Book and Movie Recommendations
Welcome to my page of recommendations. I spend a great deal of my free time reading, watching movies and television, and listening to music. The items on this page are my favorites and those that I think everyone should try for themselves.
My latest discovery (and obsession) is the Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson. The books,which begin with Queen Lucia, are sophistocated, witty, and extremely charming. You will meet the scheming social climber Lucia, her dear friend Georgie, who spends a great deal of his time embroidering, Mapp, queen of Tilling until Lucia's arrival, and so many more. The books are the sort that Jane Austen would have written if she had lived in the 1920s and the television series, starring Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales, and the wonderful Nigel Hawthorne, is simply divine. Both are highly recommended. Click the picture above to visit Tilling and learn more!
My very favorite author is Jane Austen, whose work is quite simply the best I have ever read. The exquisite style, superb wit, and wonderful humour have never been matched by anyone else. Pride and Predjudice is perhaps her best known work; it is also her funniest. Pride and Predjudice was the very first of Miss Austen's works that I read, and I suppose it is still my favorite, though in some ways I believe that Sense and Sensibility is better in that the hunmour is much more subtle. I highly recommend the A&E production of Pride and Predjudice, which is 5 hours long but still leaves me wanting more, and the 1996 movie Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Hugh Grant. The latter includes the most wonderful soundtrack including two gorgeous songs and an exquisite piano piece. The costumes in both movies are also superb and will leave you wishing you lived in the Regency era. Mansfield Park is many Austenians' least favorite of the six books Jane Austen wrote; however I find it to be the most interesting and go back to it again and again. I have not seen the movie but I have read about it and would not recommend anyone to see it. Emma is a charming book though it does feature Miss Austen's most annoying heroine. Emma Woodhouse, though "handsome, clever, and rich," is a snob and a meddler. Despite this fact, the book is very enjoyable and you will find that you do like Emma by the end. The A&E adaptation, starring Kate Beckinsdale and including Prunella Scales as Miss Bates, is very well done; too bad it is only a little over an hour long. I have not yet seen the normal movie version yet but will review it here when I do. Persuasion, Jane Austen's last complete book, is my least favorite of her works as it is obvious that it was still in its rough stages when published (according to a biography I read, Jane Austen grew bored with the manuscript and had it published before she had finished editing it). I actually liked the movie, made by the BBC, better than the book. Click on the illustration above to visit the Republic of Pemberley, where you can learn all about Jane Austen, her books, and the movies made from them, and where you can meet other Austenites and shop for Jane Austen related items.
More coming very soon!
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (Lucia's favorite piano piece, as well as one of mine) was found at 
