jane austen action figure.....

ok, so before book club started this evening.....my good friend leslie presented me with a gift she bought in portland, oregon while visiting her daughter........a jane austen action figure.....complete with writing desk and quill......i was thrilled to tears...not just because i love anything austen, but also because i was so touched that she knew that i would be pleased with such a gift......and so jane has taken up residence on the newly repaired cpu.....the tiny version of p&p will not stay in her clasped hands.....but that is just a minor detail.....the packaging was similar to the usual genre of action figures, warning that this product may not be suitable for children under age 3.......there are those in my bookclub who consider jane unsuitable for those over age 3......but i digress......from the bookclub itself......which digressed from a lively discussion about who liked or didn't like the characters in ed mcclannahan's the natural man, a novel about high school basketball in a small northern ky town...to who finished it or didn't finish....i purjured myself, in wanting to show some solidarity to those who disliked it....i said i made it only to page 51, when in fact i finished the whole book and only wished that i had stopped at page 51........don't tell............the host's wife also failed to finish the book, which made me feel better, but did spur the host to make a snide comment about he slogged through to the lighthouse and the least i could have done was to finish the book he chose......at the end of the book, the big brawny basketball player who was recruited to play for this small town basketball team ended up dying in viet nam....which led to a discussion of the current war, which led to a comparison between the current state of white house affairs and watergate/nixon....which then collasped into raised voices....and the host's wife reminding us all that politics and religion are poor choices for discussion in public......in this crowd i rarely get a word in edgewise.....so please understand that i said more in my mind than i was able to interject into the conversation.......ah well........back to jane.....i will leave you with selected j.a. quotations from the packaging.....

'for what do we live for, but to make sport of our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?'.....pride and prejudice, spoken by mr. bennett

'it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.'......pride and prejudice spoken byu elizabeth bennett

' there are people who the more you do for them, the less they do for themselves'....emma, spoken by....emma

'if there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it'.....persuasion, spoken by sister mary

'people always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid them'......sense and sensibility, spoken by fanny

'a large income is the best recipe for happiness i ever heard of'....mansfield park, spoen by miss mary crawford

'i do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them'.......jane austen herself.....and words that i seem to live by.............