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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Audiobook7 hours

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

Written by Laurie Viera Rigler

Narrated by Orlagh Cassidy

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

3/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

In this Jane Austen-inspired comedy, love story, and exploration of identity and destiny, a modern L.A. girl wakes up as an Englishwoman in Austen's time.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 2, 2007
ISBN9781429585651
Unavailable
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Author

Laurie Viera Rigler

Laurie Viera Rigler is the author of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict. Laurie is also the creator of Sex and the Austen Girl, the Babelgum comedy web series inspired by Laurie's Austen Addict novels. A longtime resident of the very same Echo Park/Silverlake neighborhood in Los Angeles in which Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict is set, Laurie now lives in nearby Pasadena, California, with her filmmaker husband and their cat. Her online home is at janeaustenaddict.com.

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Reviews for Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

Rating: 3.157559260473588 out of 5 stars
3/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a quick read. Overall, I was fairly satisfied with the story. It was definitely entertaining and the look "behind-the-scenes" of Jane Austen novels was humorous and eye opening. However, the ending of the novel left something to be desired. Rigler did not neatly tie up the ending to her novel as Austen does with hers. I was left wondering what happened to everyone and if the "body-switch" had any lasting effects on the main character.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    great fun.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I wet back and forth about giving this 3 or 4 stars. I settled on 3 because, though it was a fun read, I didn't finish the book feeling like my life had been changed by it. It's a fun and easy read - so I definitely recommend it if you want something entertaining that you can veg out with and not have to think too hard about. I liked it enough I will check out the sequel "Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict".
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I know the reviews are mixed on this book, but I really enjoyed it. It was an easy read and I was done in a day and a half. May be would be a good beach read or one to take on a long weekend trip. If you ever get one of those. I found it funny and entertaining, not too deep.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When a 21st century woman wakes up to find herself in Jane Austen's England, she discovers that her romanticized view she has of the world might have left out a few things. She did recognize a woman's place in her reading, but had not realized just how rigid the class and gender constrictions were. She had no idea of the smell or the conditions, such as chamber pots and having to haul water to take a bath. A well written, readable story that does leave quite a few plot holes. Not a bad read for a quiet afternoon when you don't want to work too hard.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I actually picked up the sequel first and then read this one, but it didn't spoil anything due to the way they were written. I picked this book up expecting to be equally delighted, and I sort of was, but many parts made me very uncomfortable, partially due to the stupidity of the character. Courtney Stone is a retard. She's spent so much time supposedly being obsessed with Jane Austen's books and that time period, yet she can barely function there? I mean BARELY function there. She's really not ladylike at ALL and it comes through with her character. I understand different worlds, times, etc. but come ON! I could have been raised by wolves for all the instruction on basic manners that I received and even I could figure out that there are some things you just don't do or say. Then there's the whole thing with her acting like a total slut with some folks she happens to pick up in Bath? Trying not to spoil too much here. Really unbelievably stupid. I enjoyed reading this, but there were some parts I had to skip over.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a quick read. Overall, I was fairly satisfied with the story. It was definitely entertaining and the look "behind-the-scenes" of Jane Austen novels was humorous and eye opening. However, the ending of the novel left something to be desired. Rigler did not neatly tie up the ending to her novel as Austen does with hers. I was left wondering what happened to everyone and if the "body-switch" had any lasting effects on the main character.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Being a big Jane Austen fan, I just had to read this one. Courtney, a modern woman from LA, who is having man troubles, wakes up one day to find herself in a bedroom in nineteenth-century England. She is a big Jane Austen fan and remembers going to sleep while reading Pride & Prejudice. Courtney just figures she's dreaming. Sound bizarre? It gets better. Courtney finds herself being called Jane Mansfield and living with her meddling other and her father. Her mother is trying to make Jane marry Mr. Edgeworth. Courtney figures she might as well play along, since she will wake up anytime from this odd dream. Strangely enough Courtney is even talking in an English accent and is able to do beautiful needlework with no problem. As the days pass, and she doesn't awake from this dream, Courtney starts to worry. She wonders what is going on. She thinks maybe she is losing her mind. She starts to have flashbacks and memories, these are Jane's memories. Courtney starts to put the pieces of the puzzle together when her best friend and Edgeworth's sister, Mary, comes to visit her and fills her in on some details. Including Jane's recent encounter with a fortune teller when she wished for another life. I found this to be a fun, light read. It made me laugh out loud, at work no less, as I was reading certain parts. I really liked how the author refers back to Austen novels, quotes and characters throughout the story. At one point, while riding in the horse and buggy to church with her parents, Courtney...a.k.a... Jane, looks out and sees Pemberley in the distance. As for the main character, Courtney, I liked her. The annoying thing about her was that she depended upon men too much. For example, in her pre-Austen life, her fiancee is cheating on her, and when she catches him, they break up. As he's packing his things to leave their apartment, she's checking out his butt and wishing he'd stay with her. She even acknowledges being attracted to the wrong men throughout the story, and has to remind herself not to give into temptation. I found that part about her character weak. And the ending was a little weak as well. It felt a bit rushed. I would have liked a better explanation as to why and how Courtney became Jane. All in all, this was a very entertaining, very sweet read. I recommend it, especially to Jane Austen fans.'That's when I decided to order myself a large clam-and-garlic pizza and reread Pride and Prejudice. I would self-medicate with fat, carbohydrates, and Jane Austen, my number one drug of choice, my constant companion through every breakup, every disappointment, every crisis. Men might come and go, but Jane Austen was always there.'
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Digital audiobook narrated by Orlagh Cassidy.From the book jacketAfter nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen novels and Absolut, Courtney Stone wakes up and find herself not in her Los Angeles bedroom, or even in her own body, but inside the bedchamber of a woman in Regency England. Who but an Austen addict like herself could concoct such a fantasy? Not only is Courtney stuck in another woman’s life, she is forced to pretend she actually is that woman, and despite knowing nothing about her, she manages to fool even the most astute observer. My reactionsI should have read the book jacket and put the book aside. This was just ridiculous on so many levels, and Courtney was a total idiot whom I wanted to slap on about every other page. Okay, at least Rigler disabused fans of the Regency era of some of their more romantic notions with some in-your-face reality (outdoor privy, chamber pots, body odor, greasy hair, etc). The plot line was mildly entertaining, and played with time travel, identity and memory. The reader is asked to believe that Courtney has really become Jane Mansfield and that NO ONE in her circle realizes she is really a different person in Jane’s body. Oh well, it was a fast read (or listen).Orlagh Cassidy does a great job despite the poor material. I’ve listened to several of her narrations and come to appreciate her gift f
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was actually better than I thought it was going to be. I grabbed it onsale at BAM and decided to bring it in to work and listen to it. I found myself just sitting and listening, not even working quite often.

