Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

This book is not quite as interesting to me as Persuasion was, possibly because the main character is 17 instead of 28 like in Persuasion.  She is flighty, like a normal 17 year old, but because I am more mature now, I disapproved of a lot of her choices of friends.

In the beginning of the book, we see her visiting Bath, England with a family friend.  There, she engages in high society life, attending balls, dinner parties, and the theater.  Eventually her time there ends and she is invited to the home of a friend, Elenor Tilney, where she engages in an embarrassing leap of the imagination, as teenage girls will sometimes do, and in an unrelated note, falls in love with Elenor's brother Henry.  There is additional unrelated plot which, while tangent to the story, still adds dimension and interest.  I did not care for this one as much as I did Persuasion, but it was still a good book.

I'd recommend this book only to Jane Austen fans, or perhaps to other 17-year-olds, or those who want to remember what it was like being a 17-year-old girl.

Persuasion

Persuasion, by Jane Austen

This book is awesome.  It is made even awesomer by the fact that it is the first book I've read digitally.  (New phone, new technology, all Jane Austen works are free...)  You can look forward to more reviews of Jane Austen works soon.

The book tells the story of Anne Elliot, a single woman of 28, who had, years before, been persuaded by family and a close friend, to turn down an engagement to a man she loved.  She did, and regretted it.  Years later, he is back in the picture, and they struggle to reconcile all that happened.

The book is well written, and has intricate plot, with the reader always wondering which character will marry which.  There is some jumping around and mind-changing on the part of the characters, but in the end, everyone is neatly paired off, like an Ancient Greek romantic comedy.

Why does this book attract me?  Last year, my close friend's love story appeared to be that of Pride and Prejudice.  She had found her Mr. Darcy, argued with him, and eventually fell in love and married him.  I loved that story, but feel persuasion is a story I can identify with more in my own life.  I understand what it is to wait years for the right person to come along, or to see people in my life behaving in a somewhat flighty manner, flitting from lover to lover while onlookers wonder when the final match will occur.  I only hope my Captain Wentworth can write love letters quite as well as Jane Austen's Captain Wentworth!

I recommend this book to everyone.  Period.  It is an easy read, fairly short, fun.  Ok, it is sort of a chick-flick type of book so maybe not all guys would enjoy it.  But definitely SOME guys would.

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

I had my reservations about picking up this book, because I sometimes find the literature of the 18th and 19th centuries to be somewhat dry. Jane Eyre was decent enough, and Wuthering Heights just made me mad, but I found them both to be lacking in the "can't put the book down" factor.

Pride and Prejudice was a "can't put the book down" kind of book. I had to physically remove it from my sight during my test week and before my pathology project was due, so that I would actually get work done. The style of writing seemed very polite, as well as the characters' ways of treating each other, even those they didn't like. I felt that if we could treat everyone like that, there would be no more war. And yet, despite their "civility" towards one another (the way Jane Austen worded it), there was still an indication that the England in which the characters were living was at war.

To boil it down, and attempting not to give away the whole book, Elizabeth Bennett is an out-spoken woman, the sibling of four sisters, all single and of marriageable age. Their mother's one purpose for living is to facilitate getting her daughters married off. Mr. Darcy is a visitor to their area, and acts as he has been brought up to act- that he is higher in the hierarchy than many people. She finds him too prideful, and later discovers she also is guilty: of judging him without first examining all the facts (her prejudice). The plot is much more complicated than that, with several unexpected twists, and other character's stories woven into it, but the basics are a look at the effects of (go figure) pride, and prejudice.

One thing I found slightly implausible is the ability of the characters to run into each other in all different parts of England, as if they are the only ones inhabiting it. I realize England then was less populated than it is now, but while such coincidences have occurred, they don't happen regularly. But the book was good enough that I forgave it.

Bottom line, this book is great for anyone who likes a good love story or several, anyone who likes 18th century literature (actually more like 19th), anyone who likes to study human nature and anyone who likes good quotes or polite, poetic ways of speaking- almost making prose sound like poetry.