"The Jane Austen Book Club" & "The Dante Club"

TJABC: Chick lit at its finest...interesting characters, but always with Jane hovering in the background. I am a rather large fan of Ms. Austen (although I haven't read any of her stuff in awhile...quelle tragique!)

I give you some pithy words of wisdom from the Book Club:

"I just don't look in mirrors anymore....Like a vampire," she added, and when she put it that way, we wondered how it was that vampires always manged to look so dapper. It seemed that more of them should look like Bernadette."--p. 2

"Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section."--p. 4

"Always good to know what the lesbians were thinking about love and marriage."--p. 5

"Sahara [the dog] turned. Animal passion. She had seen things in the kennels. Thing that would make your hair stand on end."--p. 14

"How odd, to be minding the uncomfortable straps at the very moments in which she was plunging to earth from a plane. 'That's one small step for man, and it's a bit hot in this spacesuit'."--p. 54

"If only she would stop speaking French. Or go to France, where it would be less noticeable."--p. 58

"A trio of young women came on behind him. All three had chains in their noses, spikes on their wrists. They wore cuffs on their ears as if Fish and Wildlife had tagged and then released them."--p. 127

"Being a vampire is no excuse for being rude."--p. 128

"A night that began with mind-reading a grateful crustacean and ended with drunken elves would be a night to remember."--p. 131

"This was a romantic space. You could imagine serenading a lover one one of those balconies, or assassinating a president if that was the sick way your imagination ran."--p. 158

"In general, librarians enjoyed special requests. A reference librarian is someone who likes the chase. When librarians read for pleasure, they often pick a good mystery. They tend to be cat people as well, for reasons more obscure."--p. 213

"The pools had the charm of dollhouses without inspiring the urge toward rearrangement."--p. 229

TDC: A bit of a heavy read. The premise is very interesting, Dante-inspired murders with no clear idea as to WHO might be doing it, as there is no American translation (or an English translation at all, I believe) in 1865 when the murders take place. The only people who could possibly be responsible are people like Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Not a group really predestined for serial murder.