    The plot is pretty structured, but it has some tiny twists you don't quite expect. The main character is a tad bit predictable, and I wanted to smack her a couple of times for not editing her behavior to fit regency England, but she is a strong women and a very good character in my opinion. The plot slowed down a tad but right at the middle, around the trip to Bath, but other than that, everything flowed well and worked together I am definitely going to read the next book in this duo. Can't wait actually.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Courtney Stone, a modern-day LA girl and addict of the Austen novels, in the midst of yet another binge following the collapse of her engagement, is suddenly -- at least mentally -- hurled back in time and into the body of Regency spinster Jane Mansfield (geddit?). She soon finds that she's living amid both the best and the worst of the era from which the novels she so adores were born. Is rich youngish widower Charles Edgeworth, whom her bitch mother wants her to marry, really the delight he seems or in fact a heartless seducer who will wed Jane and then oppress her vilely while bedding any passing miss who takes his fancy? Can Charles's sister Mary really be as ingenuous and sweet-natured as she seems? Did Jane, before the "arrival" of Courtney's personality to replace her own, bed or not bed the servant James with whom she obviously had some kind of romantic dalliance on the rebound from an earlier disillusion with Charles? Will Courtney ever be able to return to her 21st-century existence? Has Courtney always really loved Wes, whom she's thought of as merely her best friend? Is Jane's mind inhabiting Courtney's life in the 21st century even as Courtney's life is inhabiting Jane's in the early 19th? Why is Jane's artist father producing Cubist paintings over a century before the style will be invented?

