The Jane Austen Society; Promised; Bubble in the Sun

I was a little disappointed in "The Jane Austen Society" by Natalie Jenner. I almost gave up on it a few times in the first 50 pages, but it got better, so I hung in there. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't terribly good, either. After WW2, a group of Austen devotees decide to try to save the cottage in Chawton where Austen lived and turn it into a museum honoring the author. It was just a little bit ridiculous and then ending was too perfectly tied up in a bow for my taste. It does however make me want to read some of Austen's other works. I've read "Pride and Prejudice", of course, and like it a lot more than I used to, and I read "Emma" once (don't really remember it, to be honest, but I've seen "Clueless" more times than I can count, so that's practically the same thing). Excuse me while I go hide from all the Austen fans who are now coming after me with pitchforks :)

I wanted to like "Promised" by Leah Garriott, too. I put it on hold a few months ago when I was going through my Regency Romance phase. Like "The Jane Austen Society", it wasn't bad, just not great. Margaret is still stinging from a broken engagement: her intended was cheating on her with multiple other women. For some teeth gnashing reason, Margaret's reputation is destroyed, not his. She's determined to marry for convenience, and quickly, to stop the gossip, and chooses a man who she will never fall in love with, a notorious rake named Mr. Northam.
Mr. Northam's cousin, Lord Williams, is just as determined that Margaret not throw herself away on his worthless cousin and contrives to become engaged to her himself, throwing a large wrench in Margaret's perfect plans. The book went on, with the inevitable and predictable twists, overly long, before finally coming to the conclusion anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have seen a mile off. I think if it had been shorter and not so needlessly complicated, it would have been a better book.

And finally, "Bubble in the Sun" by Christopher Knowlton, in which he makes the claim that the Florida land boom of the 1920s led to the Great Depression. I'm not sure how much he succeeded in his claim, that part of the book was mostly over my head (I did not fair well in Economics in college), but I could see how it might have been a contributing factor. Seems like everyone who was anyone was migrating to Florida during those boom years, and making money hand over fist, putting up grand mansions and hotels and tearing down the Everglades to build highways. All those insanely wealthy developers, architects, and interior decorators ended up dead broke and for the most part, died early deaths. It was a cautionary tale as old as time: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.