I can't...I'm not even sure how to begin with this. I was SO looking forward to it because quite frankly I'm more old fashioned then current fashioned when it comes to my life expectations. Unfortunately the author seemed obsessed with comparing this book to a currently popular self-help guide series called "The Rules". I'm not sure if I was missing context (and this was meant to be a comparative book in that way), but it made the author come off as more bitchy/catty then helpful.

And while this is an ARC the constant use of "?!" as punctuation really grated on my nerves.

The high points for the guide included the examination of the various characters in Austen's works against common types (guy vs man, girl vs woman) and how to spot them in today's society. ( )

I got this book as an advanced reader's copy from a library convention. It was all right. Some good advice, but the author does that thing where she kinda shoehorns the books/plots/messages to fit her own. I think most of the time authors writing for adults don't write their works of fiction in order to Give A Message; they just want to tell a story. If you get any good life advice out of it it's a bonus, but that's not the main intent. ( )

Couldn't even finish the book ( )

With this title, it seems like the author and publisher were just ready to jump on the Jane Austen bandwagon, hoping to make some money on the legions of Janeites out there. The author tries to sell this book as an antidote to dumb dating advice books, with the book The Rules particularly in its crosshairs. Having never read The Rules (or any other dating advice book for that matter), this was kind of unnecessary for me. Especially in the first half of the book, I thought the author would have been better off leveling a point-by-point critique of The Rules as such, rather than hiding negative comments about that bestseller behind the cloak of a title meant to be about Jane Austen's contributions to society.

Despite - or perhaps because of - all its attempts to point out the holes in other dating advice titles, this book ends up being equally insipid itself - perhaps even more so given that the advice is gleaned from the lives of fictional characters rather than from real-world experience. (Completely un-ironically, the author at one points quotes Anne Elliot from Austen's novel Persuasion as saying "I will not allow books to prove anything," which undermines the whole premise of this book. But this is not surprising, given that author seems to contradiction herself throughout her book, sometimes even within the same chapter.) Furthermore, the author often "proves" her point by using the words and actions of characters from Austen's oeuvre that are not generally considered to be ones esteemed by Austen herself, such as the obnoxious Mrs. Bennet. It's bad enough to be asked to make life decisions based on people who never existed, but it's even worse to be asked to do it on the basis on annoying lesser characters. Again, this is done entirely without irony, and the author seems to have no awareness that happy endings in novels do not necessitate "happy" endings in real life.

In addition to being a diatribe against dating books ala The Rules, this book also seems to serve as the author's soapbox for a variety of issues, including her lamentation about people wearing sweatpants and other comfortable but not stylish clothes outside of the home (who cares? really? is this what you waste your time worrying about?) and her thought that not wanting to getting married* for reasons related to feminism is basically throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Never mind that there are a myriad of reasons that some people may not want to get married and that it's not her place to tell people what their end goal in a relationship should be; a dating guide should help a person reach an end goal, whether that's a loosely defined long-term relationship, co-habitation, or traditional marriage. But this book, while simply laying out 10 rules does not do much in the way of providing concrete steps on follow through; however, this is no real loss in my opinion given that these rules seem unlikely to help any relationship much, let alone every relationship. Not to mention that they seemed to be forced out of Austen's works using not so solid examples, rather than something that seem to flows naturally from Jane Austen's pen direct to the reader.

The author also has a few rather annoying tics in her writing style; these both seem to come from a desire of the author's to make sure she's being clear and result in her overemphasizing almost everything. She uses italics far too frequently, making it seem like everything in the text is urgent for the reader to absorb. Likewise, she is overabundant with her use of exclamation points, frequently inserting them even within the middle of a sentence. On one page alone, I counted six exclamation points. No subject needs that level of exuberance, least of all a dating advice book.

On the plus side, this book is short and reads very quickly. The few drawings of Regency scenes are a nice touch as well. There's not much more to recommend it, as least not on its face value. Interestingly enough, where this title fails completely as the dating advice book it purports to be, it actually serves as a kind of literary criticism. Sure, it's not the deepest literary criticism I've ever read, but the author does look closely at certain passages and come up with interpretations that are outside of the ordinary and perhaps not without any merit. After reading this book, you might look at, say, Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill's relationship differently. Still, I think readers have better options out there for critical analysis of Jane Austen's works and are therefore better off avoiding this book altogether.

*Also, the author titling her last chapter "Dear Reader, Marry Him" is a clear reference to Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte, who famously hated Jane Austen's works. This isn't a terribly important point, but it bugged me that she quoted from a different (antagonistic) author and didn't even note it. ( )

I grabbed this at the library because I saw "Jane Austen" on the cover. I was in a hurry and didn't look closely, so it wasn't until I got home that I saw the part where it is actually intended as a dating guide. Hm. I read it anyway, because it is short.

I'm not an expert on dating guides, but it seemed pointless. Be a woman, not a girl. Speak up. Look for a man, not a boy. These are some of the rules. They aren't given a lot of how-to, and i don't know how someone who was actually trying to use this to get dates would proceed. There were a lot of snarky comments about how "The Rules" gets it wrong. I haven't read that, just remember hearing about it, but it seems like an easy target.

On the plus side, there was a surprisingly large amount of Jane Austen. There wasn't a lot of deep reading, but one of the rules is to "Pay attention to what they say." This means to listen to the conventional wisdom and gossip of the community. That's an interesting point, and most interesting of all, Murphy makes the argument that Mrs. Bennet is right more often than she is wrong, specifically because she listens to gossip. That's presented as a good thing, as being deeply involved with the life of the community and building wisdom from the collective experience. It's framed as an explicitly feminist understanding, which is also interesting. Now I'm going to have to re-read "Pride and Prejudice" and see if this is correct. ( )