a writer I’ve never read

Jane Austen.  Her books are classics.  There are only six, I think, but they are internationally known and make the English very proud.  Today Barbara and I went to Chawton to visit the house where she did the bulk of her writing (and revising), and I learned that her first books were published under the name “A Lady” and then “by the same author as Sense and Sensibility.”  Those Brits sure are proud of someone they initially tried to supress.  I suppose it was the early 1800s, after all.

They have a writer in residence at her house, and you can do workshops there (unfortunately none this month or the next, which I was bummed about).  She has a blog, too.

The thing that most surprised me about the house was the tiny table that she supposedly wrote at– smaler than an end table, a little low circular table you’d probably put a small lamp on, or a vase of flowers.

Jane Austen's writing table

When I write, I like to be spread out.  It’s hard to imagine being productive at such a small table.  Or without having access to a computer where you can store word documents with pages and pages of notes, or thoughts, and internet where you can look up pretty much anything about anything, any time you need to.  That might be an interesting exercise to do, having to write a complete work just sitting at one table.  I guess that’s how she acheieved her supposedly incredible imagery and attention to detail– she wrote about what she knew, and she knew it very well.

average price: 62.5¢

Went to the Miami Public Library Book Sale.  Amazing.  Here’s a list of the books I got, with their original prices (if known):

PLAYS

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee $6.99

CLASSICS

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne $3.99

NOVELS

• Native Son by Richard Wright (I feel like I remember Ms. Maniego, my HS junior year English teacher, mentioning this book.  We might have read Black Boy in her class) $12.95
• White Oleander by Janet Fitch (seen the movie… now I can read it) $7.99
• Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood (she came to Miami during the book fair but I forgot she was speaking and missed it!) $13.95
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (Lori’s favorite book, she’s been telling me to read it) $12.00
• The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (Lori also recommended this to me when we first met in the kitchen at HSC! I was so happy to find it) $14.00
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood $7.99
• The River by Gary Paulsen (going to give this to Nina, because she loved Hatchet and is looking for more books to read) $1.99
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (one of my favorite books, also read in Ms. Maniego’s class.  We also read parts of it as a study of writing in Lawrence Stanley’s class, and probably Meredith Steinbach’s too.  I already have it but now I can give it to somebody else) $14.95

OTHER

• The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton (he also wrote How Proust Can Change Your Life, the Brown class of 2011 freshman summer reading book) $13.00
• Miami by Joan Didion (had borrowed this from Cal for basically the entire time I was in Miami, read about 40 pages, and then returned it to him.  The next day I found this book at the book sale and am so excited that I now have it and can read later, esp since I never got around to reading the chapter about Overtown, which is the whole reason he lent me the book in the first place) $17.95
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (it’s about writing… pretty sure I saw and maybe bought this book in Half Moon Bay a few years ago, but the cover called out to me again so I bought it.  Maybe I’ll pass it on if it turns out I already have it) $12.95
• Maggie: Girl of the Streets and other short fiction by Stephen Crane (last semester I shopped a class called Reading New York, and the class had already read this story and was discussing it when I sat in on the class.  I ended up taking “The Arrangement of Words”: Liberating Fiction(s) instead, but was intrigued by the story) $4.95

Total should have been: upwards of $145.65

Total was: $10

It’s kind of like I just got two books for each night of Chanukah.  Happy holidays!