Everything Austen Challenge

[Michelle]

I know we have a whole Jane Austen board but I don't know if people see it, so I'm posting this here. Feel free to move it, admins, if you'd like.

I just wanted to share this Jane Austen challenge that I thought you all would like. Basically, do 6 Austen-related things (books, movies, etc) in the next 6 months. I might use this as a way of catching up on all the Austen things I have on my shelves.

thewrittenword.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/introducing-the-everything-austen-challenge-with-prizes/

[Isa]

Sounds like a fun challenge! I might do it without bothering to register...

[Dominique]

Sounds like fun! I might do it too

Question though, do you guys think we should move all the JA threads into Book Discussions and delete the separate board now that the discussions on it are over? Or keep as is?

[Michelle]

I think we should move them over to the book discussion board. I usually skip over the Jane Austen one when I'm checking the site and they might get more attention over here.

[Kristie]

This sounds fun! It would really be a challenge for me to do 6 JA things because I'll be busy. But what makes it harder is that I'd like to do stuff I've never done before and that leaves very little left. I don't think I'll register, but this challenge sounds like fun.

I think moving the JA board to the Book Discussion board makes a lot of sense. I think it would get more attention

[Isa]

I see Dom's moved it, but I don't know where it is. Is it going to appear bellow the book list sub-board? That might be a good spot for it.

I think for those of us who want to participate in the challenge without registering, we should list our six items here and have the challenge start on July 1st and end on December 31, sounds good?

[Dominique]

I just moved all the threads into Book Discussions, so they should all be there organised by the date they were last posted in... which means since they've been inactive for awhile they might be on the second page or so of results. Do you think a sub board would be better Isa? I don't mind either way

[Isa]

I think it would make it easier to find, do you mind doing it?

[Kristie]

Going back to the Challenge, I made up 6 goals for completing the challenge and posted them on my Vox. Just to make it simple, I figured I'd just copy and paste them on here.

1) Join the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). get publications and a bunch of interesting JA stuff for joining. And I can go to meetings and a special party on December 16th for her birthday (if I want to) as well. *Note: If any of you who live out of the US want to join, you still can as an International member, but it costs a little more.

2) Read three books that have something to do with JA. I have them picked out already.
- Jane and the Stillroom Maid by Stephanie Barron. This is one in a mystery series where JA has to solve stuff. I've been meaning to read it for a while, so this gives me the chance.
- Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. I'm not sure what it's about, but it's a sci-fi book and, since I'd like to read some different genre stuff (ergo, the mystery mentioned above), it should be interesting.
- The Third Sister by Julia Barrett. This is a sequel to S&S from Margaret's perspective that I've also been meaning to read.

3) Read a JA biography. I'm leaning toward Jane Austen, A Family Record by William Austen-Leigh, Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, and revised by Deirdre LeFaye. I want to read one that is from the family's perspective of JA, so this is the one, I think. For all of the JA stuff I've read, I've never read anything about her as a person/writer, so that's why I want to learn about her.

4) Read the Deirdre LaFaye collection of JA's letters. I realize that this might seem redundant because of the biography. However, the biography is based on her friends and family whereas her letters can give more insight into how she saw her life. I've read some of her letters before, but this is a very big collection.

5) Watch a bunch of movie adaptations of JA stuff that I haven't watched before. That will make it difficult--because I've seen so many of them already--but there are some I know I haven't watched. I'll find as many as I can, but I'm not guaranteeing any specific number.

6) In the past, I've sort of annotated along while reading in my JA books. I want to develop that further and maybe just make a notebook of sort of Cliff's Notes stuff or whatever. Maps and lists of characters and stuff like that. This might not sound very fun. It also doesn't sound like it would really count in the challenge as a whole, but I've basically run out of other things to do and I liked doing it before, so it should work.

[Michelle]

Wow, that's impressive Kristie and way more than 6 things.

I'll have to think about it. I'll post mine soon.

[Lu]

Jun 30, 2009 6:00:01 GMT -5 Isa said:

I think for those of us who want to participate in the challenge without registering, we should list our six items here and have the challenge start on July 1st and end on December 31, sounds good?

I think it's a good idea!
I'll have to think about my 6 goals

[Kristie]

Michelle, I don't think it will be really hard to do these things. Especially since I've been wanting to do most of the things on my list anyways. This just gives them more of a purpose. Plus, the challenge was more to find 6 things I could do that I haven't done already