fun to check out the book since I almost never see a movie until I can watch it via Netflix.

I had hoped it would be a kind of "fun" read, especially since I am a Jane-ite. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't much fun. I actually found it a little tedious and the jumping around from character POV to character POV, but not really getting inside their heads was annoying. Austen does this and does it well....Fowler, not so much.

The story lacked cohesiveness...and there wasn't much of a plot. Of course, one of the book club topics was plot and women writers. Nyuck, nyuck. I suppose I'm not urbane enough at this point in my life to know if this was supposed to be ironically funny.

The non-plot and following several different life stories/character POVs seems to be a modern *thing* a la the movie Magnolia. But you have to be a certain kind of writer to pull this off...Fowler didn't do this for me.

If you're a fellow Jane-ite, it might be fun to read the book and the character's corresponding views on all things Austen...but otherwise, I'd advise you pass on this one.

ستاره‌دادن به این کتاب کار سختی بود.
از طرفی، قلم نویسنده رو دوست داشتم و همین‌طور جمع‌شدن این شخصیت‌های به ظاهر متفاوت رو دور هم. همیشه هم از کتاب‌هایی که با فلش‌بک‌ و توضیح زندگی روزمره‌ی شخصیت‌ها اونا رو برای خواننده واقعی می‌کرد، خوشم می‌آد.
اما از طرف دیگه، انتظار داشتم شخصیت‌ها به نوعی به شخصیت‌های آستین مرتبط باشند اما این ارتباط تقریبا به طور کامل محو بود. جمله‌ای که تو کتاب اومده و می‌گه «گذاشته بودیم آستین وارد زندگی‌هایمان بشود و حالا همه‌مان یا ازدواج کرده بودیم و یا با کسی در ارتباط بودیم» تقریبا تنها ربط داستان به آستین بود که به نظرم برداشت ظالمانه‌ای از درون‌مایه‌ی این کتاب‌های کلاسیک می‌آد.

The Jane Austen Book Club is a poorly executed novel that merely depends on the love of Jane Austen's fans to carry it through the pages. It relies on a prize idea without delivering on the promises of love, intrigue, and much of anything actually resembling Austen

Full Book Review

Quick Synopsis:
A group of five women and one man meet to discuss Jane Austen's main works. Meanwhile, relationships end and begin, stories are revealed, and the group is brought together through love of each other and reading.

"I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem."

My Thoughts...
That quote sums up how I feel about this book. I want to break up with this novel and get all my time back, because it was an awful book. Ok, not totally awful, but very disappointing and mediocre.

To be fair, there are some great moments in the characters' back stories, with lush detail and intriguing plot. Disappointingly, those back stories are never tied into the rest of the novel. Prudie's flirtatious high school student? Totally forgotten in the loss of her mother, and never mentioned again. It's left to us to imagine what actually transpired.

Fowler alluded to some similarities between her cast of characters and the heroines in Jane Austen's novels. However, those parallels are so weakly drawn that it seems to be only a story about a group of friends who just happen to read the novels. They don't always discuss the books on the pages, and there are so many storylines started that are never revisited.

The Jane Austen Book Club relies on a prize idea without delivering on the promises of love, intrigue, and much of anything actually resembling Austen.

The Jane Austen Book Club is an international best seller which ultimately became a successful film in 2007. I brought my edition late in 2004 and shamefully only just got around to reading it this week.

I picked this up thinking it would be great but like any best seller there were quite a few negative reviews floating around at the time, dispelling all the good press it had received. I stupidly got put off and left it to languish on my bookcase.

I thought about reading it when I saw that a film was being released but at the time I was living far away from my family home where I'd left most of my books in storage so once again it was pushed out of my mind.

Recently I've searched the majority of my books out of storage and placed them back in their rightful position on my shelf. Doing so, I stumbled back across The Jane Austen Book Club and knew that I couldn't delay things any longer.

