{"id":5461,"date":"2017-04-08T23:26:03","date_gmt":"2017-04-09T03:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=5461"},"modified":"2017-04-08T23:26:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-09T03:26:03","slug":"from-the-guardian-the-best-second-novels-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2017\/04\/08\/from-the-guardian-the-best-second-novels-of-all-time\/","title":{"rendered":"From The Guardian: The best second novels of all time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is not true that, as with our first love, our first novel will be our most memorable, written or read; in fact, it isn&#8217;t even true for our first loves, and novels deal with fiction. Nevertheless, James Reith at <em>The Guardian<\/em> has shared several books we should keep in mind next time we&#8217;re about to think the first time is always the best time. Judiciously written second-timers often come in first place:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment5462\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"\/core\/files\/2017\/04\/jane-austen.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment5462\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/core\/files\/2017\/04\/jane-austen-300x180.jpg\" alt=\"Second take  Anne Hathaway in the film Becoming Jane (2007). Photograph: Buena Vista\/Allstar\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5462\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/files\/2017\/04\/jane-austen-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/files\/2017\/04\/jane-austen.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment5462\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Second take  Anne Hathaway in the film Becoming Jane (2007). Photograph: Buena Vista\/Allstar<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span>Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The source of everyones favourite costume drama (and some of the finest prose in the English tongue) was Austens second outing. It is also <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/rsliterature.org\/the-nations-favourite-second-novel\/\" class=\"u-underline\">the Nations Favourite Second Novel<\/a><span>, according to the Royal Society of Literature. But the Austen example raises a question: is the second novel the second to be published, or do we include unpublished attempts, too? Her gothic satire Northanger Abbey was written long before Sense and Sensibility.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Every writer must learn in some form or another that the craft asks that sheput business before pleasure: one should never keep a lousy muse. Of the two-timers who learned this lesson quickly, perhaps the greatest&#8211;no, the greatest&#8211;is James Joyce for<em>Ulysses<\/em>, ingeniouslylapsing Homer&#8217;s Odyssey into a single day.<\/p>\n<p>Read his full post at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/booksblog\/2017\/apr\/06\/pride-and-prejudice-and-progress-the-best-second-novels-of-all-time\"><em>The Guardian<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is not true that, as with our first love, our first novel will be our most memorable, written or read; in fact, it isn&#8217;t even true for our first loves, and novels deal with fiction. Nevertheless, James Reith at The Guardian has shared several books we should keep in mind next time we&#8217;re about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6508,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48628],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5461"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6508"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5463,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5461\/revisions\/5463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}