With the official arrival of spring,many a reader's fancy turns to love and who better than Jane Austen to stimulate some of her infamous lively wit and wisdom for such a passionate topic? I've been listening to a couple of audio editions of beloved Austen titles lately and to my surprise,everything old is new again.
Emma is presented as a BBC Radio production,with not only a narrator but a full cast of actors portraying the vast array of Highbury residents. Lead by actress Angharad Rees,the sparkling dialogue of the book is used to paint a marvelous mental portrait of Emma Woodhouse and her attempts to bring order to her little world.
Background music and appropriate sound effects fill out the setting nicely,making this audio book version as vividly alive as your favorite film adaptation(mine being the 1996 made for TV movie with Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong). Emma may be a hard character to love,but the BBC Radio edition is impossible to not adore:
The best known Austen classic is,of course,Pride & Prejudice,which BBC audio books has in a "cover to cover" edition,giving the text the complete and through spotlight that it richly deserves.
Narrated by distinguished British actress Irene Sutcliffe,the strengths of the story are played out via a direct but not dull reading straight from the book. Sutcliffe gives the words a distinct theatrical flair without resorting to over dramatization or underplaying the impact of the plot points. Her story telling skills added true taste and flavor to an often told tale:
The trendiness of Jane Austen may wax and wane in the fluctuating,Twitter-pated paced pop culture realm but she never really goes out of style. As long as there are folks willing to laugh at as well as indulge in the follies of life and love,Our Dear Jane will always be with us in one form or another.
Both of these audio takes on Austen not only help to keep Jane's influence strong,they also give two of her most spirited leading ladies an impressive showcase to strut their stuff:
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