Oh, god! Jane Austen is NOT Romance. Her plots often revolve around who will marry whom, but that's just to give her something to talk about while she skewers all and sundry with her rapier wit. Jane comments on who people are and how they behave in groups, using their courtship rituals more as an anthropologist would than as a Romance author would.
Don't judge Jane Austen by movies that have been made of her work; you really have to read her to get Jane Austen. Many consider to be the English language's finest novelist.
There are a lot of really, really bad mysteries out there, but there's some good stuff, too. I'll have to think a bit before I come up with books that are great literature, though I could give you a list of fine mysteries with little effort.
When my husband was trying to teach himself to write, he read a book on writing that said that the first step was to READ good writing. There followed a list of recommended authors, most of them writers of classics. But one was a mystery author: Dorothy Sayers. I won't say her works are literature in the same way that the best science fiction is, but I will say that the lady can WRITE.
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Date: 2010-11-08 05:47 pm (UTC)Don't judge Jane Austen by movies that have been made of her work; you really have to read her to get Jane Austen. Many consider to be the English language's finest novelist.
There are a lot of really, really bad mysteries out there, but there's some good stuff, too. I'll have to think a bit before I come up with books that are great literature, though I could give you a list of fine mysteries with little effort.
When my husband was trying to teach himself to write, he read a book on writing that said that the first step was to READ good writing. There followed a list of recommended authors, most of them writers of classics. But one was a mystery author: Dorothy Sayers. I won't say her works are literature in the same way that the best science fiction is, but I will say that the lady can WRITE.