Reading and Watching

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Janeites: Austen's Disciples and Devotees by Deidre Shauna Lynch

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is mostly missable.

The introduction lays out a good overview of Austen's reception by general audiences and the critical response to her work. The chapter "The Virago Jane Austen" by Katie Trumpener is the best of the book (very well written in the clear style I like best); Trumpener discusses Austen as a kind unifying force beneath the creation of the Virago books and the way in which some of those books respond to her legacy. Susan Fraiman's "Jane Austen and Edward Said: Gender, Culture, and Imperialism" is also quite good; it critiques Said's treatment of Austen and more largely his (non)treatment of feminist readings of it and other texts. Mary A. Favret's "Free and Happy: Jane Austen in America" is not as good as those two articles but is nonetheless interesting for its discussion of Austen's reception in America. "In Face of all the Servants: Spectators and Spies in Austen" by Roger Sales is kind of a structural mess; the thesis is a bit all over the place (is this about the servants in Austen? is it about how film adaptations replace servants with the camera? is it about how some of the female characters are treated like servants in the original texts and adaptations?) and even on the paragraph level there are some cohesion/coherency issues. However, even if everything Sales has to say doesn't belong together, what he's saying is interesting. The remaining five essays are utterly missable. Utterly.



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Episode 2 Season 5 of Lucifer

I like that Chloe freaks out and goes to Europe to do some research. I think it's interesting that a priest gloms onto her to destroy Lucifer; the priest clearly knows that she's special and Lucifer's weakness, which is part of Chloe realizing that he's up to no good. I'm really glad she decides on her own and by the end of this episode not to hurt Lucifer.

Her emotional outburst at realizing that sometimes he's vulnerable and sometimes he isn't and wondering whether that's manipulation is really well done. Also that scene where she's holding the axe to his chest and she could kill him and he just lets her is SO FREAKING OMG HOT AS . . . WELL, YOU KNOW.

I can't decide if the priest truly believes Lucifer is evil and murders people or if he has another agenda. I'm going with the latter.

Maze and Linda FTW! I love that Maze gives her gin to revive her and is looking up medical treatments in a 14th century manuscript (bleeding from the eyeballs is bad? you don't say).

I feel so bad for Dan. I know real life doesn't work like this, but it's a TV show, and I want him to be friends with everyone again.

Poor Amenadiel. He struggles so hard to find a place to fit in. When Linda turns up pregnant, that's just the miracle he's been waiting for.

The image of Lucifer walking out of that exploding building was fierce. Man this show is so fun for me. So nice to watch something that's just fun.