Let Jane Austen be your guide

I dig Lauren Henderson for a lot of reasons: she writes incredibly witty books, be they her Sam Jones crime novels or her romantic comedies (the latest, EXES ANONYMOUS, will be out in the UK in April), she’s bloody intelligent, and has provided me with, hands-down, the most memorable book inscriptions. She’s featured in the Telegraph this weekend talking about her newest project, THE JANE AUSTEN GUIDE TO DATING, a primer on how to use one of literature’s greatest heroines to help you snag the perfect guy:

Undeterred by potential drawbacks – Austen’s books

tell us nothing about sex, are set in an age whose social mores bear

scarcely more relation to downtown Manhattan’s than they do to downtown

Kabul’s, and are novels rather than self-help manuals – Henderson has

discovered, at the heart of the oeuvre, 10 key principles of dating.

As
she puts it: "I think the books are coded instruction manuals – but
they can be novels, too. They are about the best way to find someone
who’s going to be a life partner for you.

"What
Austen is about is the continual process of observing the behaviour of
people around you. And whether you’re country dancing or grinding your
bum into someone at a hip-hop club, it comes down to the same
fundamental things."

Of course, as Leith wonders, if Jane was such a dating expert, why did she die alone? It’s obvious to me: because it’s a lot easier to understand the psychology of other people than your own…

(link courtesy of Ron at his Beatrice digs)