The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Audio Book Club for the month of June 2016.

I'm Katie Waldman, Words Correspondent at Slate, and I am here, or virtually here,

with Emily Bazelon of the Political Gab Fest in the New York Times Magazine.

Hey, Emily.

Hey, Katie.

And also with Jessica Winter, who is not only Slate's features editor, but also the author of the

forthcoming novel, Break and Case of Emergency, which is amazing.

Hi, Jessica.

Hello, Katie.

Today we'll be talking about eligible Curtis Sittenfeld's pert, modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice by

Jane Austen.

Spoiler warning, we will be spoiling both Pride and Prejudice and eligible today. So if you'd like a pristine reading experience

with either of those books, please pause this podcast. Read Austin, read Sittenfeld, and then return.

Anyway, I want to jump right in. Emily and Jessica, can you both quickly go over your relationship to Austin and to Pride and Prejudice coming into the novel?

You know, I don't have the kind of close, fond relationship to Jane Austen that most of my bookish friends, certainly my bookish women friends, tend to have. I've read Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and

Emma twice each, I think, but I've never read any of the others. I tend to, and this is a little

embarrassing to admit, kind of sink into the cinematic adaptations more than I've sunk into the

books, maybe because they're so beautifully cast. And in revisiting Pride and Prejudice to prepare

it for this podcast, I was kind of kicking myself as to why Jane Austen has always, you know,

she hasn't passed me by, but I've never had a Jane Austen period in my life. And hopefully

Curtis Sittenfeld and eligible will fix that for me and I can go back

...