Pride and Prejudice = DONE

Well, it's taken me a long time to get through it, but I finally did it. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is done and dusted, thank goodness.

Those of you who have read it will know that it's not a very long book. It has been sitting on my bookshelf for two years, and in May I decided to pick it up and read it. It's one of those books you just have to read if you're a lover of books, and although I feel like I've run a marathon and travelled back in time to high school english class, I'm glad I read it.

I have never read classic books like Jane Austen's before - the closest I've been to classic is To Kill a Mocking Bird - so Pride and Prejudice was a real experience for me, and a real learning curve, considering the complicated-ness (if that's a word...) of the writing.

The one thing that really struck me about the book was how far ahead of her time Jane Austen was. You would almost think it was a novel written in our time if not for the overpowering, detailed dialogue.

I can see why her books are still so popular today - although the morals and values are far from what they are today, the core human emotions have never changed, especially when it comes to love.

As I said in my May blog post First impressions of Jane Austen:

We still fall for at least one bad boy in our lifetime.

We still play hard to get.

We still get jealous.

We still fall in love. In exactly the same way as we always have.
 
I also watched the movie last night, the recent one starring Keira Knightley, and I have to say I was skeptical about it. I'm not the biggest fan of Keira - she's too skinny and pouty in my opinion - and she was not who I imagined Elizabeth to look like while I was reading the book. I also feared the story would be tainted by passionate Hollywood kisses. But Keira exceeded my expectations and after the first ten minutes, she was Elizabeth. And there was not one kiss, although I was a tad nervous when Elizabeth and Mr Darcy finally declared their love for each other at the end, but it didn't happen and, although I'm a fan of Hollywood kisses, it just wasn't necessary for this story - ironic really, considering it's a love story on so many different levels. All the other actors were just brilliant too, pretty much what I imagined while reading the book - wasn't Mrs Bennet the funniest old lady?!
 
So that's two down, 98 to go on my 100 books in 5 years mission. Don't think I'll be reading any more Jane Austen for awhile - it's hard work - but I will eventually read all six of her books. So have you read Jane Austen? Thoughts?

First impressions of Jane Austen

I've seen The Jane Austen Book Club, read about Jane Austen's life in various articles, heard about her books, and two years ago, was given two of her books - Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility - for my birthday, and said to a few too many people that I wanted to read all six.

I have just started reading Pride and Prejudice, and boy does it take some concentration. I'm maybe a quarter of the way through the story and while I can certainly see why Jane Austen is so well loved after all these years, she's hard work.

The writing is lovely, so intriguing, and so far away from how we speak today, yet it all carries the same meaning. The interactions people have with each other may be more polite and more structured, but the emotions that come out of pure human nature and our desire for each other have remained unchanged over the centuries.

We still fall for at least one bad boy in our lifetime.

We still play hard to get.

We still get jealous.

We still fall in love. In exactly the same way as we always have.