The Content Reader

Most popular blogging event I started blogging in November 2012, just before I went into an early retirement. Obviously, the first feeble attempts of blogging were just feeble. With the years and inspired by the blogging community, your posts develop and varies (hopefully!). Here, let's say, three years later my my posts are more frequent and covers more than books, although books and reading are the two main ideas with this blog. A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail from Pinterest with a summary of what the audience I have, most like to check out and pin. The areas were: Travel, Healthy Snacks and DIY Crafts! Travel I have and I do have boards for Decorating ideas and Cleaning, but Healthy Snacks? Did they really check out my boards? Miramar, Archduke Ludwig Salvator's home in Majorca

After finishing Jane Austen and Food   it was time to get on with Maggie Lane’s Jane Austen and Names . Names have a special meaning to most of us, and mostly names mean more than just the name itself. In this study, Maggie Lane has looked at an area which has not been given much attention. She looks at the history of English names up to Jane Austen’s time and the pattern of giving names in society, and the way Jane Austen uses names that fits the personality of her characters, as well as their place in society. Unlike most novelists of her period, Jane Austen used names found in everyday life. Sometimes she uses a name to explain the characteristics; “Her Charlottes are usually clear-eyed pragmatists and her Henrys are rarely without charm. More often, characters given the same name have nothing in common at all. In one novel Fanny might be a despicable, mercenary snob, and in another the timid, tender-hearted heroine. George Wickham and George Knightley are morally worlds ap...

Jane Austen never gave much detail to food and eating in her novels. Still, food is a very important part of her writing, since all references to food and eating, although indirect, suggests something about the character who refers to it. Maggie Lane, an English author of several books about Jane Austen and her time, has examined the books to find out Jane Austen’s attitude to food and how it affects the social sphere and customs of her characters. Maggie Lane starts: “One of the characteristics of Jane Austen’s style is how sparing it is of physical detail. She never pauses in her narrative to give a lengthy description, whether of faces, clothes, rooms, meals or any other facet of material life. … Jane Austen pays us the compliment of letting us imagine for ourselves. …” Jane Austen grew up in the countryside as one of eight children. Her father was a reverend, but also a gentleman farmer, so the household was more or less self sufficient during her early life. Her mother catered...