Category: General

Sanditon Group Read: Fabulous Followup!

Although most of us have only seen the combined episodes 1 & 2 of Sanditon so far, that’s all we need to go ahead with our Followup. These Sanditon Group Read posts have focused on Jane Austen’s 12 chapters, and the show has already breezed through that material. Swish! If you nodded off for a …

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BRAG-ing on The Trouble to Check Her

Will you join me in celebrating? The Trouble to Check Her was just awarded the BRAG Medallion, joining prior recipients: Remember the Past, The Darcys’ First Christmas, Mistaking Her Character, Pemberley: Mr. Darcy’s Dragon and Longbourn: Dragon Entail. You can check out more about the BRAG Medallion HERE. To celebrate, I’ve made The Trouble to …

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Sanditon Group Read: Chapters 10 – 12

It’s time to look at the last section of Jane Austen’s final, incomplete novel: Sanditon. (If you’re just joining the Group Read today, you may want to review the Introduction here and Part One here, Part Two here, and Part Three here to get caught up.) Chapter 10 I had just been wondering what was really going on …

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Fireside

Austen by the Fireside is this month’s theme, and it’s such a cosy one! Perfect for January. This is the time for cosiness, for wrapping up warm and curling up with a good book – or with several. It would be ever so nice if we could curl up before an open fire, but these …

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12 Days of Christmas, Day 11

Happy eleventh day of Christmas! If we were going by the famous Christmas carol, today’s gift would be eleven pipers piping… however I suspect that nobody has much use for eleven pipers (or even one) these days. 😊 However, in keeping with the auditory spirit, I’m giving away something that I hope will be a …

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12 Days of Christmas, Day 10, & Sanditon Group Read: Chapters 7 – 9

I trust you’ve been enjoying our 12-Days-of-Christmas posts with all the excellent giveaways! Here’s day 10, followed by the next installment of the Sanditon Group Read. You may have taken down your tree and moved on. But it’s still Christmas here at Austen Variations! We’re up to day ten, marked in the song by TEN …

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12 Days of Christmas, Day 5

…5 WORD SEARCH PUZZLES! I’ve been pretty quiet around here this past year. More than a year ago, I started working at a bookstore, which I love, but there’s a long commute, which I hate. So basically an 8-hour work day becomes an 11-hour workday. Yikes. My reading has slowed, my writing has slowed, time …

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12 Days of Christmas – 4th Day!

Happy 4th Day of Christmas!! In my newest novel, The Knight Before Christmas, my characters, Emma Westwood & Austin Knightley, make a special dessert — a chocolate-apricot torte, reminiscent of the famous Viennese Sachertorte. My husband and I were in Austria back in the mid-1990s, and we each enjoyed a generous and oh-so-chocolaty piece of …

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12 Days of Christmas, Day 3, & Sanditon Group Read: Chapters 4-6

  As you can see from the title of this post, I’m doing double duty here today! We’ll get to our Sanditon discussion in a moment, but let’s talk Christmas first! In the famous old song, the third day gift is (sing it with me) “…three French hens…” But I’m not sure what the Austen …

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12 Days of Christmas ~ Day 2

Two turtledoves and dreams of their merry, merry Christmastimes at Pemberley or at their house in town. In early wedded bliss, perhaps – or surrounded by (more or less welcome) guests – or later, when there are children at Pemberley and the new custom Prince Albert had brought from his home country had begun to catch …

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