dejablue.bsky.social

c19 Americanist prof: form & genre, women's writing, pop culture, and public humanities.

[Sophie Vershbow @svershbow]

I love explaining to people that romance and romantasy books are essentially funding the publishing industry right now.

[Jane Austen’s House @JaneAustenHouse]

#Onthisday in 1815 Emma was published.

📖 ‘This is quite the season indeed for friendly meetings. At Christmas every body invites their friends about them; and people think little of even the worst weather.’ - Mr Elton, Emma.

[Jane Austen First Drafts @Austen1stDrafts]

Persuasion was published on this day in 1817. Making it 208 years of every other love letter not being good enough.

[Valerio Capraro @ValerioCapraro]

Fascinating paper just published in Science.

The authors analyze the career trajectories of top performers across multiple domains, including Nobel laureates, elite chess players, Olympic gold medalists, and more.

Their central finding challenges a common belief.

Intensive, single-discipline training at a young age does confer an early advantage, but this advantage fades over time.

By contrast, individuals exposed to multidisciplinary practice early in life tend to start more slowly. Yet, over the long run, they are more likely to reach world-class performance, eventually overtaking early specialists, who often plateau just below the very top.

An important reminder that breadth early on can be a powerful investment in long-term excellence.

Link to the paper in the first reply.

[Rachel Christine @RachelXReads]

In addition to Project Gutenberg, the following are also helpful, free resources, especially for reading classic novels:

Standard Ebooks - use to download carefully and aesthetically formatted public-domain classics

HathiTrust - use to find and download library-verified scans of some rare texts and historical collections

Internet Archive - use to find scans of old, out-of-print books

Google Books - use to find and download scans of first editions or lesser-known works (use the "Full View" filter)

Wikisource - use to access and read public-domain primary sources and historical documents

Kindle Store (Amazon) - use to download free Kindle editions of many public-domain classics

Bookshare - use to gain access to a library of digital texts in accessible formats for those with verified print-related disabilities

LibriVox - use for free audiobook versions of public-domain classics

Libby and Hoopla - (check to see if your local library offers these) use to borrow ebooks or audiobooks of both modern and classic novels

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

Jane Austen used 'however' at the beginning of a sentence, and so can you.

[Bruce Byfield@Prentice Pieces: Querying TBR @PrenticePieces]

@cmclymer Jane Austen was a pioneer of psychological novels, one of the first writers in English to develop plots based on observations of people. George Elliot and Thomas Hardy would go even more deeply into psychology, but Austen showed later writers the way.

[The Dispatch @thedispatch]

"Contrary to the contemporary mythos, Austen’s novels aren’t about love, romance, and marriage, although plenty instances of all these fill the pages. No, Austen’s novels are about character." | @KSPrior in Dispatch Faith

https://t.co/Av42EztYyz

[Jane Austen’s House @JaneAustenHouse]

🎉 Happy 250th Birthday Jane Austen! Today marks Jane Austen’s birthday and the 250th anniversary of her birth, #onthisday in 1775.

📖 Today we are celebrating her life and incredible contribution to English literature and getting excited for our virtual birthday party!

[pride and prejudice archive @pandparchive]

on this day in 1775, marked the birth of jane austen. happy 250th birthday to the eternal literary icon!

[Shriram Krishnamurthi (primary: Bluesky) @ShriramKMurthi]

The best description of @BrownUniversity, from @bessbell. (And to be clear, the heirs and star's kids are invariably also in that carton.)
https://t.co/4iQGW7Fe6T

[Dissident Teacher @educatedandfree]

It is done. Here are clickable links of over 400 books in the western canon, separated by age group. It's meant for all of you who want the best for your child's education and for your own as well.

The good news? Emily Dickinson was right when she said of books: "How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul."

Link to the library below: ⬇️

[AB @AlannaBennett]

I’m reading Persuasion (a lesser-known-to-me Austen) for the first time, and it’s rather remarkable how 200+ years on and even with a clear formula this woman can still have me gripped and on the edge of my seat. I have other things to do today but all I want to do is read it.

[Katerina Dimitratos @KDimitratos]

This is why B players, 6s, the ones that are good in their current role and don’t want promotions/more and are very reliable and consistent matter.

Yet some of you terminate those people in an “up or out” company. They’re your glue, fam. They won’t ask more of you, don’t want more, and are happy being good at what you hired them for.

[Saloni @salonium]

Novels' sentences are much shorter than they used to be.

Part of this is about punctuation: we use periods as people used to use semi-colons. And shorter sentences aren't necessarily simpler to read, since jargon can condense complicated ideas.

But plain language writing has also become more common. More people write as they speak.

That's why English prose has become easier to read, argues @HenryEOliver, in a great new piece for Works in Progress.
https://t.co/UUx5kSrSY6

[Indigo State Of Mind⚡️ @ThirdEyeMastery]

I'm a big fan of the "GPS Theory" when you miss a turn, your GPS doesn't judge you, it recalculates. No matter how many detours you take, it finds another way forward. Life works like that too. You'll make mistakes, but your destination doesn't vanish. The route just changes.

[Rob Townsend (also @rbtownsend.bsky.social) @rbthisted]

"While other universities report that the humanities are shrinking, at Berkeley, the opposite is true…. We are finding bigger classrooms because film is exploding. English is back to the numbers we saw 15 years ago. We are hiring" https://t.co/vmOeJmgSdS

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

Women aren't only underpaid because they end up in less lucrative careers than men.

Data on >25M people across 15 countries: Women make less than men in the same job—and that accounts for about half the overall gender pay gap.

Equal work deserves equal pay. Full stop.

[Yoni Appelbaum @YAppelbaum]

Just, wow.