I consider Jane Austen to be one of my favorite writers. She draws vivid pictures of a society and a lifestyle that informs and enlivens her story and her characters. The dilemmas that women faced are particularly poignant and often told with an amusing bent. Lizzie Bennett and Emma are sympathetic characters, but they are also funny and very intriguing as the reader begins to see in these characters' lives conditions, considerations, and dilemmas that are still present 200 years later. Marriage and the stigma of non-marriage are examples. With these, Austen includes the importance of letter writing, nature, and friendship between women. Texting and email may have replaced letter writing but the importance of communicating is still a priority for women. Exercise, girls' nights and weekends, and belonging to women's groups are the modern day ways of connecting, which would have intrigued a modern Jane Austen. The context helps draw the characters, but the characters of 200 ears ago are still women we recognize, and that is why I always read and reread her. She is forever relevant.