Great Couples

In keeping with our Valentine's Day theme, today's topic is about your favorite fictional couples. Think back on all the books you've read, which blossoming romances were your favorites? And why?

Maybe they were reluctant, and at first claimed to hate one another. Maybe they were funny. Or sweet. Or they beat all the odds. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that they had amazing chemistry and you rooted for them throughout the entire book. You laughed during their highs and cried during their lows. And maybe even fell a litle in love yourself.

Here are just some of my favorite couples from books:

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Well, if that single man is the Mr. Darcy , you can bet that the readers will root for that wife to be the most worthy heroine of all.

Like many girls, I totally want to be Lizzy Bennet. She's so witty and smart and rather unconventional for her era. And Mr. Darcy? *swoon* Put off by her mother's vulgarity and the ditzy behavior of her youngest sisters, at first he's unable to see Lizzy's worth. But in time, he falls in love and his struggle to suppress those feelings, eventually ending in not one, but two, proposals is the stuff of magic.

Maddie Springer and Jack Ramirez


Adorably ditzy Maddie is a shoe designer with a penchant for stumbling across dead bodies. Ramirez is the sexy, tough detective assigned to investigate the crimes. Gemma Halliday writes fantastic sexual tension and you find yourself just as frustrated as Maddie when Ramirez keeps getting to the crime scene in the second book just as they're about to get romantic in this series. And add in a potential love triangle when tabloid reported Felix keeps snooping around and you've got the makings of a deliciously fun romantic comedy.

Lady Julia Grey and Nicholas Brisbane
The most conventional of her very eccentric family, wealthy young widow Lady Julia Grey is extremely unconventional for her time. She's smart and sassy, and holds opinions that would shock most of her set. So it's not surprising that when she discovers that her husband did not die of natural causes, she decides to find the murderer. Enter the sexy and enigmatic Nicholas Brisbane, a private enquiry agent who her late husband had engaged to find who was threatening him. Is he the right man to make her consider a second chance at love? But this is the Victorian era, after all, so their relationship progresses at a maddeningly slow pace...but the tension is smoldering hot.

Amy "Bugaboo" Haskell and Jamie "Poe" Orcutt
In the first two "Secret Society Girl" books, Amy Haskell's nemesis in Rose & Grave was a senior (and later, recent graduate) codenamed Poe. He was sullen, moody, and incredibly disagreeable. Not even worth Amy's acknowledgement, particularly when there are so many other hot guys around, like the delectable George. But author Diana Peterfreund was a literature major at Yale, and an avowed Jane Austen fan, so "the sudden, startling transformation of a mysterious Rose & Grave patriarch from sheerly evil to utterly...appealing" is not exactly terribly shocking. But it's still really fun to read!

Amanda Brice and Mr. Brice

Oh, wait...they're not fictional. ;)

So those are a few of mine. Who are yours?

Jane Austen Ball

OK, OK, I know. I'm a slacker. The Jane Austen Ball was more than a month ago.

But I don't know how to download pictures from my camera (yes, I really am that techno-illiterate, it's true), and Mr. Brice only gets around to doing that ever so often. And I didn't really have a good idea for today's post, so voila! Outated pics I should have posted a month ago.

Tough.

Anyway, the ball was super fun. I felt like I was an Austen heroine! Naturally, I want to be Lizzie Bennet.

Not a Plain Jane...

I was first introduced to the subtly delightful snarky wit of Jane Austen (or "A Lady", as her books were signed during her lifetime) during my senior year of high school, in Mr. Doherty's AP English Class. We read a whole string of classics by British lady authors, but Pride & Prejudice was by far my favorite. That was also the year that the BBC released its notable TV miniseries starring Jennifer Ehle and the imcomparable Colin Firth, although it didn't make it to the US until I was in college.

Speaking of that miniseries, all I have to say is that had Jane been writing today, I totally believe she would have included that swimming scene with Mr. Darcy in the pond outside his home while Lizzie and her aunt and uncle were visiting (snooping). I mean, come on...semi-naked wet Mr. Darcy? Yeah, that would totally be in the book. You and I both know it.

Colin Firth...mmm...

Where was I again? Oh yeah. Jane Austen.

This past Sunday marked the end of the Masterpiece Theatre series "The Complete Jane Austen" with the conclusion of the two-part remake of "Sense & Sensibility." I have to say that I'm really sad to see it go. Why couldn't she have written more than 6 novels? Didn't she know that 200 years later, people wouldn't be able to get enough?

So why do people (females, especially) love Jane Austen? In the last few years we've seen The Jane Austen Book Club (both the novel by Karen Joy Fowler, and the movie), the film Becoming Jane, the Bollywood extravaganza Bride & Prejudice, the Keira Knightley film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, the aforementioned Masterpiece Classics series on PBS, a novel called Mr. Darcy's Daughters, a novel called Mr. Darcy's Diary, The Second Mrs. Darcy: A Novel, Letters From Pemberley: The First Year, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife...and that's just in the 2000s alone.

In the 90s we got the famous BBC ode to Colin Firth (sigh!), two different Emma films in 1996 (a Hollywood version starring Gwynneth Paltrow and a BBC version starring Kate Beckinsale), the Bridget Jones books (the first one is a remake of P&P...great casting on the part of the movie producers by having Colin Firth play Mark Darcy...and the second is a remake of Persusasion), not to mention Clueless, a loose adaptation of Emma.

And that's just in the last 13 years.

I think Henry Tilney, the hero in Northanger Abbey said it best:
"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

So why is Jane Austen so popular? What do modern women (and men...Mr. Brice amazed me last week when he predicted that Marianne Dashwood would marry Colonel Brandon because "he's the brooding guy...and the brooding guy always wins in the end of a Jane Austen story"...I was all "Who are you and what did you do with my husband?" He clinched it when he started expounding on how Lizzie Bennett is like a combination of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood) see in these stories? Can something written more than 200 years ago still be relevant today? And if you were a Jane Austen heroine (or hero), who would you be?