    This last two questions never get answered, and nor, really, does the very vital one of how it came about that Courtney's mind made the transition through time from one body to the other, from one life to the other. It does emerge that at some stage not long ago Jane visited a fairground fortune-teller and expressed the wish that she could live someone else's life rather than her own; soon after this she fell off her horse and lay unconscious for a while until awakening with Courtney in occupation. This doesn't seem more than a mumbo-jumbo explanation, as if the author ducked the challenge; when Courtney/Jane encounters the fortune-teller again, there's no elucidation, just further mumbo jumbo along Wisdom of Yoda lines . . . or perhaps along Sarah Palin lines:

    Your problem is your mind [says the fortune-teller:], which, as I said before, does entirely too much thinking. You know, it is a little known fact that thinking is entirely overrated. The world would be a much better place if we all did a lot less of it.

    Much more interesting than this supposedly meaningful anti-intellectualism is Rigler's rationale for how Courtney can experience occasional fleeting memories of events in Jane's life before the mental transition occurred:

    My mind, my very identity, is tied up in all the memories of the life I called my own, my life as Courtney Stone. Yet that bundle of memories, that thing I call my self, is residing in Jane's body. And that body has a physical brain of its own. And that brain has memories imprinted on it -- visual, experiential, sensory memories. Perhaps the more I become used to living in Jane's body and using her brain, the more I am starting to access her memories.

    I wish there'd been lots more of this sort of thought-provoking stuff in Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict rather than what came to seem, at least to me, interminable gigglish scenes in which Courtney comes close to giving herself away or being thought mad as she voices liberated 21st-century attitudes into a Jane Austen world, or in which she speculates what might might happen here if she simply banged whichever hunky male has this time caught her fancy rather than merely flirting with him. In this context, the primary frustration is when Courtney/Jane actually runs into Jane Austen (who was publishing her novels anonymously) and, rather than having a conversation with her that might, say, expand our understanding of the background to the novels, blows the encounter by fangirlishly babbling about the movie adaptations -- references which, of course, mean absolutely nothing to Austen. If the scene were funny this might be an excuse for wasting the opportunity; as it is, this seems like just yet another ducked challenge.

    All in all, the book's moderately entertaining, in the sense that I did actually get to the end of it. But its lack of ambition, its inability to convey (at least to me) any sense of place and the fact that its central situation doesn't seem properly thought through -- all these meant I found it difficult to think of this as anything more than a bit of moderately well written fluff.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When a 21st century woman wakes up to find herself in Jane Austen's England, she discovers that her romanticized view she has of the world might have left out a few things. She did recognize a woman's place in her reading, but had not realized just how rigid the class and gender constrictions were. She had no idea of the smell or the conditions, such as chamber pots and having to haul water to take a bath. A well written, readable story that does leave quite a few plot holes. Not a bad read for a quiet afternoon when you don't want to work too hard.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sweet, fun light as air. I shan't remember it in a week, but I enjoyed the few days I spent reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A quick and easy read. I so enjoyed Laurie Rigler's sharp wit and sarcasm, and I liked her protagonist Courtney Stone immensely. The best Austen-inspired novel I've read to date.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book was a total drag. I was hoping for it to be a fun likeness to the movie Lost In Austen. I did not like the main character at all. The bits about Jane Austen and her novels just seemed to be tossed in randomly and not always relevant. Really glad this was a short one because I did not care for it.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This had an interesting premise, but it pretty much just fizzled out. Not impressed.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Being a big Jane Austen fan, I just had to read this one. Courtney, a modern woman from LA, who is having man troubles, wakes up one day to find herself in a bedroom in nineteenth-century England. She is a big Jane Austen fan and remembers going to sleep while reading Pride & Prejudice. Courtney just figures she's dreaming. Sound bizarre? It gets better. Courtney finds herself being called Jane Mansfield and living with her meddling other and her father. Her mother is trying to make Jane marry Mr. Edgeworth. Courtney figures she might as well play along, since she will wake up anytime from this odd dream. Strangely enough Courtney is even talking in an English accent and is able to do beautiful needlework with no problem. As the days pass, and she doesn't awake from this dream, Courtney starts to worry. She wonders what is going on. She thinks maybe she is losing her mind. She starts to have flashbacks and memories, these are Jane's memories. Courtney starts to put the pieces of the puzzle together when her best friend and Edgeworth's sister, Mary, comes to visit her and fills her in on some details. Including Jane's recent encounter with a fortune teller when she wished for another life. I found this to be a fun, light read. It made me laugh out loud, at work no less, as I was reading certain parts. I really liked how the author refers back to Austen novels, quotes and characters throughout the story. At one point, while riding in the horse and buggy to church with her parents, Courtney...a.k.a... Jane, looks out and sees Pemberley in the distance. As for the main character, Courtney, I liked her. The annoying thing about her was that she depended upon men too much. For example, in her pre-Austen life, her fiancee is cheating on her, and when she catches him, they break up. As he's packing his things to leave their apartment, she's checking out his butt and wishing he'd stay with her. She even acknowledges being attracted to the wrong men throughout the story, and has to remind herself not to give into temptation. I found that part about her character weak. And the ending was a little weak as well. It felt a bit rushed. I would have liked a better explanation as to why and how Courtney became Jane. All in all, this was a very entertaining, very sweet read. I recommend it, especially to Jane Austen fans.'That's when I decided to order myself a large clam-and-garlic pizza and reread Pride and Prejudice. I would self-medicate with fat, carbohydrates, and Jane Austen, my number one drug of choice, my constant companion through every breakup, every disappointment, every crisis. Men might come and go, but Jane Austen was always there.'
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I’d be more proud of the fact that it is only January 2 and I have already commenced and completed a 300 page novel, but well, I confess to having skimmed bits of it and generally found it a little on the “too easy” reading side. It felt like the style of writing was geared toward the junior high set. I mean, the vocabulary wasn’t adolescent but the depth of emotion, description and general-roundness in the writing was decidedly lacking.