I am pleased to say, the wait? Totally worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience that the talented, Karen Joy Fowler pieced together. I was engaged and entertained from beginning to end and I honestly believe that books come into peoples lives for a reason. If I had of read this when I orginally brought it back when I was 18 I don't think it would have been anywhere near as appealing to me as it was now, reading it when I'm 25.

The story revolves around six main characters and a solely Jane Austen dedicated book club that they've created. The novel is sectioned off into six parts as well. One for each character and the corresponding Jane Austen novel discussion that is to be hosted at their house.

While the book club itself is the main premise of the story and the link that brings all our characters together it is not, in my opinion, the main focus of the novel.

The Jane Austen Book Club is about relationships and people at their core. Who they are, how they relate and how who they are affects how they relate.

I don't want to give too much away for anyone who has yet to read this and now might be inspired to do so, so I'll leave you with one final thought and the reason that made this book so appealing to me -

We as readers shape our own reading experiences. We all have themes and styles we prefer. It's possible for two different people to infer utterly opposing few points from the exact same novel, as I'm sure it is of most things. The thing that The Jane Austen Book Club does; however, is show how a common love can unify. It deals with the way we live with books, how they become a part of our subconscious and shape who we are and what we expect from life. The Jane Austen Book Club reaffirms the power of the novel and if there's one thing I believe in with all of my might, that is it. Long live the written word and the deep and abiding affect it has on all who hold it dear.

n  Bernadette's Austen was a comic genius. Her characters, her dialogue remained genuinely funny, not like Shakespeare's jokes, which amused you only because they were Shakespeare's and you owed him that.n

Talking trash about Shakespeare??

I love Jane Austen. I find this book very close to awful, yet not close enough to be interesting. Is this what women read? Is this chick lit? Women's fiction? All the women are unlikeable stereotypes - boring ones, at that. The men are sexless addenda to domestic life. They inhabit a white-people problems world that is so superficial as to be maudlin. It feels written through the veil of anti-depressants or between runs to Costco - or both. I don't think I'll be able to finish it. I'm not even sure it's worth trying.

Started in on this one day, and quickly gave up. The writing is simply atrocious, and the characters insipid and un-motivating. I ditched it.

არამგონია ჯეინ ოსტინის რამე მაინც რომ მქონდეს წაკითხული, ან თუნდაც ყველაფერი, ეს ნაწარმოები მომწონებოდა. სქოლიოში არსებული ინფორმაცია უფრო საინტერესო იყო, ვიდრე თავად წიგნის შინაარსი.

თავად წიგნშივე შემხვდა მარკ ტვენის სიტყვები და ოდნავ გადავაკეთებ:
თუ ბიბლიოთეკაში "ჯეინ ოსტინის მკითხველთა კლუბი" არ მოიპოვება, მარტო ეს ხარვეზიც კი საკმარისია იმისთვის, რომ ბიბლიოთეკა, რომელიც ერთი წიგნისგანაც არ შედგება, საკმაოდ კარგ ბიბლიოთეკად ჩაითვალოს

I approached this novel with a little trepidation because I love Austen, and I hate when people are *wrong* about Austen (that's a semi-ironic 'wrong'; what I really mean is that my opinions about Austen are deeply-held and tend to send me on rants) -- so I was worried that this book was just going to use Austen as an excuse to tell a silly modern-day love story about annoying shallow people.

But! It's really not like that at all. This is a book about people who love reading and love talking about reading -- it actually makes me think more about the kind of conversations I've had at sci-fi cons and 'in fandom' than about other book club experiences. (Based on Fowler's background -- and even what you can intuit about her background based on the book -- this is obviously not a coincidence). It's also clearly a work of somebody who appreciates and likes not just books but the people who read them, while still being aware of their foibles. Fowler's satire is generally kinder than Austen's, and the plot twists in her modern characters' lives are less dramatic, but it's easy to see the kinship here.

