Fond as I am of Austen's work, I don't mind a decent parody, though I'm not entirely sure that an attempt to insert sex scenes into her gentile surroundings will work. But I found this fair-condition hardcover at the library book sale and figured it was worth a try.

Later: Well, not quite what I'd hoped for. The funniest part of the book, for me, was the pseudo-academic introduction, which attempted to convince the reader that these were genuine Austen passages, long-suppressed by conservative editors. [Even funnier: judging by some of the online reviews on Amazon and other sites, quite a few people actually believed it! Though to be fair, the authors of this book inserted some letters ostensibly by Ms. Austen herself, using passages from her actual letters and mimicking her tone. But still!]

The "lost sex scenes" themselves - well, I admired the inventiveness of the authors in finding ways to insert them into the existing storylines, though I don't think they were always successful in matching the behavior and thoughts of the characters involved. There were a couple of exceptions; the behavior of the more caddish characters, such as Frank Churchill or Henry and Mary Crawford, didn't seem that far removed from something they might actually have done. Kinda. [I was a bit sorry that the Churchill/Knightley encounter ended, shall we say, prematurely; if all the other characters could unbend sufficiently to provide some fodder for these scenes, Knightley certainly could have!]

I think my favorite of them all, and the only one that really made me laugh, was the scene between Charlotte Collins and Mr. Collins; that one had some psycho-sexual validity, I'm sure, and it made me feel much more cheerful about that particular marriage...

All in all, I don't think this book was a success, but I did get some amusement from it. Wouldn't want to have paid more than library-book-sale prices for it, though!

Note: while some of these scenes clearly describe some pretty wild sexual activity, they do so in, for the most part, veiled terms; there are few if any explicit descriptions. This is probably a good thing, but as it might disappoint some readers I thought I'd mention it.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

I gave this book to BCer Guinneth at our mini-meetup at Dynamite Sushi in Hudson. Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for bringing this one along. It looks...interesting! (snort)

I'm sending this along in indygo's Best of BC bookbox.

Arrived home in my bookbox. This is one I haven't seen -- LOL!

This one's been unread on my bookshelf for too long, so I'm going to make it available to someone who can hopefully get to it faster than I ever could.

Sending off to PBS member. Enjoy! :')

You have found a BookCrossing book! Please take a brief moment to journal your thoughts upon reading this book. Then, if you'd like, re-release the book (to a friend, a stranger, or back out into the wild). That way you can track its travels & its readers throughout the world!