    And yet, I won’t completely pan (but almost) Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. It’s an interesting idea, better done than some others (I wish I could remember the name of the horrible one I read where a modern girl becomes Jane Austen and has something going on with a guy on a horse… not memorable I guess). Here a modern thirty-ish “independent” girl from LA magically swoops into Jane Mansfield’s life in Regency England. (I say “independent” because the girl seems to base her LA life value on the horrible man she was attached to there out of desperation not to be lonely, and that is really not all that independent, is it?) There is no real attempt to show how this happened other than a very random psychic she chases down in Bath (no, really).

    I think the author tried to deal with the practicality parts of living in that time as most fan fics seem to glibly gloss over or fail to mention at all, which I would like to applaud. But it is all so disjointed and in fits in starts that for nearly the first half of the book I felt like Ms. Rigler had some sort of “checklist for what would be weird if a 21st century girl landed in 19th century times.” The bit about her “monthly courses” was a bit much. Although, in the same vein, Jane’s horror at the thought of bathing in the waters in Bath next to some old broad with exposed pustules on her leg was pretty bang on.

    The supposed love story between Jane and her “man” Edgeworth was just strange and really nothing more than intense lust she was trying to deny out of trust issues (poor man actually seemed to love her). And yet, with those same trust issues, she eschews polite strictures between men and women of that time meeting a servant in a public place and allowing him to touch her (or her to touch him??) and almost has sex with some guy she meets at a raucous London party. I get that the point of that was for her to have a revelation about sex and sloppy seconds or one night stands, but the whole approach to Jane’s fitting into the 19th century yet fighting against it was just off–too unbelievable.

    If you’re a Jane Austen freak, then you’ll feel compelled to read it. You just will–you know it; I know it, and nothing I can say here will dissuade you. For those not quite at the obsessed or freakish status–skip it and start reading something else. The only message in this book that I could see was that letting your fears guide your decisions is no way to live and makes you look at the world with a stilted point of view. And you’ll never find happiness until you trust yourself and those around you enough to let go of those fears and just revel in the world as it really is. Maybe that’s a good message; I don’t know–maybe it’s crap. All I can say is that the book is a hearty waste of time.

    I did like one thing about the book tremendously–this quote:

    “Then, somehow, without preamble, I go into that semi-mediative state that I have experienced several times while embroidering, and I am completely at piece.”

    Truly? Perhaps Ms. Rigler is a fellow-embroiderer? Even so, I still wouldn’t like this book.

