Booksology birthday letter to jane austin
Yesterday marked the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, and her work feels as current as ever. (I was thinking the other day about what kind of romances Jane Austen would write). I’ve been stocking up on Austen-related books in honor of this year’s 250th anniversary, and luckily Stephanie Eisley Harsino has a great overview of recent books and events of this year that are of special interest to Janites. As she wisely points out, part of Austen’s appeal, like Shakespeare’s, is how little we know about Jane herself. If you are deceived, you will never be satisfied.
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Pleasure list needs another name
The Hay Festival is on many book lovers’ bucket lists, and it’s a great idea to host a National Year of Reading in the UK. I doubt the ability of PR campaigns to change basic cultural habits, but what else is out there? This is fine. As with one of our initiatives for ‘The Year of Reading’, we source the most compelling books (I don’t use the term ‘unputdownabl’ anymore; being persuasive works, and has the benefit of not sounding like you’re trying to bring four pint glasses back to the table).
The problem here is: This crowd-sourced collection of great reads is called The Pleasure List. We have to do better than this. I can’t stand this.
On today’s episode of the Book Riot Podcast, Rebecca and I are joined by all of Book Riot’s editors to talk about their personal favorite books of 2025. We thought about calling it Our Pleasure List, but we didn’t want to involve HR.
