Jane Austen

CASCO BAY, Maine - And now we turn to our summer reading list. OK, our mid-summer reading list. We are, blush, late with our report. Indeed, we were reminded of our tardiness last week, when the National Endowment for the Arts reported ominously on the decline and fall of reading. Barely over half of Americans read any book at all this year. Was it something we didn't say? Actually, we suspect that too many of the "big books" these days are political screeds instead of good reads. So herewith, as a public service, is a list neither blue nor red, but black and white and read all over.

Truth and Consequences Alison Lurie Viking / 232 pages Truth and Consequences begins ominously when Jane Mackenzie, working in her garden, catches sight of a man coming up the driveway whom she does not recognize as her husband, so bent and broken is he by lingering, terrible back pain. The injury itself was ominous. Alan Mackenzie, an academic luminary in architectural history and 11 years Jane's senior, hurt himself during a midlife testosterone surge on the volleyball court. Now that injury has changed the dynamic of their relationship to a fatal degree.

Before giving a speech to 500 people in Baltimore recently, the acclaimed writer Anna Quindlen reached for her cell phone and called her 12-year-old daughter, Maria, for a lively chat that ended with "I love you" and a promise to see her softball game the next day. Then she went out and held audience members' attention for more than an hour telling them, as the talk was titled, "How Reading Changed My Life," skipping freely from movable type inventor Johann...

WASHINGTON -- The Great Scandal Machine never rests. You lived (or yawned) through the impeachment of a president. Now comes the big-buck payoff -- books, TV interviews, and for all I know, movies, videos and a Broadway musical. Hey, nobody ever went broke selling illicit sex, especially soft porn with a presidential seal. Get ready for the Marketing of Monica. There's no way to escape this week's commercial spin of Ms. Lewinsky: The Barbara Walters interview on ABC, a $660,000 interview on British TV and the book you've waited for, "Monica's Story."

Rarely does a literary classic transfer from page to stage as eloquently as Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" does in the current production by the Annapolis Shakespeare Company at Bowie Playhouse. Everything works beautifully, beginning with Jon Jory's engaging stage adaptation, which is faithful to Austen's prose and yet holds its relevance to contemporary audiences. Sally Boyett-D'Angelo's smart direction of the dream cast she has assembled creates exciting theater, where every actor fully delivers.

For [Jane] Austen," writes scholar Robert Polhemus, "love, like dance, ought to be a rational pursuit, leading to what is pleasurable, useful, and beautiful."

The Jane Austen Book Club is a movie ready-made for a cinema subdivision of Oprah's Book Club. Just consider the potential: This contemporary comedy-drama of five women and a man analyzing one Austen novel each month would foment discussion of six Austen books and Karen Joy Fowler's witty 2004 novel (also called The Jane Austen Book Club), along with such standby talk-show topics as infidelity and female friendship. An Oprah Winfrey-brand phenomenon would have to be more provocative than the lulling movie writer-director Robin Swicord has made from Fowler's peppy, humorous pastiche.

Truth or Consequences By Alison Lurie Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alison Lurie dishes up a surprising satire about two couples making mischief on a college campus. "One can read Lurie as one might read Jane Austen, with continual delight," Joyce Carol Oates has said. In this novel, Lurie returns to the setting that has delighted her fans throughout her long career - the university campus.

A Jane Austen novel forms the basis of the Sunday Cinema at the Charles presentation this Sunday at the art theater on Charles Street.Local film critic Mike Guiliano will introduce the film, which stars lTC Corin Redgrave and Fiona Shaw and has received wonderful reviews in the cities where it's opened.The Sunday Cinema offers viewers a first look at an art film as introduced before, then discussed afterward, by a local critic. The doors to the theater open at 10, and the screening begins at 10:30.

LOOK FOR FULL REVIEWS IN TOMORROW'S MOVIES TODAY SECTION Derailed Married Clive Owen has a fling with Jennifer Aniston, with far-ranging consequences for all those surrounding him. R. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang Writer-director Shane Black, missing-in-action since 1996's The Long Kiss Goodnight, returns with this murder-mystery starring Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer. R. Pride & Prejudice Keira Knightley stars in yet another version of Jane Austen's novel about five 19th-century sisters enduring the vagaries of the English upper class and the price of being women therein.