The Jane Austen Workout

I haven't posted to this blog in a long time. I've spent the summer traveling and am now settled in Barcelona for my sabbatical. I spend my days working on some scholarly articles and thinking about my second novel. It's a good life!

Along with reading and writing (and the occasional delectable meal out--who can live in Barcelona and not make eating a high priority?), I am also getting into a regular gym routine. And I think I have finally stumbled into a workout that may actually work for me. I'm calling it the Jane Austen Workout.

While most people are motivated by Lady Gaga or Cyndi Lauper while they bounce to the beat on the stair stepper, I have always gotten bored with my techno playlists after one or two workouts. I don't like to watch TV at the gym, especially when the only channel is BarcaTV, a channel entirely devoted to the Barcelona futbol team (I'm a fan, but really?), and I can't read without my glasses, don't like to wear my glasses while I exercise, blah blah blah. So all this aural and visual finickiness leaves me bored and uninspired at the gym.

I've also tried listening to assorted podcasts, and this has been somewhat more successful. However, I need to be listening to something that really holds my attention or else my mind wanders and then I'm wondering why Melvyn Brag is chortling about Boadicea (In Our Time) or which Middle Eastern pottery shard (History of the World in 100 Objects) we're learning about now.

So, what really holds my attention? A good book! If it's a book I haven't read before, then I don't have the patience for an audiobook because I want to tear through it quickly. If it's a book I know really well, then I have the mind wandering problem again. Taking all of this into consideration, I settled on the Jane Austen novels that I don't know very well.

Of course, English PhD that I am, I have read all of Austen's novels, but Pride and Prejudice and Emma are the ones I teach and thus read over and over again. I haven't read the others more than once and not for a long time. I know what happens, so I don't need to hurry through the books like I do with first reads, but I don't remember the details, so I enjoy savoring them in the slow format of the audiobook. Plus, these books are in the public domain, so I have found free audio versions through Booksshouldbefree.com. I'm listening to Persuasion first and finding myself, for the first time in a long time, quite happy to go to the gym.

I could go on about an aging heroine and an aging exerciser, but that would be unflattering to both Anne Elliot and myself, so I'll just say that I'm thrilled and surprised to have discovered that after all these years of resisting exercise, it was Jane Austen who would help me get in shape!