"And when I'm 53, I mean to write a novel as good as Persuasion, but with a modern setting."
- Flora Poste, Cold Comfort Farm

This summer I have begun to make good on a long-held goal of mine: to read the complete works of Jane Austen. I got my hands on a collection of six of her best known novels through my participation in a friend's project last semester. I was told to go to my local Salvation Army and buy a few objects without any premeditated purpose. In my case, I found a red t-shirt with white silkscreened hearts on it, the aforementioned Jane Austen book, and a package of those little yellow plastic corn-on-the-cob skewers. I brought these items back to my friend Meg, where she photographed them as part of a portrait series. I never did get reimbursed, but I wear the t-shirt all the time, and I have kept the book sitting on my coffee table in the hopes that I would pick it up.

And there — with the exception of a brief trip in a moving box — it sat, unopened, until a few weeks ago. I have started work on a freelance book design project, and have seized upon Jane Austen as a welcome antidote to almost 300 pages of gleefully detailed accounts of the famine, social unrest, and labor camp system of Stalin-era Russia.

So far I have finished Pride & Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion. Sheer will kept me reading through the first few chapters of Pride & Prejudice, but it got more enjoyable once I managed to stop hearing Jennifer Ehle's voice in my head. For that reason I have enjoyed Persuasion the most simple because I could enjoy it with a clean palette. We'll see how the others go.