Where my massive crush on Jane Austen began: alone, on a hot day in Montana, cursing her name.

I had to read it for AP English and I could not see the point. Girls need to marry. Girls can't get married. Girls are sad. Girls get married. Girls are happy.

I went to school to half heartedly discuss it and waffled and wavered in an effort to please my teacher. Finally she said: "was it good or not, Ben?"

"No it wasn't."

"Thank you...now read this twenty pages of literary criticism for homework."

Twenty More...

"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen started off annoying me and ended up enchanting me. Up until about page one hundred I found this book vexing, frivolous and down right tedious. I now count myself as a convert to the Austen cult.

I must confess I have been known to express an antipathy for anything written or set before 1900. I just cannot get down with corsets, outdoor plumbing and buggy rides. Whenever someone dips a quill into an inkwell my eyes glaze over. This is a shortcoming I readily More...

This book is quite possibly the most insipid novel I have ever read in my life. Why this book is so highly treasured by society is beyond me. It is 345 pages of nothing. The characters are like wispy shadows of something that could be interesting, the language that could be beautiful ends up becoming difficult to decipher and lead me more than once to skip over entire paragraphs because I became tired of having to stumble through them only to emerge unsatisfied, and the plot is non-existent, as More...

Well-loathed books I've re-read

Rating: 4 very annoyed, crow-feathered stars out of five

The Book Report: No. Seriously. If your first language isn't English, or if you're like nine years old, you might not know the story. Note use of conditional.


My Review: All right. All right, dammit! I re-read the bloody thing. I gave it two stars before. I was wrong-headed and obtuse and testosterone poisoned. I refuse to give it five stars, though. Look, I've admitted I was wrong about how beautiful the writ More...

6.0 stars. Confession...this book gave me an earth-shattering Janeaustegasm and I am feeling a bit spent and vulnerable at the moment, so please bear with me. You see, I decided I wanted to get more literated by reading the "classicals" in between my steady flow of science fiction, mystery and horror. The question was where to begin.

After sherlocking through my Easton Press collection, I started by pulling out my Dickens and reading A Tale of Two Cities which I thought was jaw-dropping AMAZO and More...

Critics who consider Austen's works trivial because of their rigid, upper-class setting, wealthy characters, domestic, mannered plots and happy endings are almost totally disconnected from reality, as far as I can tell. What can they possibly expect an upper-middle class English woman to write about in 1813 but what she knows or can imagine? Sci-fi? A history of the American Revolution? A real-life exposé of underage exploitation in the garment district of London? Come on. What other setting can More...

Some years back in one of my APAs, someone castigated Jane Austen's books like this: "All those daft twits rabbiting on about clothes and boyfriends and manners."

Since then, I’ve encountered other variations on the theme that a modern woman ought not to be reading such trash because it sets feminism back two centuries.

Well, much as I laughed over the first caveat, that isn't Austen. It sounds more like the silver fork romances inspired by Georgette Heyer. Austen's characters don't talk about clo More...

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that it had begun."

This was Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy's reply when Ms. Elizabeth Bennet asked him when he fell in love with her.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen had put my left out dictionary into good use. I have to admit, I was very slow in the first pages, however, nearing the end, I was like a driver going at 100mph, eager to reach the finish lin More...

I finally finished! It took me awhile but it was worth it. I think what made it kind of hard for me to get into it was because I had watched the movies beforehand (which actually helped me to follow the timeline of the book better.)

This book doesn't really need a review, I mean it's a classic! There isn't a better recommendation than standing the test of time.

What a wonderful romance and I'm glad I read the book because we do miss out on some of the details that are not put into the movies.

Whil More...

I hardly needed Penguin's introduction to remind me that Pride & Prejudice has significant parallels to Sam Richardson's Pamela (1740). In both books, a boorish man is reformed through the protagonist's refusal to fall for his original cockishness. And in both books, a late and great scene features some bitch trying to talk the guy out of his reformation. There are loads of differences between the two, as well: for one thing, Elizabeth is an actual person, as opposed to Pamela, and for anoth More...

For a lover of books, I came to Pride and Prejudice (P&P from now on) very, very, very late.

The reasons are myriad: my mother hated Austen (a disdain she took to the grave without ever explaining), so she never recommended her to me; I was a boy in the '70s and a teen in the '80s and even though I loved Barbra Streisand, ABBA, Wham!, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran (and...yes...I still do) I wasn't about to let people know that, and since I carried whatever book I was reading with me wherever More...

Some early, pre-review thoughts on Pride and Prejudice.

Mary Bennet

It has been asserted that Mary Bennet is a bit of a cipher, a cardboard cutout inserted to utter pedantic lines used to reinforce the irony of certain situations. She is the least-known Bennet sister and contributes next to nothing (so they say)to the overall plot, except for a little humor and a part in the disaster of the Netherfield Ball. I don’t think this is entirely incorrect, but at the same time it’s not really fair.

I wo More...

Review Temporarily Removed.