I think this is secretly a book about geeks, and fandom -- all the characters have their passions, and Fowler conveys an impressive geek-level knowledgability about their varied interests from skydiving to girl-dancing acts from the 50s. It's also a good book for Austen fans. I imagine you can read it without knowing anything about the novels, or just knowing a few of them, but as somebody who knows them all pretty well, I kept finding echoes throughout the story.

There is a little bit of weirdness with the point of view in Jane Austen Book Club -- there are places that use a collective 'we' first person that seems illogical in the context and is also the kid of thing I usually hate with the passion of a thousand suns (yes, I'm a point of view geek) but just this once I was able to roll with it.

A woman brings together a group of friends and acquaintances to form a bookclub that will focus on Jane Austen's six complete novels. Each meeting brings revelations about the background and current circumstances of the host for the meeting and the group thoughts their latest Austen read.

I've meant to read The Jane Austen Book Club since I delighted in the movie years ago and just never got around to it. But, for a fun readathon that asks challengers to read a book and watch a movie, I was motivated to reach for this one and finally give it a go.

Turned out it was right book for the right time. I'm not sure it would have worked when I was in any other mood, but I was ready to read about the lives of six people and those connected with them and enjoy how the themes and elements of Jane Austen's novels could be found and also influence their lives. The writing style felt disjointed to me, at first, as I got used to the way the author dropped me into the story, then bounced around between the present and flashbacks. There was also head-hopping which added to the challenge of concentrating. By chapter two, I was used to all this and was able to settle in. This is good because each chapter flipped to a different (main) point of view and a different character's background and life.

First up was Jocelyn, the mover and shaker of the group who brought the club together and started the club with Emma. Not unlike the matchmaking Emma, Jocelyn, a dog breeder and confident single gal is happy to observe and arrange everyone else's life.
Allegra got Sense & Sensibility. Allegra is one of the two younger members and likes to make it clear she is a clear-eyed analytic, bold adventurer, and yet keeps to herself that her heart is bruised over a betrayal from her girlfriend that sends her back to living with her mom for the time being.
Next comes Prudie with Mansfield Park. Prudie is a high school French teacher with a passion for all things France though she never actually wishes to visit which her handsome and wonderful husband Dean doesn't seem to get. Her night ends in a shocking phone call.
Following this is the mysterious only male member of the group, Grig, for Northanger Abbey. Until now, Grig was unknown to any of the group save Jocelyn and she doesn't seem to know him well. Grig loves to read, but shocks the group because he doesn't see Austen as the best, but only a good author among many- and, he loves sci-fi? The women are all a flutter and not necessarily in a good way when it comes to one of them.
Moving into the home stretch is oldest member, Bernadette's turn, with Pride & Prejudice. Talk about a saucy life for the eccentric and always chattering woman. Austen's influence is starting to be felt by all the members and they are startled by how real life seems to be paralleled in the books. And, their own minds have gone to relationships. An Austen Magic Eight ball lives up the discussion.
At last, Sylvia hosts the Persuasion discussion and the members reflect back and look around at all the changes a half a year has wrought. One among them gets a letter of remorse and desire for a second chance and will that member give it? While another member is also faced with offering a second chance.

The Jane Austen Book Club was a mixed feeling read for me. Some lives were fascinating to explore while others were a drudge for me to wade through. But, I appreciated that aspect, too, because the author wrote six different points of view and really pulled off the variety in their personalities and lives. This was an interesting look into many different lives. I found Jocelyn and Prudie the toughest to connect with, Grigg was a fun surprise, Allegra was challenging, and Sylvia was a kindred spirit in many ways, but their group was engaging and I enjoyed when they interacted.

So, all in all, it was a nice reading interlude and I was glad to get to the book at last. Yay that it was set in my home town environs! Those who enjoy women's fic and general fiction will be the target group for this one and now I'm off to revisit the movie adaption.