Michelle Ruff

Michelle Suzanne Ruff (born September 22) is an American voice actress. She is known for her work in anime and video games. In her early voicework career, she used her mother's name, Georgette Rose, as a pseudonym. Some of her notable roles include: Chi in Chobits, Rukia Kuchiki in Bleach, Aoi Sakuraba in Ai Yori Aoshi, Elie in Rave Master, Yoko Littner in Gurren Lagann, and Yuki Nagato in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. In the more recent Resident Evil games, she voices Jill Valentine. She also voices Cream the Rabbit in the Sonic the Hedgehog video games.

Career

Ruff grew up in Michigan and graduated from Michigan State University. While she was there, she worked at a talent agency and attended a radio audition, which marked her first venture into the voiceover business. In Chicago, she studied with Second City, Players Workshop and Improv Olympic.

After moving to Los Angeles, she worked with some directors on looping and voice work for films and TV shows. In an Anime Dream interview, Ruff credits Richard Epcar, Steve Kramer and Michael Sorich for training her to dub anime. In the Digimon series, she was referred by director Mary Elizabeth McGlynn to audition for Lopmon and Antylamon in the third season, and in the fourth season she landed the lead part of Zoe. Ruff said that it was her first show that made it to TV, and a show that let her "work my acting muscle". She played tomboy-ish characters Miyao in Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran and Kiki Rosita in Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team.

The Jane

Coordinates: 40°44′18″N 74°00′34″W / 40.73823°N 74.009496°W / 40.73823; -74.009496

The Jane is a boutique hotel located at 505–507 West Street, with its main entrance at 113 Jane Street in the West Village section of the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

The building was originally the American Seamen's Friend Society Sailors' Home and Institute, a hotel for sailors built in 1906–08 and designed by William A. Boring in Georgian style. The building featured a chapel, a concert hall, and a bowling alley, and a beacon which played over the river from the polygonal observatory. The hotel was used to house the survivors of the RMS Titanic while the American inquest into the sinking was held.

In 1944, the YMCA took over the building, running it as a transient hotel called the Jane West. Most recently, it was called the Riverview Hotel. The hotel was renovated by developers Sean MacPherson and Eric Goode in 2008 in partnership with BD Hotels, converting a facility which had become long-term housing for drug addicts and those down on their luck into an upscale hotel.

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (/ˈdʒeɪn ˈɒstɪn/; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony and social commentary as well as her acclaimed plots have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics.

Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer. From her teenage years into her thirties she experimented with various literary forms, including an epistolary novel which she then abandoned, wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.

The Jane Austen Book Club

The Jane Austen Book Club is a 2004 novel by American author Karen Joy Fowler. The story, which takes place near Sacramento, California, centers on a book club consisting of five women and one man who meet once a month to discuss Jane Austen's six novels. It was a critical success and became a national bestseller.

A film adaptation of the same name was released in autumn of 2007.

Plot introduction

The novel takes place over the course of several months in Davis, California, a university town in California's Central Valley near Sacramento. Each of the six chapters is dedicated to one of the six book club members as well as one of Austen's six works. In turn, each of Austen's novels parallels the individual characters' experiences with relationships and love.

Characters and their corresponding novel

The Jane Austen Book Club (film)

The Jane Austen Book Club is a 2007 American romantic drama film written and directed by Robin Swicord. The screenplay, adapted from the 2004 novel of the same name by Karen Joy Fowler, focuses on a book club formed specifically to discuss the six novels written by Jane Austen. As they delve into Austen's literature, the club members find themselves dealing with life experiences that parallel the themes of the books they are reading.

Plot

The book club is the brainchild of fiftysomething six-time divorcée Bernadette, who latches onto the idea when she meets Prudie, a prim, married high school French teacher in her mid-20s, at a Jane Austen film festival. Her concept is to have six members discuss all of Austen's six novels, with each member hosting the group once a month. Also inducted into the club are Sylvia, a fortysomething librarian who recently has separated from her philandering lawyer husband Daniel after more than two decades of marriage; Sylvia's 20-something lesbian daughter Allegra; Jocelyn, a happily unmarried control freak and breeder of Rhodesian Ridgebacks who has been Sylvia's friend since childhood; and Grigg, a science fiction fan who's roped into the group by Jocelyn with the hope he and Sylvia will prove to be a compatible match.