I feel like today should be an international holiday.

Image from Wikipedia.

Today is Jane Austen's birthday. It's safe to say that Jane rocks my world.

She was snarky before snark existed and her characters were more realistic than other fictional heroines of the time--they were more than the sappy girls in Gothic romances. If they were wealthy and attractive (like Emma) they had selfish and meddling tendencies. If they were filled with common sense and wit (like Elizabeth Bennett) then they had less money and embarrassing families.

Some great Jane quotes:

* "Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody."
* "Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being."
* "Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance."
* "I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them."
* "It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage."
* "It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before."
* "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

Chandler may want to stay out late tonight, because there's a solid chance I'll be parked on the couch enjoying one of these:



What's your favorite Austen novel? Favorite adaptation?