    This all reminds me that I need to commit to a reading goal for the year some time soon.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The last thing Courtney Stone can remember is nursing her recently broken heart with a Jane Austin Novel and some Absolut. Now she has awoken in Austin’s England living the life of Jane Mansfield (yes, the reader and the character both realize the implications of the name) and living it quite well. This was a clever time travel/body swap story. I especially liked Courtney/Jane’s reactions to things such as chamber pots and personal hygiene. All of a sudden Austin’s England was just a tad less romantic. It was a fun read and apparently there is a second installment telling Jane’s adventures in L.A. in Courtney’s life. I’ll definitely be picking it up to wile away another pleasant Sunday afternoon.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Chick-lit time-travel fluff about a modern California girl who was prone to “self-medicate with Jane Austen” plunked down into the body of a daughter of a Regency England family. Ok if you’re an Austenite seeking a fix.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One day, Courtney wakes up in a place she doesn’t recognize. The people call her “Jane”, and she quickly discovers she’s in someone else’s body. Not only that, she is in England in 1813! Courtney is actually from Los Angeles in the 21st century. As she acts the part of Jane Mansfield during the time period that her favourite author, Jane Austen, wrote, she is trying to figure out how she got here and how to get back home. I really liked it. Once again, if I’d read more Austen novels, I would have recognized more of the references, but it was still a fun, entertaining novel, regardless
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A good read...much better than Jane Austen Ruined My Life. There was something about the main character that I didn't love though...she was no Lizzy or Fanny. Not to mention, that whole "I'm in a dream" business went on for a little too long...no one's dreams are that realistic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm curious whether this book was the basis for a movie I heard about with a similar plot: a modern-day Janeite awakens to find herself mysteriously inhabiting the body of a young woman in Jane Austen's time, facing some of the same troubles as an Austen heroine. I enjoyed the book very much, combining as it does time travel (a longtime favorite theme of mine) with Austen-ish situations and romance. There is also quite a bit of humor in the heroine's struggles to deal with daily life in the early 19th century with its smells, lack of indoor plumbing, and peculiar medical beliefs. Recommended for a fun read.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    If you want to read the day away but not think, this may be the book for you. It was compelling to read even though I thought it was poorly written. I had originally planned to buy a copy to read it but thought I'd get it from the library instead. Best choice ever. Kind of not sure why I finished it, but I did and the ending was the worst part of the whole book. I was really looking forward to enjoying this book and eagerly reading Riegler's next Austen addict book. Don't think I'll be picking that one up...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a delightful escapist perfect snowy day book - which is exactly what is was.Poor Jane Mansfield. She has somehow left Regency England and the Mansfield manor in Surrey, and arrived 145 years later into 2010 LA and turned into Courtney Stone, a fast tracked "executive assistant" in the film industry with her own apartment, own car, and ex-finance. She bumped her head in a pool, and Jane has now taken over her body.Just pure fun! Brilliant read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was pleasant! The plot wasn't especially compelling, but the book was clearly a well-researched labor of love, and I loved it! Still, I just wish she had gone more into detail about who Courtney Stone was, rather than presenting her as a kind of amorphous 21st century everywoman.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Pleasant enough trifle. As others have noted, the presentation of period detail as it would actually look, feel, sound and smell to a modern is interesting. The story, not so much.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed this little time travel romp into Regency, not so much for the story-line, as for the glimpses into what the world looked, sounded, and smelled like back then. (After all, it's not all Colin Firth in a wet shirt, though that's pretty impressive.) One of my other favorite back in time books is a favorite for that very reason -- it brought the period alive for me through the author's research into the times. Of course, I had to stop early on to assure myself that there was a parallel book about what happened to poor Jane, thrust into our time, as Courtney was pushed into the past. Once I saw that this was covered, I could enjoy the book again. Some places were a little forced, some a little weak, but others were utterly charming. Not bad for an ear-read by audio book! Especially nice since I've been immersed in Miss Austen's work again of late. (I picked this up at That Big Book Sale this year, sponsored by our Friends of the Charleston Library. Yay!)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Lots of fun with cultural shock but a shaky ending
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I confess I have never read a Jane Austen novel (yes honestly), I only picked this novel up because it was buy one get one free for 99p. To my surprise I found it an enjoyable read and as a result it may have inspired me to dust one of Jane Austen's novels of my shelf and give it a try (one day).The modern twist made what could have been the usual 'will they, won't they' scenario, which I can find tedious and frustrating, much more interesting. A light, enjoyable 'holiday' read.