The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

YouTube is for more than just cat videos and makeup tutorials now.

Hank Green (one half of YouTube’s Vlogbrothers with YA author John Green) created a webseries based on “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen. Now Lizzie Bennet is a masters student with a video blog, filmed by her best friend Charlotte Lu. Her sisters Lydia and Jane make appearances in the videos (poor Mary and Kitty were cut for time allotment I guess), which focus on their new neighbor Bing Lee and his prickly friend Darcy.

Much like Jane Austen, the videos are witty and warm. It’s interesting to see how they have modernized elements of the story, for instance Bing and Darcy meet the Bennet sisters at a wedding instead of a ball. I’m curious how they’ll handle the Lydia running away and marrying Wickham storyline down the road.

But the coolest thing, for me, is that the videos prove something I knew long ago: “Pride and Prejudice” is a timeless story.

New videos of the “Lizzie Bennett Diaries” are posted every Monday and Thursday on the “lizziebennet” YouTube channel.

Rowling Returns

This morning I was delighted to discover that J.K. Rowling announced that she will be publishing her first book for adults with Little, Brown and Company.

Rowling has not published anything since “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” a collection of fairy tales that tie in to her beloved Harry Potter series, in 2008.

The title, publication date and more details about the novel with be announced later this year, but Rowling stated in a press release that her “next book will be very different to the Harry Potter series.”

I think it’s good that Rowling is putting an emphasis on how this book is not going to be Harry Potter-like, but I doubt that will stop people from comparing the two. I also find it interesting that it’s being labeled as an adult book, when the Harry Potter series dealt with a lot of adult things. I’ve personally never been a fan of labeling the Harry Potter books “children’s books” to begin with, so I’m curious just how “adult” this new novel will be.

J.K. Rowling is probably the only author out there who could write literally anything and the public would buy millions of copies of it. But I hope it doesn’t disappoint. She’s proven that she’s a talented storyteller, but writing a follow-up to one of, if not the, most popular book series of all time has to be a daunting task.