Welcome to Wishlist Wednesday!

The concept is to post about one book from our wish lists that we can’t wait to read. Want to play? Here’s how:

• Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
• Do a post about one book from your wishlist and why you want to read it.
• Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of the post at Pen to Paper.
• Put a link back to Pen to Paper somewhere in your post.
• Visit the other blogs and enjoy!

My wishlist book this week is:

Longbourn by Jo Baker
(release date October 8, 2013)

From Goodreads:

• Pride and Prejudice was only half the story •
 
If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them.
 
In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.

Why do I want to read this?

I’m a Pride and Prejudice fan, although I do usually try to avoid re-tellings, which mostly strike me as attempts to cash in without being terribly original. (Notable exceptions, for me, are Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Death Comes to Pemberley — and in movies, Bride and Prejudice!) From the description, I’d say that Longbourn sounds a bit Downton Abbey-ish, with the focus on the happenings below stairs and how those crazy Bennet sisters create chaos for their mostly silent servants.

This strikes me as being a fresh approach to a familiar story, and I have high hopes for it! I’ve just received an ARC, which I plan to get to in the next few weeks, and I’m hoping Longbourn will be as fun and entertaining as it sounds.

What’s on your wishlist this week?

So what are you doing on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

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Do you host a blog hop or book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!