I can't say anything fascinating about Pride and Prejudice that hasn't already been said a thousand times. It is one of the best books I've ever read, if not the best. It is like a textbook on how to pace a story, which is a hard thing to do, for me at least. It is a perfect social comedy. The dialogue is both believable, natural-seeming, and yet ten million times more interesting, witty and articulate than anything real people say. The characters are so well-drawn, interesting, and deep that yo More...

Pride and Prejudice; The story of a man with five unmarried daughters, from the oldest to youngest, Jane,Elizabeth,Mary,Catherine and Lydia,15,in Regency England, during the Napoleonic Wars.When Mr.Bennet is no longer breathing, his house will be inherited by a distant cousin,Mr. Collins.His family becomes homeless.The parents,the witty,sarcastic Mr. Bennet is rather aloof and Mrs.Bennet silly and ignorant ,but it's incumbent that the girls find good rich men to marry before that happens .Mrs.Be More...

18 chapters in... I want that to sink in for a moment... ok. 18 chapters in and NOTHING has happened. I am enjoying her writing style very much, but I also enjoy the back of an occasional cereal box so that may not mean much. We will see.
I am sitting here eating a tootsie roll, a Halloween left over, and I can't help notice the similarities between it and the novel Pride and Prejudice. First off, like P and P, the tootsie roll wasn't one of those dinky ones that you can almost swallow in a singl More...

This book is utterly amazing, and if I were more of a five-star type of girl, I'd have given it another. I must say though that P&P was a little hard to relate to because it was written a long time ago, when women had to wear uncomfortable clothing to try and look pretty and were defined mostly based on their ability to trap a man. Back in those days, being a smart-ass was considered a huge liability for a lady, and also back in those days some otherwise clever ladies, like the main characte More...

P to-the-double-O P.

Pride and Prejudice is special for many reasons; for one, its style and language – albeit sometimes difficult – are delightful beyond comparison. Old texts are often dry and hard to read, which is discouraging to readers. I truly loved the way some words are used, and wished language would still be dealt with the same way. I wonder; is it really the language of the age, or a superior skill Jane Austen possessed?

The way culture is portrayed is also very interesting; it is too different than any I More...

I poured myself a Dolly Parton cup of ambition to ready myself for reviewing this book. I think it just went to my boobs... They are growing to be enormous, my god. I'll put on a corset for a Little Florida Whore House review, showing off my high kicks for the business of dancing around saying what I really think, and playing footsie with the stuff I like, and more dancing. Kinda hard though, what with the enormous boobies. Could be a cigar girl. It was okay to smoke back then. It'd be even bett More...

I have hesitated giving a review of this book because, as they say in Wayne's World, "I'm not worthy!" Since I don't really feel I can do the novel justice in a review, here are some random thoughts. This is my favorite book, mainly because the character of Elizabeth Bennet is such a great creation. I even named my dog Bennet, in homage. I was always impressed by how ahead of her time Lizzie is, and although she has great qualities, she is not without fault--hence the title of the book. I see al More...

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that people who love romance novels, must love Jane Austen’s 'Pride and Prejudice'. :)

This wasn´t the first romance book I read, but it was THE ONE that got me addicted to the genre when I was still a teenager. There´s nothing I don´t love about it and I think it´s the most romantic novel ever written - even though there isn´t a single kiss between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth! That fact alone shows how good Ms. Austen was.

And I have to finish this "review" wit More...

I really enjoyed it; I loved the language and the delicious style of Austen's writing--very delightful! The last part of the book was probably my favorite--that was quite suspenseful and dramatic, and left me wondering what would happen. The ending was quite satisfying, too, and it was really interesting to get a sense of what life in that era was like. A charming book!

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

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How long do first impressions last?

I always had this notion that I have to read at least three works of Jane Austen for me to achieve a sense of accomplishment. Why do I feel that? Well, she was born in the late 18th century and still, she remains a household name. I feel that everyone, even nonreaders, have an idea of who she is, like a news reporter whom you always see on TV but don’t really bother to know.

The three books that I hurled at my to-read-and-to-buy More...

There are many books along with Pride and Prejudice which I shall mention as my favorite novel but, I have to admit, that there are none which I take half as much pleasure in reading again and again as Pride and Prejudice. There is something so delightful and exhilarating about reading Elizabeth and Darcy’s unlikely courtship, watching it all unfold with the same feeling of apprehension every year. The wide array of characters and their antics - Mr. Darcy’s haughtiness, Lizzy prejudices, Mr. Col More...

In order to write this review…

I’m going to set-aside the fact that I think Mr. Darcy is highly overrated.
(I’m also going to forget the fact that he is terrible with proposals).

I’m not going to mention that Lizzie is obviously mercenary, only deciding that her feelings for Darcy have changed after she’s seen his giant house.
I’m not going to tell you that I think she’s really quite a vain, petty heroine, deciding that she dislikes a man because she heard him say to his friend that he didn’t think More...