I have been on a travel book kick lately and came across this book while I was making some online purchases. I thought that I would enjoy reading it and I figured one of my local Bookcrossing friends would also be interested. I will be using it in the (online in 2020) BC in DC Holiday Party first line game.

I purchased this book during a buying spree of travel books with "walk" in the title, in large part because I am a huge Jane Austen fan. I recall seeing the subtle where it mentions faith, but didn't really expect the level of theological discussion that awaited me.

I loved the travel aspects of this book, recalling my own brief time in Oxford. I enjoyed the pairings with the biography of Austen, whom I grew to love even more on a personal level. I cringed sympathetically over the discussion of Jack, the potential love interest and all of the associated existential angst. But I found myself most drawn to the discussion of the struggle between faith and feminism, between the religiously sanctioned future of being valued only as a wife and mother and the need for an independent identity. The author was raised evangelical Christian and I am LDS or Mormon, but her concerns and musings and frustrations are echoes of my own and thosr of my single friends in my church. In some ways that is comforting. In some ways it is sad. I don't know that I have the same faith commitment that she has, but I know that when I was her age I walked a similar emotional path. I hope she is able to make her peace with whatever hand life dea looks her. I am still struggling. torn between Austen's ideal of an ordinary life and the societal pressures towards something grander.

This book is in the mail bound for Authorauthor.

Any future reader or recipient of this book is encouraged to leave a journal entry here on the BookCrossing site to let prior readers know the fate of the book. You can make an anonymous entry without joining the BookCrossing movement, but if you are interested in joining, it is a free and spam-free community where your contact information is not shared with others. Best of all, members receive private messages via e-mail from books like this one when those books are journaled, allowing for long-term relationships between books and readers.

Thank you, 6of8! I received the book today. I'll be interested in reading it and then holding onto it until I resume my adventures with my Jane Austen Action Figure, bookbombing Little Free Libraries with Jane Austen books.